Party in Dubai

Hello from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates! We arrived on New Years Eve, and Alison set about getting us tickets to the hottest club in the city. She’s amazing at this kind of thing and not only got us three tickets to a sold-out party, but then also got us into the VIP lounge. I’m taking notes, let me tell ya! 🙂 The New Years party was really fun, we danced a lot, talked a lot, drank a fair bit, and met some new friends. At about 3:30am we crawled off to an after-party at a local apartment and met some more great people. So far everyone we’ve met wh lives here in Dubai has been very welcoming and just plain fun to hang out with.

This city is in great flux. The number of buildings under construction is unbelieveable. They’re basically flipping the local economy from oil to tourism over a span of about 15 years. As you might imagine, real estate here is hot hot hot. This is very much a big city, increasingly metropolitan, with lots of shopping. None of the traffic craziness of Cairo (at least, much much less).

One of the things we’ve found ourselves really enjoying on this trip is shisha (sheesha), a water pipe through which flavored tobacco is smoked. We find them all over the place, and they’re especially popular with dinner or at parties.
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Sorry for the quick update; we’ve been very busy. Tomorrow Alison and I are off to Cambodia, we’ll visit Angkor Wat the next day on our own and then meet back up with Jason the day after that. Should be quite a different experience than Dubai, I’m sure!