Al Ain Weekend and The Need to Know Arabic Part 1

I just got back from a weekend trip to relax and checkout the nearby City of Al Ain, UAE. Jennifer, my friend/coworker/roomate, and I planned a couple days away to explore the Zoo and take a quick drive across the Oman border to extend our entrance date into UAE.

Friday was quite uneventful. We left Abu Dhabi at about 10 and arrived in Al Ain at noon to check in to our hotel. Abu Dhabi is a city in UAE and is also one of the 7 emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates. Al Ain is in the Abu Dhabi Emirate so it is not too far away but the pool made a good excuse to get away and take advantage of the hotel amenities which I think we managed to do quite nicely.

First impressions of Al Ain from a traffic signal engineer's point of view....the traffic signal left-turn arrow displays are inverted and the mastarms are placed on the wrong side of the road so when you sit at an intersection, the signal heads are above you not in front of you.

Well now that I got work observations out of the way, I can enjoy my mini vacation...








Upon arrival at the Rotana Hotel (a huge hotel chain in the Middle East), we were greeted outside of the lobby by the gentlemen at the hotel yelling "Madams, Don't be silly. Put your luggage down. This is our job!" At this point I've come to the conclusion that this is the start to a fabulous weekend!

A coworker is out of town and let us borrow his Rotana card which we waved around the whole weekend to reap tons of the benefits and discounts. We first presented this card at the lobby and received an upgraded room. I'm not sure what our room would have looked like had we not presented that card but we arrived to a room with a huge deck! While exploring the room and the wonderful assortment of miniature liquor bottles in our mini fridge (It's been a while since we actually had the control to drink whenever we felt like it), our luggage arrived. The bellboy entered and asked if he could show us what was available to the review. We said "Sure." He started with the TV and the remote, found us some English speaking channels. He showed us the huge balcony then proceeded to the night stand. He opened the drawer and said "Here is a prayer rug" realizing who he was talking to and closed it before he had practically opened it, and said under his breath "This is for the Muslims." Then he proceeded to the Mini bar (which we had already toured for ourselves ;) ). The TV was still on the channel that the he earlier left it on and Jennifer and I heard a very familiar word at the same time and looked at eachother. Hoquiam! Only Pacific Northwesterners would know where the hell this was! It was a show about logging aired all the way on the otherside of the world! The bellboy didn't notice a thing and had no clue why we both repeated the word and went on with the tour like nothing ever happenned. He showed us where the robes and slippers were, showed us to keep the lights on we must place our key into the switch. He showed us the fancy phone with the buttons that you push to tell the maid help to not disturb. This was the life!

Our first stop...the pool of course. We jumped into our swim suits and located the pool. We found a couple of chairs and as we started to place our towels on the chairs, the pool boy ran over with a couple of comfy chair covers. We sat to relax and one of the bartenders brought around fresh fruit on a stick. So refreshing! Then another bartender walked around with ice cold wash clothes. Again, so refreshing! Another bartender walked around to take drink orders. We ordered a couple of Gin and Tonics. One more time, So refreshing! We were on our way to relaxing. The heat occasionally became a bit too much but the chilled pool was only steps away. The pool bar came in rather handy also! The pina coladas weren't the best to my normal standards but my 'haven't had very many drinks over the past couple of month' standards said it was excellent! ;)

We have been to so many malls since in the UAE that it was time to head out. I beleive that I've been to about 12 malls in this country. Malling is a common pastime because there is not much you can do outdoors in the Summer time.

This leads me to talk about our next stop...the Zoo! I know what you must be thinking...are you crazy, the Zoo, it's 110+ degrees out. We thought the same but an article in the Abu Dhabi Weekly had me thinking differently. The Al Ain Zoo which is a sister zoo to one of my all time favorites, the San Diego Zoo, is opened from 4pm to midnight. You must wait for the sun to go down to see any of the animals doing anything other than laying in the miserable heat! We arrived at the Zoo at about 7:30 when the sun was down. It was then that I realized what a poor idea this really was. The cost was only about 15 dirhams ($5USD) to get in. Animals in the light are sometimes difficult to locate but animals in the dark are impossible. Oh and I did manage to snap a few photos. Check em out!

If you would like copies of these, please let me know. So going to the zoo at night was not the 'brightest' idea...literally. ;) I did manage to snap a few photos that kinda sorta showed up. Please don't ask for copies they just appear to be too good to be handing out to everyone.

The highlight of the zoo was the bird show in Arabic. Birds are cool and everything but a bird show in Arabic is not worth attending. Jennifer had to remind me that we are in their country as if I had almost forgotten. Next time, I'll go during the winter and find a translator to take with me! ;) Or better yet, it's time I learn some Arabic.

After the Zoo it was late and we were hungry. We made it back to the hotel and dined at a restaurant called Zest. It was a buffet to feed a king and we tried it all! I'm not sure if you can tell from the pictures but there was food stacked on other food as if another plate was hard to come by or something.

We planned on going to Trader Vics but after dinner we were too full to consume anything else, so we called it a night.

No thanks to my alarm going off at 6:30am, we were able to make it to the pool bright and early. We made up for the alcohol-free night before and drank a Bloody Mary while relaxing by the pool. It was here that we met a 22 year old young local Emirati lady. She had some interesting views on a young muslim woman's life. She was definately not the most strict Muslim woman and had some very strong views. She believes that many of the women that marry at 18 or 19 go crazy because they didn't experience much of their young adult lives. So she has decided to spend her young adult life having fun and being free until, as she put it, she gets married and goes crazy. We exchanged numbers and business cards and we are hoping that this local Emirati can show us the ropes. She will be an interesting young friend to have as she is definately not the norm.

We then headed up to the room and got ready to head to Oman for our re-entrance visas. Stay tuned for my next blog about that.