did not have a lot planned today. Thought we'd just take it easy, head for old Dubai and do some shopping in the original gold souk area and see how much the creek has changed. Dubai creek was once the heartbeat of the city. Anything coming and going into the city came up the creek on the boats and was unloaded on the corniche along the creek. There were water taxis coming and going across the creek all the time because it was really the only way to cross the creek. I figured that things would have changed by now.
So a late start, a taxi ride into old Dubai and then we wandered through the souks. First thing we heard when we got out of the cab was "copy watch, copy bag". Gosh how that took us back. We used to wander Asia and get this all the time, men trying to sell us reproduction watches and high end copied purses and bags
. Hadn't heard it here yet because they can't go into the malls to do this. was kind of fun to hear it again. And as we didn't need a $20 Rolex, we passed them by.
The Gold Souk is enormous and when you think about the quantity of gold that is sitting in all the shop windows between here and all the malls and all the other Middle Eastern countries, and all the Asian countries and India, it is a wonder why gold is so expensive because there is certainly a lot of it. It's almost too much to look at and after awhile you kind of get almost inebriated from looking at all the gold and sparkly stuff. We stepped into a couple of stores and enjoyed talking to the clerks just because they are always from somewhere else. We talked to men from Kandy, Sri Lanka where we have visited and also men from Irkutsk, Russia where we have also visited. They always seem surprised that we've been in such out of the way places.
We finally had enough looking at gold so headed out towards the creek and had to walk upstream quite a bit to find the cargo boats and the water taxis but they are still there. We found a place to cross the creek and a man offered us a one hour tour on the boat so we took that and cruised up and down the creek for an hour, in the sun. Thank goodness it is winter almost and it was only about 75 degrees F. This part of Dubai has been here a very long time as it was the first important city center and also the first place to have sky scrappers and huge buildings and hotels and such. But I think it is like Singapore in that once a building has been up and running for 10-20 years, it is then old and faded in it's glory so we could see a lot of spaces where the buildings are coming down and being replaced. I think the fancy hotel along the creek where I stayed once is in that process.
The boat man dropped us on the other side of the creek and we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. We had to walk through a souk to get there and were offered pashminas and full Arabic dresses and perfume and tea sets and spices as we walked the short block to get to the restaurant. My hubby used to be bothered by the persistence of the salesmen but he's gotten much better at ignoring them.
Lunch was typical Arab food today and we enjoyed sitting under the shade, close to the creek, with a breeze, and having a nice lunch. But afterward, there wasn't much we wanted to do so we went out to a main street to find a taxi. The taxi that picked us up was a taxi from Sharjah and he isn't supposed to do that but he had been around the block and seen us and came back and we were still there so I'm glad he stopped. He didn't have a meter but by now we knew what the price should be so we got back to the hotel and have spent a quiet afternoon relaxing and trying to fight off a cold that is trying hard to sneak up on me - no, it's not sneaking, it's trying to hammer me. Just what I need to head off to the Seychelles tonight for diving. Well, luckily we'll be there long enough that I'm sure I will get in some good dives.
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