Dubai has a wonderfully placed irrigation system that uses drip watering to keep the plants watered and safe from the scorching sun. The irrigation system gets its water from the sewer treatment plant at Al Awir; though the purification process leaves parts of Dubai with an unbearable stench at times, the fruits of it are well worth it. The water obviously has an element of manure in it (obvious from the smell it produces) and flowering plants just love it.

This well planned irrigation system has water outlets that can be connected to drip watering tubes that can be quickly configured to water any type of plant. The system has enough water pressure so wherever required they can even have sprinklers. Being a gardening enthusiast myself I’ve been closely studying how this works and I believe I’ve amassed enough knowledge to write whatever I said above.

My first visit to a park in Dubai was to Zabeel Park near the Trade Center. A techno themed park, Zabeel park is wonderfully landscaped with areas designated for barbecuing, children’s play, boating, a cricket cum football ground, amphitheater and of course my children’s favorite place the Star Gate a complex made to the shape of four planets that accommodates a small roller coaster, arcade games, joy rides and food court with adequate choices.

Apart from this Dubai has six parks all of which are great entertaining venues for families.  Though I most often visit Zabeel park because of the choice of games it offers to my kids, my favorite would be the wonderful creek side park along the coasts of the Dubai’s man made creek. What I love most about the creek park is that it’s landscaping and nearness to the water and convenient picnic spots that it offers with barbecue pits. Also the creek park has great vantage points for photography enthusiasts, the floating bridge, the Dubai Creek side Golf course, Garhoud bridge are some of the picture worthy spots that are visible from the parks restaurant’s spire. Also the Dubai Dolphinarium is located within this park where you can entertain your self to a Singapore’s Senthosa park style dolphin show.

My second favorite would be the Jumeirah Beach park, this is one of the two beach parks of Dubai, the other being Al Mamzar Beach park nearer to the Dubai – Sharjah  boarder. Both of these parks allow you to drive in to the park along with all your picnic gear and it costs only 10 AED (2.5 USD) for the car including the passengers in the car. Al Mamzar beach is mostly secluded in the evenings and it has good facilities including a chalets service that has to be booked prior to visiting. Also the Al Mamzar has a slipway for all jet ski and boats enthusiasts.

If you are a swimmer who’d like to confine yourself to a swimming pool, Al Mushrif park in Khawaneej has an excellent public pool facility that can be accessed at a cost of 5 AED per person and ladies and gents pools are segregated so it doesn’t really hurt the culturally sensitive.

In Dammam, Khobar we stayed at a hotel close to the coast (cannot remember the name), for 1200 Saudi Riyals per night we managed to get a  two bedroom suite  and it was a bargain compared to the average rates. Though I am not a big fan of Saudi hotel’s food this particular one was good and had lots of variety. After spending couple of days in Dammam I couldnt get a flight back to Dubai as it was a Wednesday (Wednesday is the last working day of the week for Saudis – TGIW) and many Saudis fly to Dubai on this day and flights are usually full. So my only other option was to take a flight from Bahrain.

Part of the Causeway

When I asked the hotel to arrange for a Taxi to Bahrain the guys were nice enough to warn me about the traffic on the causeway on Wednesday afternoons and evenings. I checked out from the hotel at 2.00 PM and was on my way to Bahrain by the King Fahd Causeway trying to beat the traffic, I was right on time. The Taxi costs 250 to 300 riyals including the causeway fees, you have to bare the visa fees to enter Bahrain.

About The Causeway

The construction of the bridge was started in 1968 and was completed only in 1986. It cost the Saudi’s a staggering 1.2 Billion US dollars. The bridge is 28 KM long and is approximately 23M wide. There is a man made island on the center of the bridge, part of which is Bahrain and the other half is Saudi. The immigration and passport control offices of both the countries are on this island.

The Island on the center of the bridge

In peak summer Dubai goes into a lower gear, the roads become less congested and breaths free because many return to their home country or at least send their families home. I’ve also followed the trend and packed my family back home to join them at the end of Ramadan. No later than few days I realized my mistake , but mistakes are never without lessons to learn.

Good food is one of my passions and if you read my post Sri Lankan food in Dubai you would’ve realized this. But good food is nothing if you don’t have the right company to enjoy it, this is my latest realization. Though I am not the greatest cook I am confident that I can make out the ingredients of most of the dishes I try and replicate the results. And I used to take pride in that to the extent sometimes to my wife’s annoyance I even compete with her. But suddenly I seem to have lost the interest in cooking, First because I hate the cleaning up, second there was no one to share the joy of good food. And in peak summer non of my good school buddies who are in Dubai share the idea of eating out. So many a times I used to order food from a restaurant to be delivered home.

If you’ve been a family man in Dubai and suddenly when you are alone you cannot kick sense to your mind as to how to kill your time. Of course the month of Ramadan keeps you busy with religious activities but weekends are almost too much to take. Luckily I have high speed broadband internet connection which I’ve made wireless within my home. Most weekends I’ve been only surfing the net and watching the set of Discovery Channels for which I am paying dearly.

I’ve been carefully compiling this particular blog entry for one whole month, not because I had too much activity to cover, simply because there wasn’t much I did to report. During this time I spent 4 days in Riyadh and 4 days in Kuwait, which I enjoyed, simply because there was someone to do the cleaning up.

During my last two weeks before my vacation I spent most of my time with my soon to be married school buddy (and enjoyed playing “know it all” married man!!), did lots of shopping and some window shopping of Digi Cams.

If you are on a visit visa and have an International driving license then you can get a temporary driving permit. There is plethora of rent car companies where you could rent from luxuries Rolls Royce to the matchbox sized Suzuki Altos. If you are a four-wheel fanatic welcome to the land of four wheelers and the choices you have are endless. But when you are renting a car a word of caution though, make sure that you carefully read the terms and conditions of the rent a car company, as many of them have hidden charges that mysteriously appear on the final bill! If you are here on resident visa then the things get a lot more complicated.

For those who hold the residence visa, the Dubai government accepts direct transfer of license from the following countries,

Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Kuwait, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.

If you are license is not in English you would require a translation attested from your respective consulate.

More on converting a license>

If you are not from any of the above countries, you ought to be ready for a great deal of pain. Most of us who got our driving license have many ‘horror’ stories to share. I see this is partly because of the strict procedures RTA follows and partly because of the language barriers; I have come across very few RTA officers who speak fluent English.

If you have a driving license (from your home country) that is more than 2 years old you have to go through only 20 lessons to get to the final test, if it’s much newer or you didn’t have one when you arrived you have to go through 40 lessons. A driving license could cost you minimum 2500 AED (20 lessons) to 4000 AED (40 lessons) this would be a lot more depending on the number of times you retake your final test (Yes on average thrice!!). Every time you fail your final road test, you have to undergo additional 8 more lessons that would cost you 750 to 800 AED. Of course since you are immobile you need to add in the costs of taxi’s to get to the training centers and tests.

Approximately 5% of Dubai’s population  is made of us i.e. Sri Lankans. Obviously we are a minority my first impressions of Dubai was similar to the experience I had in Little India in Singapore though it is not India everywhere you turn all you see is Indians; they makeup 40+% of the population. There are more Indians in Dubai than in India’s fourth most populous metropolitan area Chennai.

That aside, soon I was headed to the famous Chef Lanka (CL) in Karama, Dubai.  I still remember how I was so pleased to see so many faces that I could relate  to (the Sri Lankan Look) and the smell of Sri Lankan Spices and not to mention the bottle cooler filled with Elephant Cream Soda and Elephant Ginger Beer!!.

CL offers a variety of Sri Lankan food including an “All you can have” buffet for just 25 AED. My favourite of course was the Kottu Rotty. It is nothing compared to the Kottu at Pilawoos or Hijra which so many of us the night dwellers are used to, but something is better than nothing is n’t it. The service here is great and friendly as you can expect from any Sri Lankan joint.

I figured on Friday’s for lunch they serve lumpries packed in banana leaf (this is making me hungry); but you are ought to arrive early or you’ll be disappointed as the supply does not match the demand.

Apart from CL, there are few other places where you could try Sri Lankan food one of which is Indunil Lanka, they are located just a stone throw away from CL near the Ted Lapidus shop (around the corner) in Karama. This is a very small place as compared to CL but hey who cares about the size of the place as long as the food is good!! The Kottu here is way better than at CL.

The Curry Leaf at musalla towers in Bur Dubai is another popular place amongst the Lankans, I’ve had one of the best nasi gorengs ever in this place, one nasi goreng cost 30 AED and the quantity is huge so watchout if your palet is small. Of course Nasi Goreng is not a Sri Lankan dish (its Malaysian) , but so much so with all the Malays in Sri Lanka we’ve grown to love this stuff.

Nasi Goreng

There are couple of restaurants that I’ll be blogging about later on, I need to do couple of more rounds of UATs before I recommend them to anyone for I don’t want to be cursed.

I’ve been wanting to blog about life in the middle east ever since I set foot in Dubai. As a total alien to the region at that time I did not want to misinform any reader; as such gave some time and space until I am accustomed to the ways and means of this land.

I hope I will live up to your expectations.

Please read on..