Arabian Gulf Surprises - Part 1
Map of countries and ports where cruise ship docked.
Arabian Gulf Surprises - Part 1
Is a visit to Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi or Muscat on your bucket list? It was never on mine. Even three months after visiting those cities I’m amazed that I went and that I loved the experience.
Sometimes we get talked into doing things we never would do on our own. My tour of a portion of the Middle East was sponsored by Carleton College and was planned in conjunction with my 50-year college reunion. I attended my 45th college reunion in 2015. Shortly after that I was recruited to be part of the planning committee for our 50th Reunion to be held in June, 2020. While planning the 2020 reunion the idea came up of also taking a cruise. One of our classmates had served as Ambassador to Qatar and she wanted to share some of her experiences in that part of the world with classmates. The cruise was originally scheduled for January 2022, a year and a half after our scheduled reunion.
Map of countries visited and neighboring countries.
When the registration materials came out, my husband was quick to tell me he had no interest in participating in a cruise that would take him to United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman. I did not really want to go either, but also hated to miss out on an activity so many of my classmates planned to be part of. When a friend I’d traveled with previously asked me to be her roommate on the trip, I cautiously agreed. Our 2020 reunion turned into a Zoom event, followed by a specially scheduled in person gathering in 2022. Our 2022 cruise was rescheduled at the last minute to 2023. In the midst of the confusion about these schedule changes and anxiety about the itinerary and COVID, my roommate and I decided to shorten our participation by dropping the three-day desert extension we had originally signed up for. The trip I actually took began January 3rd with an overnight direct flight to Dubai on Emirates Air. I returned home 13 days later, flying from Muscat to Dubai and then directly to Seattle from Dubai, arriving at SeaTac on Sunday, January 15, 2023.
Initially, I knew very little about the countries we would visit. We had several advance Zoom calls and recommended reading to help us prepare for the trip, but it was hard to escape concern that I was going to countries which had Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Yemen as neighbors. Was it safe? Would we be welcomed as visitors? Would the temperature be tolerable? Would I be embarrassed or shamed for behaving or dressing in a way not acceptable in the culture of these countries? What would happen to me if I got sick while traveling? I found it easy to think of many things to worry about.
My flight to Dubai went smoothly. Traveling alone, I opted to fly business class and appreciated the good food, available movies, nearby bathroom, and the extra attention I received from the flight attendants. I’d been told that the flight crew were unlikely to be from the countries I would be visiting. The ones I interacted with all seemed to be from Europe. In Dubai, I was the first passenger off the plane and was able to fairly easily find my way to passport control. When I presented my passport I was asked if I had arrived from Tel Aviv. I was really confused when he didn’t seem to accept that I had flown in from Seattle. Israel had recently entered into an agreement with United Arab Emirates which would allow Israelis to travel to U.A.E. for the first time in years. Just before I got to the passport desk, passengers from Tel Aviv had come through and the worker assumed I was part of that group. I explained that there was a whole planeload of passengers who just arrived from Seattle, but I was the first off the plane, so he hadn’t yet seen the others. With that confusion cleared up, I passed through with no further problem. I was meeting two other classmates at the airport to ride together to our hotel. The Dubai airport is huge and there was some confusion about our meeting location, but we did finally find each other, as well as our luggage, and rode off with our designated driver to the JW Marriott Marquis Hotel Dubai, where we would stay for two nights before embarking on our cruise aboard Ponant’s Le Bougainville cruise ship.
Dubai is a large modern city with a population of over 3 million people, including both citizens and foreign workers. It is a city of many dramatic skyscrapers, funded by oil revenue, international trade, tourism and financial services. Since only about 15% of the population is citizens, most of the people visitors see on the streets, in the hotels and in shops are from other countries. Each of the countries we were to visit are considered Islamic monarchies, with the government controlled by ruling families. We were given some useful information by our guides shortly after arriving:
1. There is no crime. (We wondered how that was possible but it was a relief to know that we did not need to worry about pickpockets, guns, or other criminal activity.)
2. There are no illicit drugs and we could be in serious trouble if we had brought any with us.
3. Public displays of affection are viewed as inappropriate. (Not something I was likely to engage in.)
4. Women will need head coverings if entering a mosque, as well as modest clothes.
5. The city is very clean, with almost no litter, no graffiti, and no homeless encampments.
As we walked around the hotel and the neighborhood where it was located, we discovered that the people we met were polite and welcoming. Throughout the trip, everyone we met expressed how happy they were to be living where they were. I heard no one complain about anything. When my fellow travelers and I were in our hotel room or on our ship, we asked one another if people could be as happy as they all claimed to be. We wondered whether there were penalties for criticizing the government or whether the citizens were happy because of their comfortable financial situation and the foreign workers were happy because their living situations and employment were substantially better than where they had come from. For myself, I was quite happy as well – happy that I arrived healthy and with no lost luggage, relieved that I didn’t have the pickpocket worries so common in Europe, comforted that there was no need to worry about guns or street violence and drugs, and pleased to be able to escape from the homeless encampments that are prevalent in large cities in the U.S.
After our Carleton group of about 38 passengers had boarded our ship along with the other passengers we headed off for our next destination, Sir Bani Yas, an island nature preserve which was privately developed to house mostly non-native animals and to host tour groups who could view the animals from jeep-type vehicles or enjoy the beach. We were the only cruise ship at the dock on the day we visited, so it wasn’t crowded as we drove around viewing the animals. There was no time for beach activities.
Our next destination was Doha, the capital of Qatar, and the location of the recently completed World Cup Soccer Tournament. Much like Dubai, it is a large modern city with many skyscrapers. The highlights of our visit were the Souq Waqif shopping area, the Museum of Islamic Arts and the National Museum of Qatar. We saw many more people in traditional dress in Doha than we had in Dubai.
After our short visit in Qatar we returned to the United Arab Emirates for a visit to their capital, Abu Dhabi. We visited several amazing buildings there: the Louve Abu Dhabi and the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque are shown below. Visiting the mosque was the first time the women in our group were required to don headscarves. The Cinnabon picture might appear out of place, but the public entrance to visit the mosque is underground and requires a walk through a huge underground shopping mall that, except for being underground and some arabic writing, would not be out of place anywhere in our country. It seemed a bizarre way to construct an entrance but there must have been a rationale.
Another breathtaking building is the Qasr Al Watan Palace. In addition to being a showplace for tourists, this is a site for many conferences , banquets and government events. It also has a library.
This concludes Part I of this blog post. Return later for Part II.
Carolyn Hayek