Lá ar an Trá

Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
OH. MY. GOD.

Ever see Chinese culchies? I'm sure you've seen those ridiculously annoying Chinese/Korean/Japanese/French girls who bring twenty seven carry-on bags with them into the plane, then are too weak to lift any of them . We had plenty of them. They couldn't cope when the airport staff wrenched the luggage trolleys off them before boarding. BUT THE CULCHIES. ARGH. Culchies, my dear foreign friends (hi, Sheryl!!!) are hicks, rednecks, bumpkins... boorishly uncultivated folk, usually of a rural background. I suppose in China they could be minerfolk too - it's more difficult to fit the definition of a "culchie" when you come from a country of 1.3 billion people...

ANYWAY, there was a large group of them on the plane with us - all men, though they appeared to have one female minder in a large, unnecessarily cozy jacket, considering the destination - and I assume they're all going to Abu Dhabi for work. I could well be wrong, but they seem to fit the bill of how these low wage workers end up over here. THEY WERE AWFUL. There was only one air hostess who spoke Mandarin, but a few of them had Asian features, and no matter how many times they told the men they didn't speak Chinese, the men kept talking at them . They kept talking at them, because the hostesses were trying to get them to put their seat belts on. Or their tray tables up. Or their seats upright. Or to SIT. BLOODY. DOWN. And each one had to be told individually, even though they saw the one beside them being told that on an aeroplane, one abides by certain rules. And they were smelly, and they slurped their noodles, and they banged their touchscreens, and they shouted at each other in the middle of the night, and they snored... AND, and and and! We were about to descend, and the message telling us so came on in Arabic, English and Madarin, and the cabin crew came through and checked us all (and told each single man to fix the thing he wasn't doing right) and then they sat down themselves and we started to see the lights of Abu Dhabi. And - seeing the aisles empty - a bunch of the men decided this was the perfect time to go to the toilet. THE TOILET. The male cabin crew members came out of somewhere and put most of them back in their seats, though they never buckled up, but I think one of them stayed in the toilet until we landed. And, of course, the second the wheels touched the tarmac they all unbuckled their belts loudly and started jumping around the place to get their bags together.

MY GOD .

I'm so glad we didn't have bad turbulence or anything. Imagine being hit in the head by a smelly Chinese redneck on his way to the toilet. For the record, I didn't use the toilets on this flight at all. I'd say they were a bit dodgy. And if my delicate nature was this offended by the entire flight, can you imagine how the Japanese passengers felt??? :D

It all makes a good story anyway. When the plane doors opened, there was a mad dash to the bus, and when the bus stopped, a mad crush for the door, but they didn't let us out for a few minutes so when the doors opened, there was a mad dash into the building and THEN....... everyone disappeared. I was at the immigration desks all by myself. I had no idea what happened. A minute later, Daddy appeared around the corner. Turned out none of them could read Arabic or English, so they had no idea where to go once they were faced with a hall, a set of stairs and an escalator. And they managed to prevent all the other passengers from getting through either. :D Fun times.

We got a taxi (oh what a beautifully maintained taxi) to the hotel, which turned out to be not that far away at all. On the drive, we passed a big round building, which looks just like a circle on its side, but for some reason I can't find the name of it online. I think it's owned by Aldar Properties, but that's as much as I know . It's weird, and very "new Middle Eastern". :D There was very low fog this morning too, which I hadn't expected, and which covered the top of that building, even though it isn't even very tall. We arrived at the hotel before 8am, but they had our room all ready already. SLEEEEEEEP. I was exhausted. And my nose is killed out too, partly from all the running, partly from the air conditioning on the plane, and partly from Beijing.

After a few hours sleep, we had dinner at the buffet. It was YUMMY. It's lovely to eat lettuce without worrying about the life it lead before it made it to your plate. Even in Raffles, the food is still Chinese and still does unusual things to the stomach. There seemed to be two or three business meetings having lunch at the same time as us, one of Americans, one of Indians and one of Arabs (and three were aaaall men), but they had started before us so they were gone before it was time for dessert. Mmmm, dessert. That's another thing China just doesn't do. Dessert. :( It's a right tragedy. And the Arabians do really nice bread and hummus too, OMG THE HUMMUS. *drool*

Okay, enough about food, I'm getting hungry again. Since this is the Al Raha Beach Hotel, we went for a swim after lunch in The Gulf (dnn dnn dnnnnnn). The water was SO HOT. I know this entry is full of capital letters, but I have no other method of conveying the extremes of the various situations I was in today . I've never, ever felt sea water that hot. It was gorgeous. And we're right beside the roundy building, so it's perfect for photos. I spent the afternoon alternating between the beach, the pool and the loungers and it was just lovely. There's even a lovely slide set in the pool for the kids, which made me totally jealous I wasn't twenty years younger and four feet smaller.

When the sun started to dip below the umbrellas, I headed back inside. It was still warm (in fact, it's always colder inside here), but the jetlag was starting to creep up on me. I could tell the womens dressing room apart from the mens, because the head on the door was covered in a black shawl except for the eyes (the mens is an outline of a head with a shawl thing, but there's a band across the top). There was no one else inside, so I tried the sauna for a few minutes, but it wasn't all that different to being outside, so I quit. Nudity is prohibited in the changing room, but they only have one tiny corner with one single dressing room which leads me to think you must either change in the shower stalls or prance through the hotel in your bikini whether you're wet or not. It's not that I enjoy communal changing rooms (and I repeat: this one was empty), but you don't want a wardrobe malfunction to lead to you breaking the law or anything, do you? I guess you could always just not get into the water. Some of the Arabian women at the pool had their ...dresses? I don't know what it's called. "Shawl" sounds like something from 'Peig'. Okay, "dresses". They had their dresses hiked up to below their knees and leggings on underneath. One woman, though she was east Asian Muslim, was wading around the kids pool in leggings, trousers and a skirt, with the skirt tied around her waist. Phew. It just seems like a lot of effort. Wouldn't a few sarongs or khaftans do the job? And they dry easier too. At least they looked after their kids better than the Brits. One woman told the lifeguard she was going to finish her dinner and would he watch her three year old, like a good chap? And he did too, the poor man. He even started a game on the slide with a few of the other kids in the pool.

My swimsuit is dry now anyway, but my brain is fried. And I feel kind of like Ishmael. Didn't he say a bed always felt more comfortable when the air outside it was cold, so you had to wrap up in the blanket? God bless air conditioning. :)

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