Winter UAE : Dune bashing & belly dancing

The moment i’m writing this, Nadal just advanced himself to semi-final Australian Open 2012 after beating Tomas Berdych in four sets battle of quarter final. Meaning that, he will meet Roger Federer in semi-final match and i bet it’s gonna be such a mouth-watering match. Yeaayy!! Two of my favorite tennis players will play against each other and if i may recall, it was three years back since the last set up. I don’t have any preferences, in fact i don’t even care who’s gonna win because i just fancy both of them. Ok, enough said about tennis. Let’s just stick to the real topic, about continuing my Emirates venture. And this time, it’s Dune Bashing and ‘tarian gelek’ a.k.a belly dancing episode! The desert safari adventure started at 3.30pm and ended roughly around 9.30pm on the very same day. It’s an Evening Desert Safari and the driver picked us up at the pickup point near Mariah’s apartment. Then, the driver drove us to Al-Ain which located about 1 hour away from the central of Abu Dhabi. There was only 3 of us in the jeep,excluding the driver – me, Lyn and another Indian guest (i could not remember his name). And i also remember, that the driver is also an Indian, from Kerala to be specific who already worked in Abu Dhabi for the past 13 years and he can speak Arabic fluently. One thing that i noticed about the Arab culture, that all Arab mens will wear ‘jubah’ to work. That’s one thing that you can actually distinguish between the true local Arab mens and the foreigners. So, our driver just wore a collared- tshirt and blue jeans – my presumption was right! Once reached Al-Ain area, the driver stopped for a while at the camel farm. That was my first time seeing so many camels in front of my eyes at one time, like bunch of them. People were right when they say camels has a thick and wavy eyelashes. Having seeing that in real life, well i could not agree more on that. Very tall, humphy and stink! Masya Allah, the smell..i just could not stand it. Busuk nak mampus!! With all the urine and the poo-poo all over the places, i need to watch out my every steps.

Tumpuk- tumpuk…tahi unta (Pendekar Bujang Lapok).

Mat saleh is always a mat saleh!

Silly me, i forgot to bring my shades from KL. I know, i know! I thought i did packed the shades into my luggage and not that i realize i just brought the shades box with no shades in it. * slaps forehead* Even though it’s winter but the sun was so bright. Had such a hard time to capture  good pictures with my eyes widely opened. Well, this is the best one we got!

One of the stupid pose with the camel (credits to Lyn for the pic)

Some of the drivers were performing Asar prayer in between the jeeps.

Here we go, the dune bashing adventure started. All the jeeps lining up and ours was leading the group. Wicked!

The dune bashing itself took about 45 minutes with one stop. Basically, the stop is just to cool down the engine as you may realize by now, that the driving method was very rough exploring the dunes. From the beginning, my friend Lyn was a bit nervous as she kept on telling me how scared she was, but for me..i didn’t even feel a thing! I don’t know what’s wrong with me cos throughout the journey, i just feel so sleepy and very much giggling all the way until these  two Mat Saleh mens who joined our ride later on called us the ‘ Giggling Group’! No, no..i ain’t being so stuck up about it or anything. Well, the rides were bumpy but i ain’t scared or anything. Am i heartless? Truly speaking, i don’t know! You tell me! Maybe it was because i’ve done much scarier attempt last time when i traveled to New Zealand- bungy jumping. So, that has countered it all, i guess!

(credits to Lyn for below pic)

The dune bashing continues…

And 20 minutes later, we reached our final stop – the desert camp. The camel ride begin, sand boarding, BBQ dinner and belly dancing yo!

This is obviously not a belly dancing. Just a bunch of Pak Arabs dancing to Arab songs, the routine is very much slow moving in circle formation with tossing up the stick to the air.

Right, this is it- the belly dancing! The dancer just gelek gelek on the stage and then later invited some of the guests to join her ‘joget lambak’. Haha!

No, she does not have a flat tummy like Megan Fox. According to some source, the Arabians prefer the one with the belly cos apparently, they found all the ‘spare tyres’ are very much appealing to their eyes and sexy! Yes, pleasing for them  but not for me cos i do find it’s distracting. Hehe! The belly dance formation also not so erotic and nothing like ‘Goyang Gerudi Inul‘. In this case, Inul took the throne with no exceptional! Hahaha!

We reached Mariah’s crib around 9.30pm later that night. Had shower, napped and packed our stuffs for the Turkey trip and off we to Istanbul on the same night via Turkish Airlines at 4.30am . We supposed to be flying an hour earlier but our flight got delayed. So, stay tune for the next episode which is the main highlight of the trip – Istanbul a.k.a Isketambola , Turkey !

Winter at UAE and Turkey, teaser

Some teasers from my recent winter holiday at UAE and Turkey. Will upload more once i recovered from high fever – i got this on my last day at Turkey, due to non-stop raining at Istanbul, ice rain at Selcuk and first day of heavy snow at Pamukkale. Nice combo! And it even got worse once i reached Abu Dhabi. It was so torturing to fall sick during vacation. *mood deprive*

The Sleepless Shanghai

More pics to come…. will upload them later (when i have the mood hehe).

Yuyuan Garden & Bazaar, Shanghai

It has been 2 months since the last time i posted something in this blog, and i can say that i was having such a hard time to find a way or perhaps a suitable words to begin with. I know this post kinda ‘basi’ already, but hey my schedule was super pack for the past few months. I thought of posting all the pics up in July, but i was terribly sick due to viral conjunctivitis that kept me stranded in quarantine mode for 3 weeks at home. I could not go to work or out in public places because it is contagious, and i could not even watch tv or surfing the Internet via my iPhone as the lights really strained my eyes. And if i need to go out, i need to put on my shades does not matter whether it is day or night. Tell me guys, who won’t feel bored after being stranded at home for more than a week without doing anything but just sleep and stocking up in pills and eye dropper. In fact, i felt totally like an idiot being the only person in cinema hall watching Harry Potter 7 with the sunnies on when it was not even a 3D.  In fact, during that 3 weeks period it wasn’t just conjunctivitis but i also had fever,flu and sore throat along the way. Ah nice, here comes all of those in one combo huh?! Geez man! Conjunctivitis is like the worst of all, you can’t do anything to heal rather than just run the course! Alrite, enough blabbering about the conjunctivitis as it is obviously nothing to do with the rest of these pics that i’ve uploaded. All that matters now, i’m back in shape,fine and healthy. Alhamdulilah.

I was in Shanghai in May and it was still Spring when i reached there. The flight journey took about 5 hours from KLIA via MAS. This trip also cover some suburb places like Suzhou and Hangzhou. Since i captured so many pics, i decided to post them in up in separate entries. As the title referred, this entry was about Yuyuan Garden,located in Shanghai city itself. Not so much that i can recall of Yuyuan, except it is a national historical garden with a lot of bazaars selling all those handcrafts and souvenirs.

I remember this old lady approached me begging for money, but instead of giving her what she begged i hold my camera up and took few snaps of her pic. She covered her face right away and as i passed her by, she tapped my arm and said something in Mandarin. With my little Mandarin skills that i have, all i understand that she said  she felt a bit uneasy as i refused to give her money but took her pics willy nilly. (Nasib kau la makcik oii..!! Haha).

Starbucks,it’s everywhere. Halal toyyiban!! Haha.

This little creature is so easy on eyes, well something nice to look at than those ‘sepet’ faces everywhere! Haha.