Yesterday afternoon I went on a desert safari that I had been looking forward to going on, I had heard good reviews so I figured it was worth a go. Well the whole experience can be summed up by saying "frikken hilarious!"
Now let me lead into this by saying I really didn't know what to expect. I had been trying to contact a tour company that was recommended in my Lonely Planet while I was in Kandahar and they never replied to my e-mails. Once I got to Dubai I gave them a call and made the arrangements. Well on Tuesday around noon (with the tour supposed to start at 3:30pm) they called me to tell me that they would have to reschedule me because they had damage to their base camp and needed to do some repairs. So just a note: don't book a tour with Alpha Tours Dubai... bad experience.
So I scrambeled and booked with another company called Lama Tours. I'd give them two thumbs up... book your desert safaris here. Anyways as I said, I didn't know what to expect on this tour and when the driver showed up to pick me up it was me and a family of four in the truck. I didn't know if that meant it was going to be just the five of us all evening? I had images of me jumping in all their family photos, maybe they would adopt me and be my Dubai family. Little Rasheef gave me some of this candy on the drive out to the desert so I was pretty happy with how it was all starting.
Well I quickly figured out by the number of tour trucks that we saw on the highway that we were clearly not going to be the only ones. There were dozens of trucks from several different companies all heading in the same general direction.
Well the tour itself started off with a nausiating ride through the dunes. I should note that I was stuck on the back bench of the SUV and with all the ups and downs I was starting to feel sea sick.
When we eventually got to the base camp it was really pretty nice. They had a "traditional?" (I say that because I have no idea what a traditional bedouin camp looks like but that's what they told us) bedouin camp set-up with tables and chairs around the central stage area. All-in-all it was pretty good.
They had a number of activities that you could participate in if you liked: camel rides, henna, smoking sheesha (or hubbly bubbly as they kept referring to it). I wanted to ride a camel and I'll tell you that was the most uncomfortable experience ever! I just couldn't find a position where my boys weren't being crushed. Thank god it was a short ride because I basically had to hold myself off the saddle the whole time. I think the guy leading the ride knew what my problem was because he had a big knowing grin on his face.
So after the camel ride I went to relax and smoke some sheesha. While over there I met a couple of Californians who were on their way back from a wedding in Sri Lanka but I can't for the life of me remember their names. Well there were also a bunch of Chinese tourists trying the sheesha and it was just about the funniest thing I've ever seen. Some of them I couldn't actually tell if they were sucking or blowing on the pipe. When they would draw their face would clench up and they would put such effort into it and then you would see a single bubble in the pipe and they would stop and cough and the rest of them would laugh at the smoker. My new american friends and I couldn't stop laughing at this. If instead of a dancing show they had just put a couple of these Chinese guys up on stage with a pipe it would have been the perfect entertainment for the evening. This experience alone made the tour worth every penny!
So as for the show, thirs they had a guy wearing a dress and spinning. Now I'm going to sound ignorent, but they didn't tell us anything about what we were watching and I had never seen anything like this before so from my un-enlightened perspective it was a guy spinning around in a dress. That said, he was really quite good at it... he spun and spun and spun. Then they turned off the lights and his dress lit up so he looked like a UFO. Again, the Americans and I couldn't stop laughing, it was a good show but the lights were a little too much.
So then we had supper (which was really quite good) and after supper they had the belly dancing show. Now the way that they introduced the dancer kind of made me think I was in a strip club. In a deep radio DJ voice the announcer said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this next dancer has performed in shows all over Asia. Put your hands together and welcome to the stage... OLGA!" and then out came Olga to laser sounds and the Arab techno music started with her "Olga" theme song. Again, peals of laughter!
I did rather enjoy that she sort of had audience participation from the men sitting in the front row. At some point she was shaking everything she had right up in front of some guy while his 10 year old son sat next to him with a look of amazement on his face. Amazing! Overall, this tour was worth every cent. Definitely do this if you're in Dubai!
Now let me lead into this by saying I really didn't know what to expect. I had been trying to contact a tour company that was recommended in my Lonely Planet while I was in Kandahar and they never replied to my e-mails. Once I got to Dubai I gave them a call and made the arrangements. Well on Tuesday around noon (with the tour supposed to start at 3:30pm) they called me to tell me that they would have to reschedule me because they had damage to their base camp and needed to do some repairs. So just a note: don't book a tour with Alpha Tours Dubai... bad experience.
So I scrambeled and booked with another company called Lama Tours. I'd give them two thumbs up... book your desert safaris here. Anyways as I said, I didn't know what to expect on this tour and when the driver showed up to pick me up it was me and a family of four in the truck. I didn't know if that meant it was going to be just the five of us all evening? I had images of me jumping in all their family photos, maybe they would adopt me and be my Dubai family. Little Rasheef gave me some of this candy on the drive out to the desert so I was pretty happy with how it was all starting.
Well I quickly figured out by the number of tour trucks that we saw on the highway that we were clearly not going to be the only ones. There were dozens of trucks from several different companies all heading in the same general direction.
Well the tour itself started off with a nausiating ride through the dunes. I should note that I was stuck on the back bench of the SUV and with all the ups and downs I was starting to feel sea sick.
When we eventually got to the base camp it was really pretty nice. They had a "traditional?" (I say that because I have no idea what a traditional bedouin camp looks like but that's what they told us) bedouin camp set-up with tables and chairs around the central stage area. All-in-all it was pretty good.
They had a number of activities that you could participate in if you liked: camel rides, henna, smoking sheesha (or hubbly bubbly as they kept referring to it). I wanted to ride a camel and I'll tell you that was the most uncomfortable experience ever! I just couldn't find a position where my boys weren't being crushed. Thank god it was a short ride because I basically had to hold myself off the saddle the whole time. I think the guy leading the ride knew what my problem was because he had a big knowing grin on his face.
So after the camel ride I went to relax and smoke some sheesha. While over there I met a couple of Californians who were on their way back from a wedding in Sri Lanka but I can't for the life of me remember their names. Well there were also a bunch of Chinese tourists trying the sheesha and it was just about the funniest thing I've ever seen. Some of them I couldn't actually tell if they were sucking or blowing on the pipe. When they would draw their face would clench up and they would put such effort into it and then you would see a single bubble in the pipe and they would stop and cough and the rest of them would laugh at the smoker. My new american friends and I couldn't stop laughing at this. If instead of a dancing show they had just put a couple of these Chinese guys up on stage with a pipe it would have been the perfect entertainment for the evening. This experience alone made the tour worth every penny!
So as for the show, thirs they had a guy wearing a dress and spinning. Now I'm going to sound ignorent, but they didn't tell us anything about what we were watching and I had never seen anything like this before so from my un-enlightened perspective it was a guy spinning around in a dress. That said, he was really quite good at it... he spun and spun and spun. Then they turned off the lights and his dress lit up so he looked like a UFO. Again, the Americans and I couldn't stop laughing, it was a good show but the lights were a little too much.
So then we had supper (which was really quite good) and after supper they had the belly dancing show. Now the way that they introduced the dancer kind of made me think I was in a strip club. In a deep radio DJ voice the announcer said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this next dancer has performed in shows all over Asia. Put your hands together and welcome to the stage... OLGA!" and then out came Olga to laser sounds and the Arab techno music started with her "Olga" theme song. Again, peals of laughter!
I did rather enjoy that she sort of had audience participation from the men sitting in the front row. At some point she was shaking everything she had right up in front of some guy while his 10 year old son sat next to him with a look of amazement on his face. Amazing! Overall, this tour was worth every cent. Definitely do this if you're in Dubai!
No comments:
Post a Comment