Boogacres: Asia, National Geographic Expedition - Thursday, February 15, 2018

National Geographic Asia

The time has come for another adventure with National Geographic. Last year on the final day of our NatGeo African Expedition, Stevie, Lorri, Midge and I put our heads together to decide where we wanted to go next. And now, a year later, here we go again!! The four of us, plus Pat, are headed to Asia with National Geographic. We meet the group in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and from there go to Katmandu, Bhutan, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Udaipur, India. With this group of 5 women together, no matter where we go ... I KNOW we'll have an amazing time.

I was so happy to find that Midge and I are on the same flight out of JFK. I had a 4 hour layover from Tampa to JFK, but was actually kind of excited about it because I've always heard about Emirates' amazing lounge. Well, guess what lounge is closed for renovation. Yup! Emirates at JFK. I'm a little surprised that Emirates didn't work out a reciprocity arrangement with another airline lounge. Instead, they gave us a $40.00 food voucher for a meal in the terminal and sent us on our way. I met up with Midge right away and we wandered the airport in search of food and a comfortable place to hang out for 4 hours. We settled on an Irish Pub with terrible food and service to match. Not a good first impression of Emirates. But hey, if this is the worst thing that happens to us on this journey, we are darn lucky!!

After our not so fine dining experience, I picked up some almonds and various other snacks to take on the trip. Asian food is not on my list of the 10 best foods in life. In fact ... for those of you who know me well ... it's not on ANY likable food list of mine. So I have taken necessary precautions and loaded up on almonds and pistachios. Good to go.

On board and ready for take off with a nice cup of tea.

Let's get this party started! At the Emirates on board Bar.

Guess this could be considered our first happy hour evening on the Emirates Flight.

We boarded our flight, got settled and as soon as the plane took off and the seat belt sign went off, we found our way to the on board bar for a cocktail, where we met a delightful family from Dubai who gave us some suggestions of things to do in Dubai. They were returning home after 3 weeks in the US. It was fun hearing their enthusiastic descriptions of their vacation stops in the US. They loved Miami, the Grand Canyon, New Orleans and Las Vegas. After a few cocktails and some nice conversation, we returned to our seats for dinner and then a nice long nap. I slept until the flight attendant woke me for another feeding - breakfast just before landing in Dubai.

Friday, February 16, 2018 - Arrive Dubai

I had prearranged a service with American Express where Midge and I were greeted right outside the jetway, put on a cart and driven through the airport to immigration. We felt so important!! Our guide opened a gate, bypassing the entire immigration line and we were "next up" in a rather long line of not so happy looking people. As for me ... I pretended Midge was a celebrity and charged right through, totally ignoring the scowls from the "commoners" and handed my passport to the immigration officer. After clearing immigration, our guide escorted us to baggage claim, collected our bags and turned us over to the National Geographic driver who gave us a guided tour all the way to the Jumeirah Zabeel Saray Hotel - our home for the next four nights.

Lobby of the Jumeirah Zabeel Saray Hotel. The floor is inlaid marble in geometric designs. Incredible craftsmanship. The columns are gold leaf and the chandeliers are crystal from Germany.

Colorful chandliers hang in the lobby bar.

My room.

The living room and terrace of my room overlooking the Arabian Sea and Palm Island.

Bathroom.

The HUGE tub was the size of a small swimming pool with hand carved doors that open into the bedroom.

The view of the Arabian Sea and Palm Tree Island from my room.

About the Jumeirah ... it's hard to hide the oil money here. The opulence is overwhelming. The shiny marble floor with geometric designs perfectly inlaid in contrasting color marble, stunning crystal chandeliers, gold leaf accents on the ceiling and a water fountain show complete with laser lights, set the lobby apart from the ordinary. I think I'll be happy here for a few days.

So our journey in Dubai begins. I've never been here. It's never even been on my radar screen, but I find myself here now and totally captivated by the architecture and beauty of this desert city. Most of "new" Dubai is built on man made grounds. They literally hauled sand out of the sea to make a land mass to build fabulous hotels and homes.

Ok. So here's problem number one. As a child, I remember an old Baptist Hymn that said "On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand." I also recall a bible verse saying something along those lines - a wise man builds his home on a rock foundation and not on sinking sand. Well, I guess these folks have never heard that, which makes sense because it is a predominantly Muslim country. So they probably never heard that hymn. Therefore, they have massive high rise hotels and apartments built on SAND that a few years ago rested on the bottom of the ocean. I just hope the lovely hotel I'm staying in, Jumeirah Zabeel Saray, has some solid footers to get us through the next few days.

You can almost make out the Palm Tree Island here in the background. A new island is being dredged in the foreground.

After the sand is dredged and compressed, rocks are stacked around the edges to keep the sand in place and then buildings go up. How many of these do you think will be standing in 50 years? I've already seen a couple of news articles about the Palm Island sinking.

Seriously, I've never seen anything like this. People like to live on waterfront property. So when the waterfront is built out, they just dredge up more sand and build more water front. They already have two "Palm Tree" islands. One is almost totally built out. The other Palm Island is much larger and no construction has begun there since the 2008 real estate crash. They are just now beginning to offer lots for new construction on the 2nd island. But in the meantime, other islands are being created. It's totally insane. I've never seen so much concrete and glass in my life. Each building is architecturally unique. An architectural student could have a field day here studying the designs. I guess I don't have a true appreciation for some of the designs. I find myself wondering what kind of weed they were smoking when they dreamed up some of the buildings. Here's a perfect example:

This 70 story building is twisted by design.

What a difference one letter can make. "TO LET" means space available to lease. I guess at a quick glance, my eye kept thinking the signs were saying TOILET. So with my warped sense of humor, I want to buy a vowel.

I know what lies ahead, so I'm trying to stay ahead of the calorie intake with a workout in the gym.

Happy Hour

Dinner at the hotel.

My room attendant brought me a bounty of goodies today. Now you know why I was in the gym.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

We toured the worlds tallest building today, Burj Khalifa. The 165 story building is so tall, that the temperature difference at the top is 6 degrees cooler than at ground level. Construction began in 2004 and Burj Khalifa was completed in 2009 with a price tag of 1.5 billion oil dollars. The building is surrounded by a fabulous man made lake which displays a water show each evening beginning at 6:00.

Burj Khalifa. The world's tallest building. Until a taller one is finished in Dubai by the year 2020. The Burj makes the other surrounding skyscrapers look tiny and insignificant.

This is the lagoon surrounding the Burj. At 6:00 every evening, a water show begins that is said to make the Bellagio look like nothing.

The view from the 125 floor of Burj Khalifa. The dark design in the water is plumbing for the water show.

Another view from the Burj Khalifa

Selfie from 125 floors up Burj Khalifa.

Burj Khalifa is used for office space, private apartments and retail space. While leaving the building, we found a fun spot in the mall area, near the aquarium where we dressed in traditional Bedouin outfits and had a photo session. One of the girls said, this just feels so artificial. Well hell! All of Dubai is artificial, so we fit in just fine. And had fun at the same time.

Some locals were watching us and got a kick out of the foreigners trying to look like them.

Our guide Janine held our cameras and purses while we were playing dress up.

After lunch at the top of the Mariott Harbor Hotel with fabulous views from the 52 floor, we wandered to the Marina where we boarded the Ali Baba for a tour of the artificial harbor around the artificial Palm Tree Island. Gave us a chance to see the incredible buildings on the water front.

Our yacht for a 45 minute cruise through the Harbor.

The concrete skyline of Dubai rises above us.

We've had an amazing guide today. Her name is Janine VanLanen and she is from the Netherlands. She's been a tour guide for 17 years, speaks 5 languages and is incredible with sharing interesting facts about the area. For example. She shared with us that Emirates do NOT like negative publicity. A few years back, the Camel Racing arena was criticized for using children to race the camels. They felt the children were being exploited. Guess they don't have any small people in the Arab Emirates like the jockeys we have in the US. So, they decided that tourists would not be allowed to attend the Camel Races any longer since a few people were offended by the child riders. (Why are fun things sometimes spoiled by a few simple minded people, eh?). Since 90% of Emirates consists of ex-patriots from other countries, the Camel Racing attendance dropped off almost completely. The people decided they needed to do something to bring back the spectators, so someone invented robot camel jockeys to ride the camels and they got rid of all the child camel jockeys.

Robot jockeys on Camels for next race.

That's right. The robot rests on top of the camel's back and the jockeys control the robot remotely like a video game. They can make the robot whip the camel and have actual recordings of their voices to encourage the camel on. This made the people happy and the racing industry began to thrive again. However, there is no gambling at the races. WTF??? Why bother?

Emirate Sheik's motto is to keep the people happy. They have declared Emirates the happiest country in the world. They do NOT like anything negative.

This concluded the tour of New Dubai, so we headed back to the hotel around 3:30. Just in time for a quick workout and shower before our 2nd happy hour in the lobby bar and dinner at the Rib Room.

Happy Hour #2 after touring New Dubai.

Dinner at The Rib Room at out hotel.

Dinner was excellent and now I'm back in the room trying to download photos and get the blog posted. But alas, the website won't allow me to download the photos. I think the files are too large as I'm shooting in RAW format. Might need to change that for purposes of the blog. In the meantime, I need to get some sleep. We have an early start tomorrow. Night night.

Sunday, February 18, 2018 - Abu Dhabi

Sheikh Zayed Al Kabel Mosque, Abu Dhabi.

We got an early start this morning with our guide, Janine and off to the capitol of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, to tour the Sheikh Zayed Al Kabeer Mosque, also known as The Grande Mosque. Apparently, the goal of the Emeraties is to make the world's largest, tallest and best of EVERYTHING. The building we visited yesterday was the world's tallest. The Farris Wheel, "Al Ain Dubai" (which I'll explain in more detail later) is the world's largest Farris Wheel. The world's largest mosque, The Sheikh Zayed Mosque (pronounced Zi-'yed) can accommodate over 40,000 worshipers.

World's Largest Chandelier.

Seeing the Chandelier with people in the photo gives one a better perspective of it's size.

World's largest carpet. The columns in the photo are solid marble with inlaid mother of pearl flowers and leaves all the way to the ceiling.

Truly an international affair with lots of international flair, the mosque contains the world's largest Swarovski Crystal Chandlier from Germany, valued at nine million dollars. The 60,570 square foot carpet is said to be the largest hand loomed carpet with over 2 billion knots, made by craftsmen from Iran out of wool from New Zealand, and also had a price tag of nine million dollars.

Glass from Murano is used for the doors and these marble flowers are 3 dimensional and attached to the walls.

The lovely lady (Midge) peaking through these columns compliments the spectacular craftsmanship of the inlaid flowers.

The hand carved inlaid marble and semi precious stones throughout the Mosque are from India. Glass windows are from Murano, Italy. The 180,000 square foot courtyard is said to be the largest display of marble mosaic in the world. Hand painted ceramic tile frescos are displayed throughout. Oh. Did I forget to mention the gallons of 24 karat gold paint used to accent the ceiling? I just had a text from a friend who described Abu Dhabi and Dubai as "the land of opulence." Well said. I'll say it again ... you can't hide the oil money in this place.

Traditional Abayas were in order here. No shoes allowed inside the mosque.

Our guide brought the required dress for women, Abayas (dress) and Khatta (scarf), for us to wear while touring the mosque. At one point, Midge's scarf fell off her head while another tourist was taking a photo. A guard quickly instructed Midge to replace her scarf and made the tourist delete the photo that may have contained Midge's uncovered hair. I had a few strands of hair hanging out from the front of my scarf and was severely reprimanded and required to tighten the scarf around my head immediately! REALLY???? Ok. Any men who many be reading this blog, let me ask you ... are a few strands of hair provocative?? I didn't think so!! These folks need to get a life!!

Where are my friends??? They all look alike!!

Sometimes, when I would stop to take a photo, I found it difficult to catch up with my group because there were so many black Abayas wondering around. I didn't know "who/who", as a Maroon Creek Caddy would say. Occasionally, I'd follow the wrong group and didn't realize it until I poked one to make a sarcastic remark only to see a stranger's face looking back with a startled expression. Hate when that happens. There is probably a rule against that too!!

The courtyard is surrounded by these walkways.

Stevie sporting her Abaya.

These dome skylights add natural light to the ladies room below. Unbelievable ladies room.

Check out the ladies room. One of the nicest I've ever seen.

This is the room where women wash their feet before worship. Natural light from the skylights (above) illuminate the room.

Still in the ladies room, the marble is stunning in this foot washing room.

Lorri taking a selfie.

The tour was truly worth the 1.5 hour drive from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. After touring the mosque, our next stop was the Louvre. The Emirates had to pay the French government millions of dollars - I believe the figure was around $100 million to use the Louvre name. In return, the Louvre sends an occasional piece to be shown here.

The Louvre in Dubai. Not terribly impressive from this viewpoint, but from inside, the roof is amazing.

The layers of the metal ceiling allow natural light through causing a "star" effect on the floor.

I was fascinated by the ceiling.

Ok. We saw a Van Gough self portrait.

Some kind of war amour.

Hey, finally somebody I recognize!!

And a Leonardo DiVinci selfie.

By now ... I've reached the "who gives a shit" mode.

The Louvre building is an architectural work of art. The roof is made of eight layers of metal. Each layer of metal has cutouts allowing natural night in. I have to admit, museums are not really my thing, but I was fascinated by the building.

While at the Louvre, we ran into a couple from our Africa trip, Alicia and Tom. As we hugged them, a guard immediately told us that public displays of affection are forbidden. Damn! These folks REALLY need to get a life! I'm glad I don't live here. I'd likely spend most of the time in jail for an offense like hugging or hair exposure. Our guide told us that in Emirates, if a woman invites a man to her room that she is not married to, and she is sexually assaulted by the man, she will be considered at fault and go to jail. Don't anybody tell Weinstein this!!

The coffee shop at the Louvre was delightful. I'll take a cappuccino over a Van Gough. Guess I flunked the fine arts "culture class" when I went to school.

Stevie and I did the "Jiffy Louvre." We saw a couple of DiVinci's, Van Gough's self portrait, and the coffee shop, where we had a tasty cappuccino while waiting for Lorri and Midge.

Our next stop was the Emirates Palace. Construction began in 2001, but Sheik Zayed (pronounced "shake Zi-'yed") died before it's completion in 2005. All of the Sheik's children had plenty of palaces, so it was decided to turn Sheik Shack (hope you get the play on words. Get it? Shake Shack?) into a 7 star hotel becoming one of the worlds most expensive hotels with a price tag of one $3 Billion dollars. I'm not sophisticated enough to have a word in my vocabulary grand enough to describe the opulence of this hotel. It was truly over the top.

Sheik Zayed Palace is now the Emirates Palace Hotel.

The Sheik Shack

Lobby of the Emirates Palace Hotel. Originally built to be the Sheikh's palace.

Ceiling of the Emirates Palace.

Lobby at the Emirates Palace Hotel. Yes, that's real gold leaf.

We decided to have a cup of coffee. Twenty-five dollars for a cup of Emirate Palace Coffee surpasses Aspen's high prices. It won't stop me from drinking a tasty cappuccino sprinkled with 24 karat eatable gold flakes, but it might slow me down a bit. Delicious!!

Waiting for our Emirate Palace Coffee in the lobby bar.

$25.00 for a cup of coffee ... it'd better come on a silver tray!!

Enjoying our coffee.

Stevie and her coffee.

Check out those golden flakes.

So tasty!! And now I have gold leaf lips.

After our coffee break and checking out the Palace lobby, being sufficiently museum'ed and mosque'd out we headed to lunch at Safina, Saadiyat Beach Club.

Lunch at the Beach Club.

Gives new meaning to "The Pot Store" AND I dream of Jeanie and, of course, the worlds largest pot.

Finally back to our hotel in Dubai, my friend, Pat, arrived this afternoon and she has much to catch up on. So we met in the lobby bar for our third happy hour, which turned into dinner.

It all starts with a few drinks!

And then things get interesting.

I'm now back in the room. My room attendant, whom I accidentally tipped $20.00 the first night, continues to bring goodies to my room. Tonight's treats ... a huge bowl of fruit, a large box of chocolates and a large box with every kind of baklava imaginable. He says he's coming back tomorrow night with enough for me to travel home with. This would normally delight me, but I'm off sugar and these treats are hard to resist!! Excuse me while I try to resist another piece of baklava.

Box of chocolates from my room attendant.

And of the Baklava!!! Yum!

Also, just wanted to share a few more of the architectural wonders of Dubai. You be the judge:

World's Largest Farris Wheel. The People of Dubai wanted to name it the Eye of Dubai, but the folks in London took offense to that saying the name was already in use with the Eye of London. So, not wanting negative publicity, the name was changed to Al Ain Dubai, which is Arabic for "Eye of Dubai.