Experiences in Dubai: Part IV

Dear Friends and Family,

First off we want to share some great news. For those of you who know our daughter Jen (who lives in Snoqualmie) they are happy to announce that they are finally expecting #2. It's been a long time in coming! We are all very excited for them.

Well, we have finally arrived in Dubai to stay and are continuing our apartment hunt here. We are staying in a temporary hotel/apartment for now until we find a suitable place…hopefully before we go back to the US for Christmas.

We moved out of our house in Maple Valley on Oct. 5 and spent a couple of days exploring downtown Seattle (doing some things we kept putting off to see). Then Kent headed off to Ghana for business before heading to Dubai, and I went to visit family in Idaho/Utah for one last time before moving.

We are renting our house out to a couple (the Metts) who we found out about through our oldest daughter, Heidi, who knows their oldest daughter, Jessica from when they lived in NY a couple of summers ago. It just worked out that the Metts were moving to Seattle and wanted to rent a house and since we had decided to rent instead of sell our house, it worked out perfectly! We also discovered that we have many common friends around the world since both of us have lived overseas.

So did everyone have a fun-filled Halloween?

For our Halloween day activity, we decided we should start exploring around Dubai so when someone comes to visit us (!!!) we will know the best places to show around. So Saturday morning we went to a one of Dubai’s landmark places called The Atlantis Hotel on one of the Palm Islands. (yes, I will visit this sand palm tree, but as I mentioned in a previous letter, I wouldn’t want to live on it) The hotel is located on the crescent shaped island just above the top of the "palm tree". There is apparently another hotel similar to it in the Bahamas.

We had heard that only way they allow you to visit the hotel is to either be a "hotel guest," to attend one of its attractions, or to eat at one of its restaurants. We were told they have a great buffet, so that’s what we decided to do. It was still a bit pricey for a meal, but the "cheapest" way to get in. So we hopped in a taxi and headed out. Of course they stopped our taxi at the entrance to ask if we were guests. We told them no, but that we were coming to eat at the restaurant…and he waved us through! (I’ve been told that you can get around here much easier if you just act like you know what you are doing, whether you do or not!)

So we were at the famous Atlantis hotel!!! I don’t know how best to describe my first impression of this amazing edifice other than to say it’s a jaw-dropper!!! This 1.5 billion dollar resort development includes the two hotel towers (with over 1500 rooms) linked by a gigantic arch, a 42-acre water theme park called Aquaventure, and an 11-acre Dolphin Bay where you can swim and play with the dolphins, as well as a couple of other water/marine life activities. We didn’t go to any of the water activities…we just ate at the restaurant and then found it highly entertaining simply to walk through the massive halls of the hotel!

There was so much amazing detail in the architecture. Even the indoor pillars were either carved or cast to look like hundreds of seashells going up the sides. There were detailed paintings on the ceilings, hundreds of fancy light fixtures in the shapes of massive sea shells and an enormous blown glass sculpture in the center of the lobby (designed by Washington’s own Dale Chihuly from Tacoma!) But my favorite was seeing the enormous three-story aquarium, which was on one of the lower levels of the hotel lobby. It holds over 65,000 fish, including a 13-foot female whale/shark! The aquarium holds 2.9 million gallons of water…truly amazing!

It appears that no expense was spared in creating what I would call a hotel/resort “dreamland”. You can stay there for a mere $515 per night per room ;0) (But that does include unlimited access to the waterpark!) I was surprised at how many families were there.

Better start saving your pennies!

We took the monorail back to the mainland and that was an adventure in itself. Because the rail is pretty high up in the air, there are some great views in every direction as you ride back to the “base” of the palm and onto the mainland. We got some good shots with our video camera. I attached a photo of the hotel that I good from the train.

Halloween night we had been invited to a friend’s home – Toria Clason. She is a lady I met actually online, as I had seen her blog online when I “Googled” about the LDS church in Dubai last year. So I emailed her several months ago. Her husband was recently called as the Branch President. They have three children…the youngest being born here in Dubai. Anyway, we went to their home, which is a “villa” further out toward the desert. There were probably 15 or 20 couples that came to the party and most of them had children. So we got to meet quite a few new people.

We also had the chance to go to church on Friday and meet more members. (Remember that Friday is the Sabbath here!) There is a ward and a branch here in Dubai. We will likely be in the ward boundaries. By the way, I have attached a picture of the “villa” where we meet for church…but I hear we are getting a new place to meet soon.

As for what housing is like here…you can get villas further out like where the Clasons live (ie. a house with a yard, etc.) for the same price as an apartment in a high rise in the area near Kent’s office where we are looking. We decided that since we don’t have kids with us anymore, we don’t need a big place, so convenience in getting to work is what we are going for. Travel time out to the villas from where Kent’s office is over 30 minutes in good traffic. We are hoping to get an apartment close enough that he could actually walk to work in about 15 minutes (that is once the temperatures cool off…they are still in the 90’s).

So far we don’t plan to get a car, as transportation is quite cheap using a taxi, just not always as convenient (as we found the other day when it took 20 minutes of waiting on the street before an empty one finally came by.) Driving here makes me a little nervous until I learn my way around a little better. It took us a whole year before we bought a car when we lived in Tokyo (and we had three kids to haul around!) but we did finally get one. We’ll see how things go here.

Today I went out exploring on my own while Kent was at work. I took a taxi to find a post office over by the mall with the ski slope. It was a 15-minute ride in a taxi being driven by a man that looked like he could have been in any terrorist movie (you know, a Middle Eastern guy with a 5 o’clock-shadow beard). I thought for a moment “should I feel uncomfortable after all the movies I’ve seen where the bad guys are either taxi drivers or Middle Easterners?” I quickly dispelled my fears and decided to just visit with the driver on the way there. I did the same thing with the taxi driver on my way back home. Yep, they are just normal everyday people like you and me. Why was I worried!??

Well, I should send this off before it becomes a book. I’m sure I’ve forgotten to write about something. If anyone has questions they wonder about here, let me know. That will give me something else to write about. But here are a few trivia facts I found online that may answer some of them:

Dubai is the most populous state of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and according to Wikipedia, it is not a city. (Hmmm, it feels like one to me!) Its population is almost 1.4 million, with almost three times more men than women. It occupies about 500 square miles (apparently about the same size as Los Angeles city, but Dubai has less than half the number of people that LA does).

So there is your demographic lesson for today!

Hope all is well with everyone!

Love, Karen (ps. below are some photos. The first one is of the villa (house) we currently meet for church. The other photos we took when visiting The Atlantis Hotel/Resort.