Yay, I'm back blogging about my Middle East trip! One and a half more days left! :P

After the sumptuous lunch at Burj Al Arab, we took a cab and met the others at Mall of Emirates. I tell you, the drivers in Middle East are more reckless than me man. They swerve, speed (and I do mean speeeeed), over take other cars...I gotta salute them for their driving man.

The Mall of the Emirates is where Ski Dubai is. Yar. The Middle Easterners want everything there. They don't have snow, so they created their own skiing corner. And as usual with everything else in the Middle East (or Dubai specifically), they want the biggest, best and first in everything (Ski Dubai is claimed to be the largest indoor ski resort in the world).

This car was parked outside the mall:

Sweet.
Quite a few cars parked outside are of this kind.

After that, we boarded the bus back to the hotel. Now it's time for some desert experience, woohoo!

When we reached the hotel, the four wheel drives were already waiting for us. One four wheel drive sits around 6 people. I found some people I was close to and we boarded the car together. Caelan was originally in Prof's car, but er, Prof specifically told the driver to drive slower, so he discretely crept out of Prof's car andcame to ours. :P Smart move bro.

Us in the four wheel drive

We were told to bring our jackets along with us, as the desert is cold at night. I always had the perception that the desert is hot not matter what, but yar, it's not true.

Anyway, the driver we had was of Pakistan-Indian descent. And thankfully for us, we had Mishti in our car! If not we would have even more difficulty than we already had in understanding the driver! What happened was what ever the driver said in Urdu, Mishti would listen, reply him and translate it for us in English. Sweet.
Me, Mishti, Weining
We stopped to buy some drinks
Some of us were having a headache from the bumpy ride, :P
Oh, how exciting was our experience in the desert! The desert was quite faraway from our hotel, so it took quite some time for all of us to get there. When we were there, we knew it was the desert, cus of the massive amount of sand there (like duh)! And wooo, was it sooooo exhilarating! The desert is made up of sand dunes, and in order for us to get to where we wanted, the driver had to drive on the sand dunes. It was like a roller coaster ride! Going up and down, up and down. This went on for about an hour. We had so much fun inside, that we purposely asked the driver to go up and down the more sloppy sand dunes. Wheeeeeeee!! Real lucky that Caelan jumped into our car, :P.

Sand dunes
The layers on the sand is caused by the constant blowing of the wind

The driver stopped some points for us to take photos. Boy, was it sooo nice to feel the softness of the sand, the purity of it! No granules, no small stones..just pure, yummy sand! And the mildly strong wind blowing, aaaaaahhhhhh........

Now here's the question to the driver:
Mishti: Uncle, how do you know the direction? The sand dunes all look the same!
Driver: I've been driving for 12 years you know.
Mishti: Oh, so you don't really know where to go?
Driver: Haha, it's through experience.

Spy agents in the desertSweet desert :D
Ants in the background
Hot gals in the foreground :P

We continued the drive, and as some cars were in front of us, we could see that the cars in front of us looked like ants, traveling from one point to the other.

Finally, after a looooong ride, we arrived at our destination - a desert camp where we'll have our dinner. They had free camel rides there, so most of us took the opportunity to ride on the camel. I think the camel was quite poor thing though, having to do so many rounds and on the same route.
Mishti & I on the camel

The sky was getting dark, so we headed into the desert camp for our dinner. I was pretty barfed then, and didn't have much. It was the typical Middle Eastern food - grilled meat, humus, vege...if you like those stuff, then Middle Eastern food is just your thing man.

They also had entertainment that night - belly dancing! Haha, got to see a hot Middle Eastern girl dance. :p I wondered to myself: If Middle East is such a conservative country, how come they allow erotic dances such as belly dancing? Hm, can anyone help me answer that question?

Anyway, back to the story. After a few dances, the belly dancer invited random people on stage to dance. Our in-house dancer, Pei Hua, voluntarily went up on stage to show off his talent. He was good man. And sporting. Some of the other hot guys and gals went up on stage to dance subsequently. It seemed pretty fun, and soon after, I joined in with Weining, haha.
Weining & I
Me, Caelan, Weining and our superb dancer, Pei Hua

OoO, and they also had free henna painting! I think it looks pretty and nice, so I went to get my hand painted.
Mishti took this pic.
I think it's pretty well taken. :)

We ended the day and had our rocky ride back to the hotel. Yay! More roller coaster rides!!! But before that, we were conned into buying this:

The international group:
Qin Zhen (China), Weining (China), Mishti (India), Caelan (Spore), Shaz (Spore), me (Msia)
It cost 50 dirhams!!! That's like RM50!
But as Caelan said, it's once in a lifetime.
*winks*

I'm thankful for the bunch who were together in the same car. Great people, great fun. :)