I've had a couple questions as to where exactly is the United Arab Emirates. So... here are a few maps. The first two are general maps. The third map is also a general map, but shows some additional detail for the next blog entry. Quick lesson on the UAE: The UAE is composed of 7 emirates; Abu Dhabi is by far the largest. Dubai, Sharjah, Fujairah, Ajman, Ras Al Khaimah and Umm Al Quwain make up the balance. We might think of an emirate as a state, within the country that is the UAE. They think of emirates as countries within a greater alliance that is the UAE.
Here's an overview of where the UAE is globally.
We zoom in a little bit this time to see where the UAE is located within the Middle East. Note Saudi Arabia to the West, Oman to the South, and Iran to the North.
This is a closer view of the UAE. I've highlighted Ajman, where my office and project are both located. There's a callout box on the right that says "UAE - Inside Oman - Inside UAE." The border between UAE and Oman is interesting, at the least. While Saudi Arabia borders the UAE to the south, Oman borders the UAE to the east. However Oman also borders the UAE to the north, though there is no connecting landmass between these two parts. To make the border more confusing, there is a small part of Oman located COMPLETELY inside the UAE. Continuing to complicate things, there is an even smaller part of the UAE within the small part of Oman, contained completely by the UAE. It is to this even smaller part of the UAE to which John and I decided we must travel as you can read about in the upcoming entry.
Saturday is completely boring to write about. I slept in, organized music that I've been receiving from people (up to 40,000 songs, less than 5,000 of which I've listened to) and read like a fiend. The real day to talk about was Friday.
John and I had talked about going SCUBA diving at Dibba again, but I woke up with a sore back and decided donning all the heavy equipment probably wasn't in my best interest. Rather, we decided to take John's 4x4 Kia Sportage and go exploring.
Since everyone prefers the pictures anyway, I'll tell the rest of this story through the photos. Here we go:
On the way out, we found the Boy Scouts of the UAE Reservation.
The faithfull Kia enters the mountains.
Most of the trails were gravel roads through the valleys and wadis. A wadi is the path through the mountains that would encounter flash floods in the brief and rare rainstorms that assault the UAE. Because the land is so dry, and rain so rare, stormwater protection is rarely, if ever considered. When the rain does come, its effects can be devastating. We would soon discover, however, not all the trails were this easy to navigate.
There was a dam to protect the village situated on the other side of this Wadi. Notice the spillway and try to imagine this dam being overtopped. For reference, the concrete blocks at the base are about 6' cubed. It's not hard to imagine that a Wadi is NOT the place to be during storm.
This looked like a shot right out of the old 1990's "Cruisin' World" Video game so clearly I was obliged to take the shot. It's actually a random 25 house village in the middle of nowhere. I have no idea why they planted flowers and I can't figure out why someone stuck a village here. I think the main attraction was a police station.
This was as much as we could see of the houses in above-mentioned village. The arab culture here is very private. As such, most of their houses are closely guarded with full height walls around them. This was a particularly ornate gate, and thus, picture worthy. Its also worth noting that with the exception of one Jeep Wrangler, every single vehicle in the entire village of 25 homes was a toyota SUV or Lexus sedan.
After the village, we got back on the gravel path. You can't see it, but the GPS actually says "Continue to Road" It had no idea where we were.
Then we found this cool fort and decided to check it out. There was a guy with a guest book sitting out front, but I really don't think he worked here.
Here's the same fort from the courtyard. Interestingly, none of the rooms inside connected. You had to go outside to get from one to the other. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of a fort?
After the offroad driving, we found the east coast and the Indian Ocean. then these camels tried to cross the road in front of us.
SIDEBAR: When in the UAE, if you hit/kill something you pay blood money for it, or go to jail until you have enough - mind you that you can't make any money in jail. Though I can't seem to find anyone who can tell me with assurance how much that is, I have gathered that different races cost different amounts; this occurs in 4 increments. If you happen to find yourself in the UAE about to be in a car crash and you have to hit something with your car, you should do it in this order (based on UAE fines only: this sidebar does not reflect the opinions of the author - the author strongly recommends against hitting anything with your car): 1)Indian/Chinese day laborer 2)White Westerner 3)Camel 4)Arab Local SIDEBAR OVER
After the camels, we went to go see the local nature preserve. The above picture was taken from the center of the preserve.
At the edge of the preserve, we passed through a small fishing village. They still use these Toyota trucks. Most other cars here seem to die in about 3 years from the weather / sand/ heat / utter neglect from their owners. These trucks were still running strong. It seems like the only problem with a toyota truck is that you'll never be able to buy another one b/c your first will run forever.
Mangrove swamp in the nature preserve.
Fishing village on the way back out of the preserve. This is a very typical mooring arrangement seen all across the UAE.
More toyota trucks, hard at work in the next fishing village.
This fort once guarded the fishing village against Portuguese invaders, so says the sign just to stage left.
We decided we would try to navigate John's Sportage through the Wadis, those dry flash-flood stream beds, back to the west coast, rather than the paved road. We found this dam. For point of reference, that dam is higher than a 6 story building. Imagine that flash flood.
I don't know what this sign says, but it proves we were there. That's John next to me.
It seemed promising at first. Nice easy roads.
Then the going got tougher. The car couldn't conquer this rock, but I did!
After about the third time we turned around, we came through this village with trees growing out of the sidewall of the wadi.
More village.
Those light-colored diagonal lines are the "roads" over the peaks. Note how this particular one seems to just end with sharp rocks. This road was particularly impassable, but not too different than many of the roads we tried.
MANY of the roads were all dead ends. We never did figure out why they built these roads. We ended up trying about 15 distinct trails that headed north and west.
This was taken the same place as the last pic, just looking slightly more to the right (north).
It was here that realized the Kia just wasn't going to make it over the peaks and we turned around for good. It was a lot of fun, but we never did make it all the way through. Oh well, back the paved road for a two hour drive home.
The Holidays were nice. I had a whirlwind trip home to Boston, via Jon Weston’s Christmas Party, Mr. Lucky’s Bar and the Long Island Ferry only to be back in time for Matt Hayes’ bachelor Party on the 27th back in Philadelphia.
So now it’s Tuesday after Christmas, back in the office and a call comes in, much in a similar way. It’s my engineering manager from my project in Ajman. The message: get on a plane; don’t pass go, don’t collect $200, just put the phone down and get on a plane ASAP. Well, Matt and Erin’s wedding is Saturday, January 3rd and I’m not about to miss it. A phone call to the travel agent later, I’ve got a ticket on Air France booked for Monday, January 5, a whole one week away to plan/pack and otherwise get ready
New Year’s was a relaxed evening at The One, The Only, The Brian, The Brady’s Mad Pimpin’ Bachelor Pad in Philadelphia. The Hayes’ wedding is a blast, despite the extraordinary lack of single girls. Oh well, borrowing someone’s girlfriend (or newly married wife) for a dance or two isn’t so bad. A good time is had by all.
3:00 PM on Monday, January 5, finds me en-route to the international gate at good old PHL. A long line and agents handing out cancelled flight notices is never a good thing. I wait in line about an hour to talk to a ticketing agent. Flights connecting through Paris are booked solid for the next 4 days, she says. Great! No problem because I’m trying to get to Dubai. How about connecting through any other city, US, European or otherwise. I think this is being flexible. My previous flight, Atlanta to Dubai direct on Delta is booked 4 days out. There is a flight from JFK at 11PM – issue: they can’t get me to JFK. It would be up to me to rent a car, drive said car, return said car and take the shuttle to the airport 3 hours ahead of time to check in for the international flight. Unlikely. (The train doesn’t get me in on time at all.) There’s a flight out of DC at 10:00 tomorrow night, the only catch is that to get to DC I have to take a flight that leaves in 50 minutes. Okay, good enough. The ticketing agent makes the changes, gives me a handwritten paper ticket and tells me to run. Thankfully, my brother had the day off, so he came up and picked me up at Reagan National. I had a good, relaxing day of hanging out with Tom and family until the whole clan dropped me off at Dulles the next evening. After being the lucky recipient of the SSSS (special security screening selected) and given the chance repack the entirety of my fully loaded carry on and computer bag under TSA scrutiny, I made it to the gate in enough time for my last American meal at California Tortilla.
I got on the plane and promptly passed out. At some point, I woke up in Iraqi airspace and started to read a sailing book borrowed to me fourth-hand from the most recent ex-commodore of the sailing team. (Thanks Danielle, even though you don’t know it.) Three Days, 4 Airports, 2 flights, 8 security screenings, Emirati Passport control and a 45 minute luggage delay later, I met my driver outside the Dubai Airport. I’m ba-aaaack!
So I just realized that I completely forgot to post this entry from the last time I was here. Let's pretend this post is current....
On my last full weekend in Ajman, a group of us went snorkeling/SCUBA diving at Dibba Island on the eastern side of the UAE, read: Gulf Of Oman = Arabian Sea ==> Indian Ocean.
John, Michael, Tina and I took Tina's car and met Nadia and her Italian friends at a decent looking resort with a reputable PADI shop. We paid the day rate to get in and proceeded to the dive shop. John and I were going to dive, while the remainder of the group stuck to snorkeling. Because John hadn't had any recorded dives in the past 5 years and the shop wasn't hurting for business, they wouldn't let us dive.
View of Dibba Island from shore, upon arrival.
We discovered there was another resort up the beach. The Golden Palm, or whatever generic name it was called, was Japanese owned, Indian run, and their dive shop wasn't certified by anyone, in case you couldn't tell just from looking. We were staying shallow, vis was good, and the rates were cheap, so we decided to go for it. We got outfitted in our gear and hopped aboard the dive boat. We got to the island. After John had some difficulty getting his fins to stay on, we were good to go and backrolled in. Immediately, my fins fell off and sank to the bottom, 16 feet below. The view of the fish decidedly make up for this.
Fish
Fish - With John in the background.
I got my fins back, fixed them and we began our swim.
Fish - and coral.
One fish - and coral.
Me! In a very ladylike pose.
Fish
At some point, my the frame of my mask actually shattered and the lenses slammed into my face. Ahh... so this is why this place is cheap. I kind of managed to put the whole deal back together, but had to finish the dive holding the mask in place. I spent a good deal of my air clearing the mask on nearly every breath. Regardless, I was determined to finish the dive.
John - making fun.
John thought it was funny that my mask exploded. Note his expression. Now this whole dive, I'd been very careful to keep track of my camera, clipping it to my vest. The dive was over and we prepared to get back on the boat. I checked one last time to be sure it was clipped and handed up my rig. By the time I got on the boat about 90 seconds later, the camera was missing. It wasn't on any vest. We jumped back in the water and couldn't find it on the bottom. The boat driver didn't seem to care. I had to figure the camera was gone. Just in case, I filed a notice with the office desk. We went back to the first resort to meet our friends. About three hours later, I get a call from our skeevy SCUBA place. APPARENTLY, while the boat driver was alone, in a different location, in 20 feet of water at 30 knots, he saw the camera, jumped in and got it for me. Likely story skeevy looking boatman. Anyway, I got the camera back and we headed home. Today is won.
Saturday we had an early(ish) start.John’s friends Jacob and Anne Marie were down visiting from COWI Qatar.Michael and I decided to join them for a snorkeling trip to Musandam, Oman.John picked us up at 9 and we head north on the Emirates Road.
Camels on the highway.
10km to the border we see a sign for last UAE gas station and pull over.The tank is now full and comes time to leave; the car won’t start.I think to myself this is a common OCC/COWI theme… We push it to the side of the station and let it sit a few minutes.The next time, the car starts right up.Clearly, this is a good sign to start the day.
The explorers.
After passing through Umm Al Quwain and Ras Al Khaimah, two northern emirates, we reach the Omani border.We pass through UAE Customs and get our exit stamps. Proceeding to the Omani Customs, we end up waiting outside for a while, but no problems.We take a couple different sheets of paper from one person to another for about 30 minutes and pass through the system.Other than paying almost $75 US in fees to get through, it’s fairly easy.John walks over to a small building and buys Omani car insurance, good for the next three days, and climb back into the car.
Once we reach Oman, we’re following the coast road along a rocky shore.We need to reach the Golden Tulip Resort by 1:00 to reserve our boat.Despite the best of John’s speeding attempts, including passing a police SUV, we pull in at 1:05.No problem, say the Arabs behind the desk.They give us a few minutes to catch a bite at their café.This, of course, takes forever and we get the food to go.
Musandam, Oman
The Golden Tulip Resort
From the resort, a guide takes us down into the village of {insert village name here}.We pull up to a marina.We’re scrambling to get our food and snorkel gear out of the car and onto the boat.Once we’re all aboard and catch our breath, we realize that we have our own boat.There was no reason to run.
Typical mooring arrangment in the harbor.
Campers on the beach. Accessible only by boat.
Our "dive" boat.
Another Tourist Dhow
Our “dive boat” for the day is a traditional Arabic dhow, converted from sail to diesel and painted nicely for passengers.The boat is maybe 40 feet long.Decorative pillows line the edges and rugs cover the bare floor.There are no protective railings you’d expect to see on an American tour boat; you’re free to hang yourself over the side of the boat as far as you want.
We pull pass an enormous breakwater (which of course we proceed to analyze as coastal engineers), and enter the Arabian Gulf.Shortly afterward, we turn away and enter a river system.The mountains here are incredible, cutting off all transportation other than boats.We can see the rock strata as it was bent and forced up to form these mountains years ago – Yes still being nerdy as Anne Marie does her best to ignore the frequent bouts of dork-dom.
Rocks
The boat stops offshore of a couple small fishing villages on the Oman coast as the guide tells us a story about each village.The villages are accessible by only boat or helicopter.Most are inhabited in the winter months only.A water ship supplies each town’s water tower once a week.Our hour long voyage is punctuated by brief periods of watching the dolphins jump around the boat.
Typical fishing village.
Dolphins!
We drop anchor at telegraph island and its time to snorkel.Quickly donning my grocery store snorkel gear, I jump in as the guide says something about not needing to mind the jellyfish.Right. It’s a quick swim the rest of the way to the island.
Telegraph Island
The island is surrounded by a coral reef, complete with lots of little colorful striped fish making me feel as if I’ve stumbled upon some Finding Nemo-esque residence.Diving off the surface, the water quality improves, increasing visibility to maybe 40 feet.The 5 of us decide to circumnavigate the island.Off the north side, we can even see yellowfin tuna down deep.I’m not quite sure what the guide was talking about.There are tons of jellyfish all over the island.Thankfully they’re mostly small immature ones, no larger than 2” or so, that can’t hurt.I got a 3 or 4 small stings, but still hardly worth mentioning.Anne Marie got two larger stings as our only real casualty of the trip.
The Omani Sheik's house. "Is not like Dubai - Maybe small house, but have very big heart"
We climb back aboard the boat.There’s an hour long dhow cruise back to the harbor.We watch the sun set over the ancient rock formations, just as we’re pulling back in.Graciously thanking our guides, we climb back onto the dock and back to our car.It takes nearly 3 hours to clear customs and complete the drive back to Ajman, but it was a great weekend.
There are two superprojects being run out of my project office.Mine is Al Zorah, the other is called Al Dana.Al Dana is another project where a significant area of land (as in, square miles) are being created in the sea and shaped to look like an eccentric palm tree.It is a design-build project where COWI was retained by the contractor, Dredging International (DI).
Thursday night, DI had a BBQ on-site and invited the COWI project staff to join them.The COWI project manager invited me to tag along.We're initially supposed to leave around 4:30.Come 6:15 and people are still scurrying about the office.Al Dana is located in the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, about an hour north of Ajman.Tina, Michael and I rode up in one car and John and Nadia took another car.We got there just before 8:00.
DI is a predominantly Belgian crew; they have an awesome set-up.Because they're on-site their office / crew quarters and separate meal building are all situated right on an exclusive sandy beach.They have a covered patio area with a large cast concrete grill at one end.
These guys totally showed me up on making their own grill.
Tables and chairs for approx 40 line one edge.Hedwig, the DI project manager, used to be a DJ, so there quite an impressive sound system complete with projector showing glory shots of previous Dredging International projects (ref: The Pearl, Qatar), as well as shots of the crew on days off.They bring out two large coolers, one of soda, one of beer.We quickly discover there is also beer hidden at the bottom of the soda cooler.
Me, John and one of the DI guys.
More people begin to show up.When the party is complete, we have about 40 to 50 people, it is a mixed group of the DI crew (predominantly Belgian), another DI crew from the next island building project down the beach (again mostly Belgian), COWI (3xDanish, 1xAmerican, 1xItalian), and the few families that have been traveling with the more senior workers.Most people are in their late 20s and early 30s.
There is lots of meat.The grill keeps it coming.Ribs, pork chops, chicken, sausage, steak, and on and on.There's a full salad bar with pasta salads, green salads, egg salads, and many fresh breads and garlic bread inside.
Nadia and Tina at dinner.
Everyone is full, but the beers keep appearing.Every time one of the cooler is empty, someone appears with another one, full of beers kept in a different place.This happens about three times.Three of the Belgian guys decide that its time to show off.A wakeboard appears.They head out to one of the boats.Normally, wakeboarding in the ocean, at night, would seem to be a very dangerous activity, but let's re-evaluate.These guys are here to build an island.As construction is in progress, they have effectively already built their own sheltered lagoon.The pace of construction in the UAE is brutal.The day rate for machinery is by far the most expensive cost, as such, its normally to work 24 hours a day.So…. there are construction flood lights all around the breakwaters.Dredging International has, simply through their work, created a sheltered, brightly lit lagoon for 24/7 wakeboarding immediately adjacent to their exclusive, restricted access, sandy beach where in the near future, land will sell for millions, if not tens of millions, per half acre.Two hours later, the three guys come back, wearing only saltwater soaked skivvies.
Hedwig is really into his party now.The crew decides to play the DI theme song, where, of course, everyone shouts along to, "together we stand, creating the land for tomorrow."I guess that gets you going when you build islands for a living.We stay for a while and closeout the party; I get home about 3:30 the next morning.
I have to wake up the next morning to meet with my engineering manager.Projects always take precedence in a project office, so despite the fact that it’s the weekend, we meet in the office at 9:00AM.Jorgen is headed back to Denmark for a week so we work out a plan out my time for the duration of his trip.We discuss some of the technical issues that I anticipate and the best processes for finding the answers when it comes time.Much of my time before I leave will be spent finalizing the exact footprint of the canal.It is critical that we can lock in this geometry as individual block shapes and revetment curvatures are based here.
At noon, Michael and I give Sebastian a call.He's one of the guys from DI and they've invited us back to go wakeboarding with them on our day off.We arrive to find that they have two boats.Now lets be clear, these are not inboard tow sports boats.They're not runabouts, heck, they're not even recreational boats.We'll be riding around in the work boats used to ferry work crews out to the islands and to the dredge ships.One of the boats has two engines, but one is out of commission so we move to the smaller boat.The smaller boat is about 25' long with a 75 hp outboard.It's capable of about 12 mph at full throttle, 10 mph with a wakeboarder in a turn.I didn't even realize I could stay on plane at this speed on a board.There's not enough speed to jump over the wakes, but we try anyway.
Entrance to the DI jetty
Don't run over the line! (Amateurs)
Michael's First Attempt
I’m really amused that we’re out here, exclusively, wakeboarding around all this construction equipment.There are barges and tug boats, large excavators, a dredging ship in the periphery and piles of boulders waiting to be placed.Here we are, in an industrial boat, being pulled around, having fun amongst all this massive equipment and material.
Hedwig has also brought his windsurfer here from Qatar.I tried that too for about an hour.So I can pull the sail up, its not as heavy as I expected.However, my balance is severely lacking.We do some more wakeboarding and its time to head out.A good time is had by all.
Sebastiaan, the windsurfer, and an excavator.
They asked me if I knew how to drive a boat.
Then they asked me to drive the rest of the day.
Michael and I head back to the apartment to clean up.45 minutes later we're off to downtown Bur Dubai to find some place to eat.This part of the city is more packed than any part of NYC I've ever seen.My tiny corolla is far too large to get through the mass of cars and pedestrians moving with seemingly reckless abandon.It takes almost an hour to park.We walked around a bit until we find a Tex-Mex place and head.I, of course, order a plate of nachos.After dinner we head home.Tomorrow will be a long day…
a few life mottos:
1) Go Big or Go Home.
2) He who hesitates, loses.
3) Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to.
4) When in doubt, whip it out (like a map when you get lost).
5) Everybody needs some sweet sweet lovin' sometimes.
This is a closer view of the UAE. I've highlighted Ajman, where my office and project are both located. There's a callout box on the right that says "UAE - Inside Oman - Inside UAE." The border between UAE and Oman is interesting, at the least. While Saudi Arabia borders the UAE to the south, Oman borders the UAE to the east. However Oman also borders the UAE to the north, though there is no connecting landmass between these two parts. To make the border more confusing, there is a small part of Oman located COMPLETELY inside the UAE. Continuing to complicate things, there is an even smaller part of the UAE within the small part of Oman, contained completely by the UAE. It is to this even smaller part of the UAE to which John and I decided we must travel as you can read about in the upcoming entry. 
We decided we would try to navigate John's Sportage through the Wadis, those dry flash-flood stream beds, back to the west coast, rather than the paved road. We found this dam. For point of reference, that dam is higher than a 6 story building. Imagine that flash flood. 
