Ramadan Mubarak - pulling a fast one

5.12am

You are probably wondering, dear reader, why I am posting at this time of the morning, apart from in homage to Renee Artois (very old British TV reference for those who have no idea what I am talking about).

Well, I will be celebrating six years in Dubai in September, and I have yet to take part in the rigours of Ramadan in any meaningful way.

So this year, I am following the path of a hundred other journalists who have turned around in the broiling heat of the UAE summer and realised they are fresh out of things to write about, and for one day only, I am going to attempt fasting during the daylight hours. This is why I am up before the sun chowing down on my usual breakfast of yoghurt, fruit and tea plus an extra side order of Camembert sandwiches. No, Camembert is not a traditional pre fast snack, but it's what I had to hand this early. It turns out the pictured beverage is something of an institution for breaking your fast in the UAE (of which more later), so I thought, "when not in Rome, indulge in the idiosyncrasies of the locals". Ie, I'll be having some of that later. I realise the original version of that saying is somewhat catchier, but it is very early. I was going to try to scarf down some for the pre-dawn meal, but reader, I just couldn't.

Anyway, I shall be keeping you updated on how I am doing throughout the day. Lucky you. I will probably be doing very badly as I'm the kind of person who turns into a psychotic fiend if I am separated from my food supply for more than two hours.

Wish me luck.

******

9.40am

I've chosen a day when Desert Baby is at nursery because she is a girl after my own heart, ie, needs plenty of snacks and reviving treats on a half hourly basis, so I thought best stay away from that temptation.

I also have two freelance jobs on so I'll have plenty to distract me from food daydreams. I'll tell you what, though, it isn't half hard to sit down at a desk and start writing without a cup of tea. I think thirst is going to be the biggest challenge throughout the day. There will be highs of 39C today, which for a Dubai summer isn't that bad, but that's still hot enough for you to want to gulp a glass of water when you get indoors after any time at all spent outside. So I think the dashes from house to car, car to nursery and back again will be my only trips outside today.

10.25am

I really want a cup of tea. I mean really want one.

10.37am

A thought just occurred to me - what to people who are fasting do to break up the day? I'm accustomed to a point in the day when I stop working (staring blankly at a screen) get up, move around, prepare lunch (intend to have salad, usually something in a sandwich). I am realising how much I use tea, coffee and water as a procrastination device. I reckon I would normally have had three glasses of water and be on my third or fourth coffee or tea by now. As it is, that one at 5.10am is starting to feel like a loooooooooooong time ago.

12.35pm

I am officially fed up now. Can't imagine doing this for 30 days. Also, I am realising how I get a lot of my body heat from eating and drinking, particularly the large quantity of hot drinks I usually have during the day. I've had to shut of the air conditioning, something that happens not that often during a Dubai summer.

1.18pm

Only six hours to go. So I'm well past the half way point. My eyes feel puffy. What's that about?

1.29pm

I think I'm reaching the hysterical stage now. I was just remembering the 24 Hour Famine thing we used to do at school to raise money for people in areas of the world where there were food shortages. I seem to remember we were allowed water, were we not, or it would have had health implications. That was ONE DAY. I honestly can't imagine doing this for 30 days.

1.31pm

I just tortured myself by watching of video of how to make Upside Down Banana Cake on facebook. Why do I do these things to myself?

1.43pm

I have to go and pick up Desert Baby now, who will hopefully distract me from my plight. Here is some musings about Vimto and its place as an Iftar staple in the Gulf:

Vimto has a key role in the tradition of breaking your fast at Iftar in the UAE and the Gulf. Either that or the PR company in charge of promoting it has done one heck of a job pushing it this year, as the newspapers are full of articles about the rise of the sticky syrup and it's prominently displayed in every supermarket. 

I’ve read references to it “bringing you back to life” at the end of a long day of fasting (a little under 14 hours at the moment according to the UAE sunrise and sunset times) and it’s perhaps not surprising when there’s 13g of sugar per 100ml. Yikes, diabetes in a bottle.

There is an interesting article about it here which reveals its roots in the temperance movement, which is perhaps why it would appeal to followers of a religion which eschews alcohol:

The version available in the UAE is made in Saudi Arabia and has been since 1927, so it was the purple stuff that fuelled the region long before the black stuff (oil).

I suspect the UK version is far less sweet due to boring little politically correct things like not wanting the nation to lose all their teeth before the age of 35. Either way, as a fan of the works of P G Wodehouse, I think it’s crying out for a 1930s style advertising campaign involving the word “vim” – a word which should never have fallen out of usage in my opinion.

7.10pm

I  made it, which meant it was time for this:

A glass of the aforementioned "Vim Tonic" and some dates. You eat a lot of dates in the Gulf, but these were definitely the tastiest I have had for a while, even though they were the bog standard Carrefour ones you serve yourself, rather than the endless varieties packaged in fancy boxes you can buy in the supermarkets at this time of year. I have to say, I can't say that I'll be buying Vimto regularly. Very odd tasting stuff if you ask me.

8.30pm

So, the last couple of hours of the fast were the worst, except for the early hours of temptation to just have one little cup of tea. After 5pm was when the dehydration headache, which I haven't quite managed to shake off yet, set in. Luckily for me, Him Indoors cooked a dinner of sausages which we ate in front of Peaky Blinders. I was subdued enough by the day's exertions to not get too irate with the annoying blonde girl police spy Grace, who is always banging on about making men cry with her singing, when she's really not that great at it.

I've read a bit during today about why fasting is the done thing during Ramadan. There are lots of reasons - some of them include feeling greater affinity with those who have less, feeling closer to God, etc.

I'm pretty sure there was no spiritual experience in Sand Witch Towers, just a greater level of grumpiness and a marked dip in productivity, but I will definitely have greater empathy for those who observe the fast for 30 days from now on. 

Peak Dubai

I'm starting this post in a bit of an emotional mood, having in the past week said goodbye to two ladies who've basically saved my sanity during the past year and a bit.

The first is a friend who I met at a baby yoga group. She spotted me managing to look both socially inadequate and weird while clutching a squalling Desert Baby, and clearly thought "that's the kind of lady I want my own baby to hang out with, I'll invite her and her baby to join my friends and I for lunch." We hit it off, due to having certain things in common - a rather "matter of fact" approach to parenting being one of them. And while I knew the day when she had to go back to the UK would come, and Dubai is a transient place and we must get used to these things, and so on ad infinitum, I am feeling distinctly Eeyeore-like about her departure.

....

*Brief pause while I wallow in self-pity*

The second was the lady who, over the past year, cleaned my house once per week and sometimes babysat for Desert Baby, so I had time to try to find work, speak to someone who knew other concepts beyond "milk", "nappy", and "no I shall not take a daytime nap no matter how exhausted I may be". This is a First World Problem of the highest order - losing one's' cleaner and babysitter when it's just so damn hard to get the staff these days, but, I am often reminded of a line from Kathryn Stockett's intensely readable novel The Help, when I think about her. It goes something along the lines of "good help is hard to find, it's like falling in love, it happens once in a lifetime". There was something about her that meant we just clicked. She's going home for not particularly happy reasons, and I felt decidedly wretched as I dropped her off at the Metro station for the last time earlier this week, not least because her experience reminded me of how miserable the lives of those in some of the poorer sections of UAE society can be.

I've talked about my British guilt about needing someone to help me around the house in this post, but honestly, the women I have met that do this kind of job in the UAE are way better women than me. Many of them do the dirty work in the homes of people like me who think they've got it hard because it's a bit too hot to go to the beach, or, they're out of money for a manicure that month. Domestic workers in the UAE often get paid less than 2,000dhs per month (around GBP377). Many get accommodation paid for as part of their job, but considering the high cost of living, it's not a lot.

And then there's the fact that many of them have left their own children in their home country to be cared for by family members. Received wisdom on this is that it's so much easier these days for them to "parent at a distance" thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and things like Skype, but I'm not sure that would be enough to stop me going insane with misery were I in that position.  I realise that with time, such arrangements must become easier to bare, but I can't imagine it.

The reason that so many of them do this, of course, is that if they want to improve their family's financial position and give hope of a better lives to their offspring, they have very little choice. There is an army of low paid workers in the UAE and the wider Gulf, not just in the domestic sector, but in hospitality, customer service and so on, without whom the super privileged lifestyles of some locals and expats would be unsustainable.

I recently talked to one lady from the Philippines, who has a job in a beauty salon. She told me that the minimum wage in the Philippines is 34dhs per day (GBP6.40). "This is why where ever you go, you will find lots of us working", she said. While in Sri Lanka, the latest info I could find suggests that the minimum wage is less than GBP2 per day, which probably makes getting several times that with accommodation thrown in seem fairly attractive. To be clear, some of them live out, which means a higher basic salary, but the cost of living must mean living on practically nothing in order to send the bulk of their salaries back to their home countries.

Another lady I met a while ago, also from the Philippines, was working in a coffee shop. She struck up conversation with me, and it became pretty obvious that she had done so because she was absolutely desperate to talk to someone who had recently had a baby. She had just left her little boy back home to be looked after by his grandparents, having taken the UAE's standard 100 days maternity leave - 45 days paid, the rest unpaid. While I may have taken Desert Baby to a freelance job meeting with me when she was aged just four and a half months, I can't imagine being back at work full time that early, even though it's officially the norm in this country and I know people who have done it.

I think this lady was fairly traumatised by it, as I probably would have been, as I was barely in a fit state to leave the house eight weeks after Desert Baby's birth, let alone ready to think about full time work. Leaving her behind while going to work in another country would have been, and still is, out of the question.

I chatted away to the lady about the healing cesarean scars, feeding, nappies, sleep - all the things that people like me had the luxury of nattering away about for hours at various coffee mornings and mummy meet ups, until duty called and she had to go back and serve coffee. And back she went to work, with colleagues who in all likelihood had kids of their own in their home countries and may also have understood what it was like to be working thousands of miles away from your newborn while still healing from giving birth.

I once tried to talk to my "helper" (for this is the preferred term for those of us who balk at the term "maid") about what it is like leaving your children to go and work in a foreign country. "What to do? Need money," was her succinct response. Point taken: Talking about it to someone who cannot imagine doing it was unlikely to make her feel good about the situation, so I backed off.

Life in the UAE has an interesting dual effect on your perspective when it comes to your standard of living which I am fairly sure I have alluded to in a post before. There is conspicuous consumption and wealth everywhere: Enormous shopping malls crammed with luxury stores of every description, more super expensive hotels than you can shake your Louis Vuitton luggage at, car parks groaning with super cars and the blingiest of four-wheel-drives, days spent lounging on the beaches and by the pools of aforesaid luxury hotels, embarrassingly excessive weekend brunches where you consume your weekly calorie allowance in one sitting while pouring unlimited glasses of champagne down your throat.

These rich fripperies and baubles become part of your every day life, along with being able to pick up the phone your local supermarket and have someone who earns less in a week than you do in half a day deliver cans of cola to your door within minutes, incredibly cheap petrol to fill up your four-wheel-drive's fuel tank for next to nothing and shopping for "real fake" sweatshop-made handbags in Karama.

But, if you are willing to look beyond the end of your nose before you stick it in the brunch trough, it doesn't half have the ability to make you appreciate your life compared with those of many in the UAE.

I remember when I first arrived, noticing, for example, gardeners sweating away in the heat to maintain the lush green lawns and foliage of the UAE's luxury hotels, and thinking, it's only the accident of my birth - that I happened to be born in the West while he was born into a poor family in a developing country, that means I am inside enjoying the air con and slurping a cool drink while he's out there. I wondered then, as I still do now, how people can apparently not notice such workers when the mercury tops 50C and go about their highly privileged lives as if they simply aren't there.

I suppose that after a while, the workers and their discomfort simply blend into the scenery for some people. Personally, I think, when that happens, you've reached "Peak Dubai" and it's probably time to cash in your chips and go home.

A visit to the Baptism Site from the Jordanian side

This is the second of my posts about our Jordanian Odyssey because this particular aspect of our visit deserves a post in its own right.

Even if you're not particularly religious, the place known as the Baptism Site, where Jesus is believed to have been baptised by John the Baptist, is something worth doing. Particularly in the light of news that broke yesterday that the site, most of which has been a no go area for nearly 50 years thanks to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is finally to be cleared of land mines.

Church built to honour the site, with more likely to follow, I expect, after mine clearance

The site, as those of you who have good bible knowledge will know, is on the River Jordan. It's 25 miles or so west of Amman, at a place called Bethany-beyond-the-Jordan. A small part of it was declared safe and reopened to the public in 2011 - the part which Him Indoors, Desert Baby and I went to late last year - now the rest of it will hopefully be open to the public too, post mine clearance efforts by a Christian charity. To get there, you'll need to drive to the site entrance, buy a ticket and await a small tour bus which, from memory, travels to the site itself once per hour with a guide. There is a fair bit of walking to be done on uneven ground around it, but many of the walkways are shaded from the sun.

As you can see, the site where the baptism itself is believed to have taken place, is not much to look at. The river's course has changed over the centuries, so what you're looking at here is the remains of an archaelogical dig. The structure behind is the shelter built over another dig of an ancient church.

Him Indoors told me first thing this morning that he had just heard on the news that the site was to be cleared of mines, perturbed that we had taken Desert Baby within spitting distance of deadly IEDs during our family holiday. It's not quite as bad as it sounds as the part of the site we saw had been declared safe and visited without incident for five years and the guides there are pretty strict with you, that on no account are you to stray from the paths. There's a phrase about holes and stop digging that is thundering through my head as I write, and I'm not referring to archaeology.

Anyway.

Pilgrims visit regularly, and you can take part in a baptism on the part of the river that now flows closest to the site. This is what these folk are doing on the side of the river our guide referred to as Occupied Palestine, as the thing about the River Jordan, you see, is it effectively forms the border between the two states.

Here they are arriving with a rather heavily armed soldier keeping watch above:

 And here's his equivalent on the Jordanian side:

So basically, there's no messing about.

I did feel, the whole time I was there, that was I under surveillance, that someone may have gun sights trained on me from some long range watch tower. And as we turned and walked away from the narrow, sandy river and prepared to leave, I felt a desire to roar or weep, I wasn't sure which.

I am a pacifist by nature, so it's possible that proximity to heavy weaponry at a site of enormous religious significance with my nine-month-old offspring in tow was what troubled me, or that I was moved by the sound of the pilgrims singing a hymn on the other side of the river. I suppose that's it - the significance of  phrase "the other side of the river" sounds as super loud in my head today as it did then.

The thing is, even those of a faith as lapsed as mine will know that Jesus preached peace and love. Therefore the sight, on both sides of the border, of men with guns capable of ripping a person apart at the place where he was baptised, filled me with something approaching horror.

This makes it sound like I didn't enjoy the visit. I suppose "enjoy" is the wrong word, for something that provoked such feelings. But I think no matter what your faith, or if you have none at all, you can appreciate the importance of the place, and I would recommend seeing it.

In the mean time, here's a picture of a cute baby to lighten the mood:

Go to Petra

There are certain trips that those living in Dubai should make as a matter of course, and a visit to Petra - the ancient Nabatean city cut into rock, deep in a Jordanian valley - is one of them. I must admit that I was never that bothered about going there myself, ignorant as I was of the wonders therein, apart from a vague childhood memory of a scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It's fair to say that I am now a convert to the cause of Petra and tell anyone who will listen that they should go.

Credit for our trip goes to Him Indoors, who had rather more memory of the Indiana Jones film, and an interest in ancient history which means he reads stuff about these things and listens to obscure history podcasts.

Petra, is quite frankly, indescribable. But I am going to give it a go. 

Those of you who have visited the Grand Canyon will probably remember the first memory of seeing that awesome expanse of nothingness opening up before you as you approach the edge, with the cascading rust red rock formations seeming to pour down from the precipice on the opposite side. Petra, is man-made, if very ancient man, so the effect is different but similarly gobsmacking.

So, here is my attempt at describing what it's like, walking down the Siq and getting that first glimpse of the Treasury rearing up before you in the morning sun. 

Here it is.... 

Are you ready now?

........


....


.....



.............
....




...........

I saw it for the first time, turned to Him Indoors, and said: "F***... How old did you say this is?"

There it is.

It's simply awe-inspiringly swear-inducingly brilliant, is Petra. And the best thing about it is that once you've seen the Treasury, there's absolutely bloomin' loads of it to spend a day or more seeing and exploring. And, even better, it's in Jordan, which is one of the friendliest places I have ever visited. 

Now that's what I call an amphitheatre

Him Indoors and I have been on some truly splendid holidays since we moved to Dubai, taking advantage of its handy location compared with the UK to visit places like Nepal, Kenya and India etc, but I think of them all, Petra has to be hands down, my favourite. Last year was a heck of a year in one way or another, and I'll be honest, the thought of carting a sometimes sleepless Desert Baby to an unknown country was not exactly a prospect that filled me with joy, but boy am I glad that we did. 

The Monastery, it's carved into the rock. How the hecking heck did they do it?

Travelling in Jordan with a little one has its challenges, but there are also giant advantages. Desert Baby was nine months old at the time (yes she's 14 and a half months now, I've been busy and yada yada yada) and had already entered the giggling, smiling and waving her little starfish hands at nearly everyone she meets phase, and everywhere we went, people engaged with her, and talked to her, told us "mashallah". From the moment we stepped into our hotel in Amman, one of the concierges made friends with her and took her off for a little walk around the foyer and she was showered with compliments and attention for the entire holiday. At no point did you get the tuts and mutterings that having a small child in tow can cause in other parts of the world, even when she decided that she didn't feel like following our proposed itinerary for the day and started bellowing her head off.

  

The challenge, for those travelling with a young child in Jordan, is definitely food, particularly for those who are used to the 24/7 restaurant culture of somewhere like Dubai, where you can eat your way round the world simply by picking up the phone. Luckily we took a bunch of Ella's Kitchen pouches with us, or we would have been in trouble. Home cooking is still very much valued in Jordan, so on demand food to order is just not the thing. Why would it be when you are most likely always getting satisfying food at home? We were aware of this before we left, but simply didn't quite believe it, assuming that as Him Indoors and I will eat pretty much anything, even from grungy looking cafes, we would be fine. 

Not so, even grungy looking cafes shut on Friday mornings and more or less whenever they feel like it, and when they are open, they tend not to serve food until traditional meal times. For example, hotel restaurants we frequented didn't serve food until 7pm, so we couldn't sit and eat an early evening meal with Desert Baby, we resorted to feeding her a pouch and then trying to silently eat room service dinner while she slept later on more than one occasion. On other days, trotting around Amman, which as a capital city you would have thought would be a safe bet for a meal whenever you fancied one, we existed the entire day on a bowl of funny lentil snacks that came with a cup of coffee, and on another day, it was just the coffee. Those of you who know what Him Indoors and I get like when we're hungry can appreciate how impressive it is that we returned from that trip still married.  

But, Desert Baby, trooper that she is, did not let any of this get her down.

At the temple of Hercules, Amman

She was still being breastfed at this point, which is bloomin' handy for not having to worry about things like sterilising bottles and clean boiled water, and she generally giggled and wiggled her way through the trip as happily as can be. 

She even only got a little bit cross when we did this to her:

All in all, though, I would recommend taking a nine month old to Petra, providing, that is, they are the kind of baby that is willing to spend quite a bit of time in a Baby Bjorn, or similar, because there's a lot of walking involved, and it sure as hell ain't buggy friendly, as is the case with much of Jordan, unless you're inside a large international brand hotel or similar.

Luckily, Desert Baby thinks the sling is the bees knees.

 Entranced by the view at Petra's highest point

There was one thing that we did take away from the trip that irked us slightly, and that was the  attitude of our fellow Brits. It might be that we just got big heads from being told at pretty much every turn what a delightful, beautiful genius baby that she is (which she is, obviously, well, except when she's teething, then she's a rabid beast) but we both got the slight hump about the way that of the two British tourists we met in Petra, both were keen to point out to us that: "She won't remember it, you know." 

Er....

"Really? Damn, because I was planning to ask her to pitch a travel piece to roughguides.com when we get back and leave it to her to write it herself. Well, this is a monumental disappointment to me, I wish I had just left her in a cabbage patch in a Fujairah field rather than bring her with me," is what I should have replied, but one only thinks of these things afterwards. Seriously. I am as cynical as the next bod, but really, that is the limit. Sort it out, fellow Brits.      

I will let some pics do the rest of the talking about Petra, but keep scrolling for a hilarious tale of the road trip to Petra which took roughly eight times longer than it should have done, including an encounter with the Jordanian police near the Israeli border.

 Bedouin dudes with donkeys. They offer you a "donkey for later" "all the way up" (by which they mean to the monastery). Obviously the only dignified reply is: "Yes, send them to my hotel room, but saddle them up, I'm not a perv."

 A view of the amphitheatre from inside a cave

 No reason for this, other than this cat looks EXACTLY like my former cat, Kitty, may she rest in peace.

Him indoors embarking on the climb to the monastery with Desert Baby strapped to him. Even the Brits we met managed to congratulate him on his fortitude. 

About half way up and looking pretty happy about it

This is what the climb was for

And this

Followed by this

So, the thing about Petra, then, is that it's really fr***in' remote. It's really staggeringly far from anywhere, and tourist numbers, if the Telegraph is to be believed, are dwindling, due, in part, perhaps, to those Daesh idiots who are currently terrorising parts of the region. This may mean investment in infrastructure may be a long way off, and that many may experience a journey similar to what me, Him Indoors and Sand Baby experienced.

There are two ways to reach Petra from Amman via road. First, the quickest route, the Desert Highway, which is about as boring as it sounds, then the Dead Sea route, where you drive alongside the moodily flat waters admiring the watery view, the salt deposits and the pinkish sands, the bedouin camps and the occasional bromide plant. You keep going along the coast for an awfully long time then turn left along a somewhat rural road to Wadi Mousa, the modern-day settlement next to Petra. 

We, obviously, chose the latter, and hopped into a rather beastly but it turned out handily rugged rented four-wheel drive and set off. We were a little late starting as the hire car company were late delivering us the charger for the sat nav. There was no effing way we were setting off without that. We made a stop at the baptism site of Jesus Christ along the way (also on the Israeli border, and for another post) and then made tracks towards Petra..... 

So along the coast we drove, having fed Desert Baby a pouch and eaten some packets of crisps ourselves for lunch (see above) until we came to the famous left turn towards Petra and Wadi Mousa mentioned above. It was after 5pm, if I remember correctly, and darkness was falling. 

And there was a sign at the start of aforementioned road, saying "road closed". 

"B***ocks," we said. "What do we do?" "Hmmmmmmmmmm."

As is probably more often the case that it should be on our holiday adventures, the theme tune to the BBC series 999 as presented by Michael Buerk began to sound in my head. Along with the downcast presenter's imagined voiceover:  "The young(ish) couple were excited about their trip to new World Wonder Petra, and it was a beautiful day on the Dead Sea as they took the route towards modern day settlement Wadi Mousa. That day was to end in near tragedy, with their fatal mistake being to ignore a road closed sign on their final descent into the city....."

The immediate answer as to what to do seemed to be to sit in the back of the car and breastfeed Desert Baby, who had been surprisingly compliant about a day mostly spent in various vehicles so far. In the mean-time Him Indoors attempted to get a signal on his phone so he could Google the situation and find out what was wrong with the road. 

This went on for a while as the darkness became increasingly inky black and various vehicles turned right out of the supposedly closed road, looking for all the world like vehicles who had just driven from Petra with no problems. But, as foreigners with little Arabic and little knowledge of local conditions and even less knowledge of what the hell to do in an emergency, we thought driving willy nilly along a road that said "road closed" may be classed in the "somewhat foolhardy" category, particularly with an admittedly game nine month old in tow.

As the darkness thickened, and Desert Baby began to give us looks that seemed to say "you know, I may be the world's most patient baby, but even I will lose my sense of humour at some point," and cars continued to pass us nonchalantly, a large, armoured and camouflaged four-wheel drive pulled up in front of us. 

Him Indoors got out to greet the large, burly, peaked cap and fatigues-wearing soldier who got out of the armoured four-wheel drive, with his customary "hellair". The soldier, doing his job, patrolling the Israeli border, started to ask a series of rather sharp questions about what the heck we were doing hanging around there, until I got out, carrying a waving, cheery, smiling Desert Baby, and suddenly, everything was ok. The solder phoned his friend and ascertained that yes, the road was indeed "out", and then taught us another rather vital lesson about Jordan in addition to the rather stiff one we had already learned about the availability of food. 

There was, at this time, nor is there likely to be by now, no petrol station in Petra or indeed Wadi Mousa, so if you find yourselves at the left turn from the Dead Sea with possibly not enough fuel to get there and back, as we did, you need to think on. Whatever we did, said the burly, somewhat frightening, but also in some ways reassuring dad-like chap, we needed to leave quickly. 

"That is Israel," he said, pointing at the blackly disappearing hills on the other side of the narrow Dead Sea, "is problem". 

Aaaaaaah, "problem"... That word, that in the subcontinent and Arabic world can mean everything from a flat tyre to a full scale war. I tell a lie, the phrase used to describe wars, famines, genocides and the like, is "big problem". 

The best and safest thing to do in terms of the road he informed us, was drive to Aqaba, the border city with Saudi Arabia, and then turn back along the Desert Highway. Not only was the road to Petra out, but all of the petrol stations en route to Aqaba were out of fuel, so despite my furious protestations, that is what we ended up doing.     

We arrived at a petrol station on the outskirts of Aqaba, filled up with fuel, purchased some of the crackliest and most uncomfortable nappies Desert Baby will ever wear, because we were running short of those and they were the only ones available, and attempted to feed her a pouch. Unsurprisingly, she was getting a little bit testy by this stage, and a windy, dark, service station forecourt, surrounded by some of the scariest characters I have ever seen in my life is not the most joyful place to enjoy a pureed meal.  

Luckily for us, she sportingly agreed to be strapped back into her car seat as we set off from Aqaba, to approach Petra from the other side. The sat nav, which we have learned during our various comedy road trips over the years to ignore, (there was a memorable occasion when we followed it through an Australian mountain range, when there was a perfectly good motorway we could have used) wanted us to take a choice of terrifying looking single track rural roads through rocky looking hills towards Wadi Mousa. 

We took the route that the map told us was the main route which was still pretty terrifying, but there didn't seem a lot of choice with temperature dropping, the darkness thickening still further, and when we were quite frankly, in the middle of effing nowhere with a thankfully sleeping Desert Baby. 

We set off down this moderately terrifying road, and immediately understood why the original left turn road had been closed. A dense, miasma like mixture of sand and fog made visibility bad enough that we could barely see beyond the end of the car's bonnet. It was, quite frankly, the most hair raising journey of our lives, on top of an already somewhat hair raising day.   

As him indoors had done an entire day's driving to Aqaba, it was my turn in the driving seat, and I clung on to the steering wheel for dear life, as the sat nav continued to give vague suggestions that we should drive off a cliff, turn straight into a pile of rocks, just turn back, for the love of God just turn back! As we crawled along, we were overtaken by a taxi, the driver of which clearly spotted we were not local, and crawled along in front of us, pointing out of his window to the direction we needed to go to give us warning when we needed to turn. The Jordanians are probably the nicest people in the world. 

Luckily, Desert Baby slept on, as the taxi driver peeled off down a rocky track towards what was presumably his home, he gestured once more out the window, pointing out the route, so we finally took the slightly less terrifying road down into Wadi Mousa. We were cross eyed with exhaustion and unable to keep it together to find our way through the town to the Petra Guest House where we were to stay, so Him Indoors got them on the phone to be tactfully told we just needed to head towards the main gate of Petra and we would find them.  

We pulled up at the guest house at about 10.30pm, and got ready to check in, at which point Desert Baby withdrew cooperation, which was probably entirely fair enough, considering the frankly reckless behaviour of her parents, and woke up. After we stuffed a room service dinner into our mouths, and convinced the hotel staff to turn on the heating, because yes, we might look like Europeans, but we are desert dwelling wusses these days who can't cope with the cold (temperatures drop to 2C at night during the winter), she settled briefly in the cot, before waking roughly every half hour until dawn.  

Luckily, the excitement of seeing Petra for the first time was enough to make the next day pass without any of us murdering each other, filing for divorce or child emancipation. The day after that, we got up early, not that we had much choice as Desert Baby was up with the sun, and caught that magical first sight of the Treasury again, as the early morning sun begins to bathe it in light.

So, here endeth my lesson on travelling to Petra. You should go, you really should, but bear in mind it's a good idea to have a supply of snacks with you and, particularly if you do it in the winter months, aim to be there before dark, particularly if you are driving yourselves there, because that night-time trip across the barren mountains to get there is far from funny. Well, it is now, considering we all got out of it alive, but at the time, not so much.      

Things that go "khalas" in the night

Being a cynical sort of gal, it's a long time since I believed in ghouls, ghosties and things that go bump in the night. But, you don't have to spend long time living in the UAE to realise that cynicism about the occult and the supernatural may not necessarily be the majority view here.

I remember, when I first came to live here, being astounded that news stories about possession and hauntings by Jinn - the name for ghost or spirit in Islamic mythology, also spelt Djinn -  frequently make it into the UAE national newspapers. I assumed other expats would feel the same level of astonishment. But during a dinner with a group of friends, a couple of us joked about Jinn hiding possessions, being responsible for missing car keys and bad days at work, that sort of thing, only for one of the party to tell us in all seriousness that they were fairly sure the strange noises coming from the ceiling above their apartment were caused by an evil spirit.

It is with this in mind that we set off for Ras Al Khaimah's "ghost village", also known as Jazirat Al Hamra, on the outskirts of the Northern Emirate's main settlement. The village is said to be the inspiration for the horror movie Jinn which was partly filmed on location.

Rumours abound about why this small settlement of fishermen was abandoned over night. Some say it was some kind of chemical incident, but my favourite is that the residents were spooked one night by spirits floating towards them from the sea, and they packed their things and ran away in fright en masse. For the cynic, such a thing could be explained away by some kind of sea fret or mist.

Walking around the place, it certainly does have the air of somewhere left in a hurry:

The history of the place is plain to see - with coral from the sea built into the stone work. 

As is quite often the way when one has a small child in tow, I did not take nearly enough pictures, but Jazirat Al Hamra is definitely worth a visit for anyone at all interested in the history of the UAE. The traditional style houses, mosques and a small, picturesque fort are still in tact, neatly demonstrating how the lives of the people have UAE have changed beyond recognition in a mere half century.





The mystery surrounding the place is a source of fascination for many - you don't have to look far to find accounts from those who have visited at night in search of a supernatural experience.

But, sadly, for fans all things spooky, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the abandonment of the village. It seems in truth, the departure was not wholesale over night, but came about due to disputes between local families and offers of better living conditions and jobs elsewhere. You will also find accounts of some past residents and their descendants visiting regularly to remember the happy times they spent living there, particularly on national holidays.

It's also a good day out for ex-pats, particularly if you combine it with lunch at the Banyan Tree Ras Al Khaimah Beach, followed by a cocktail at the resort's sister hotel in the desert. The beach hotel appeals to me particularly as you have to get on a little boat to get to it. Both hotels are handily in The Entertainer as well, if, like us, you don't really live on a Banyan Tree budget.

So, with the departure of the villagers explained, the question remains, would I spend a night there with a crew of ghost hunters?

Hell no.

Moving, just keep moving

Since I packed my bags and departed for university in 1997, I have moved residence, if you include moving between different digs, I reckon, 15 times. And wouldn’t you know it? We're about to fuel up the magic carpet and embark on move number 16 at the end of next week.

Desert Baby needs her own room - the best we can afford without shelling out most of our income on rent in town is a one bed - so we’re moving to the ‘Burbs, baby, where property is (comparatively) cheap, the air is clean(ish, if you don’t count the airport emissions) and the people are friendly(ish).

You may have read about the infamous Dubai property crash in 2008. Well, one of my old bosses, a real estate firm CEO, would tell you that lessons have been learned from that experience, that there is a mature secondary market now, people don’t buy into the property market hype in the same way as they used to. My response to that, would be: “Meh.”  

I’ve been in our fair Emirate four and a half years, so I may not fall for the same old tricks as unfortunate newbies do, such as agreeing to sign non-renewable contracts so the landlord can turf you out in favour or someone willing to pay a much higher rent at the end of a year, but the market can still be somewhat hair-raising.

Touch wood, in a week’s time, we should be settled into our new place.  If you're embarking on the same task, particularly for the first time, here are my top 10 need to know rants about the joyful process that is renting property in Dubai, some of which I picked up from my brief career interlude working as a copywriter for an estate agent, and the rest from bitter experience.

Upfront rent

Unless you negotiate with your landlord otherwise, you will be expected pay your rent one year in advance, either in one cheque, or in a series of post-dated cheques. Rents are advertised per annum rather than per month, so try not to have a heart attack when you see the prices. On top of this you will need to also find a deposit for DEWA (electricity and water provider) a landlord deposit, (usually five percent of the annual rent) and if you've used an agent, their commission (also usually five per cent).

How the heck do people afford to pay all that at once?

Some expats, although fewer and fewer, get generous financial packages from their employers to allow them to set up home in Dubai. Many receive a housing allowance as part of their salary, and this can be drawn up to a year in advance. The first year Him Indoors did this, his cheque was refused, for some piffling reason to do with an irregular mark on it. The best way to solve this quickly was for him to draw the money in cash and hand it over. Him indoors had to go to work, so I had to sit in the bank waiting for our new landlord, who was two hours late, clutching AED85,000 in cash in a brown envelope. Those who don’t get a housing allowance have three other choices: Apply to their work for a salary advance, take out a bank loan to pay their rent, or save like mad before they even think about coming to Dubai and renting a place to live.

More on those post-dated cheques

Many of us fortunate enough to receive a housing allowance pay in one cheque so we can forget about rent until three months prior to the end of our contracts when it’s time to think about renewing or moving. Those who don’t have that option pay in two or more post-dated cheques. When the market is really in the doldrums, or a property is a bit dodgy, the landlord may allow up to 12 cheques, so you’re effectively paying the rent monthly. You can tell when the market is overheating, as landlords start demanding one cheque for even rat-infested “studios” (bedsits) with a view of Dubai Municipal Waste Dumping Area.

What is with Dubai estate agents? Seriously? Isn’t it easy money? Why are they (mainly) so dreadful?

Oh, habibis, if only I knew. The first agent that Him Indoors and I ever dealt with was a dream. She spoke fluent English, she negotiated well on our behalf with our landlord, she answered phonecalls, she returned emails, she dealt with queries efficiently. *Sigh*. What happened to her? Her employer obviously spotted she was pretty good as she got promoted, and as far as I’m aware, she is still working as an area manager for the same agency and no longer deals directly with clients. 

Agents are a strange breed here. Examples include many who don’t bother to turn up to show you round a property, and if they do, they won’t know anything about it, such as details about who pays what charges, when the construction next door is due to be complete and what the heck it is they’re building. Another agent Him Indoors dealt with recently spoke some English, to a degree, but the only directions he could give to the property were “It’s near Spinneys”. There are about 30 branches of Spinneys in Dubai, but even when this was pointed out to him, his response was “It’s near Spinneys?” “Which Spinneys?” “It’s near Spinneys”, in the manner of the way Hodor says “Hodor” in Game of Thrones. 

These are the people to whom you routinely hand over a commission of five per cent of your annual rent. Money you will never see again. I’ll just let that sink in.  

And what about the landlords? What’s their problem?

The cretin-like behavior extends to landlords, even when it comes to viewings. Him Indoors and I were unfortunate enough to be looking for a new place at the height of the post EXPO2020 bid victory hype in March 2014, and we looked round a tiny one bed flat in a not particularly nice building in Jumeirah Lakes Towers. It had a view of a building site, eye-wateringly horrible carpets and the tenant had clearly done a bunk. Their crappy clothes were hanging out of the broken wardrobe, a pan of something congealed was still on the stove, toothpaste was smeared around the bathroom sink, with something worse smeared round the toilet and the balcony was covered in cigarette ends and other rubbish. The rent being asked, from memory, was AED90,000 per annum, that’s 16,000 sterling. All credit to the agent, she had more front than Blackpool, as she didn’t even bat an eyelid about the revolting state of the flat, but politely agreed with us when we said it probably wasn’t the property for us.

I have given the question of what the hell is wrong with these people quite a lot of thought during my time in Dubai, other than the fact that many of them are foreign investors who have little or nothing to do with their property and simply hand the running of it over to an agent. To be fair, I have heard tell of landlords who *sharp intake of breath* don’t try to impose huge increases, don’t try to turf you out as soon as the market looks like it’s on the up, and *faints* carry out and/or pay for maintenance.

I’ve always suspected that due to aforementioned property crash, many buy-to-let landlords feel they were sold something that did not quite fulfill the huge income potential they were promised, so they resent the heck out of tenants. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, we rented a property in Downtown in March 2011 for AED85,000 (just over 15,000 sterling) per annum as that was the market rate. The landlord told us that in the “good times” prior to the property crash, he had rented it for AED200,000 (nearly 36,000 sterling). This may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but, no wonder he was a bit shirty with us when we phoned him in the first week to tell him the fridge was knackered.

A bit more about maintenance

I detailed in a previous post some time ago about an incident I shall now refer to as "washingmachinegate" in which a landlord’s agent got pretty nasty with me when we had the temerity to ask him to fix or replace a broken appliance. It seems that several of the landlords from who we have had the misfortune to rent property see the payment of rent as the tenant effectively owning the property for the year. Therefore their view is that any issues, including, say, damaged paint from a water leak which was caused by a tap which wasn’t installed properly, broken washing machines, etc, are the tenant’s responsibility. This is hard to get your head round as a tenant, particularly a tenant with experience of the UK, where many landlords take more interest in and responsibility for their property.

“Why don’t you just buy a property so you don’t have to deal with this nonsense?”

What a brilliant idea. Thanks for suggesting that. Foreigners need a minimum 25 per cent deposit to buy property, so can you lend me hundreds of thousands of dirhams please? Go on, I’m an excellent prospect. My turnover in freelance commissions has been literally in the hundreds of pounds sterling since Desert Baby was born, and I have as yet no source of regular work, and if I do get regular work, I will need to pay for childcare, and, oh yes, I may want to move to a different country within the next year or so depending on my husband’s work. What do you mean you don’t want to lend me any money? Wait, stop laughing me out of your bank. You’re just mean.

If you’ll excuse the facetiousness, yes, buying property would be a way to avoid the silliness of Dubai landlords, but that’s not exactly straightforward. Raising the cash for the deposit would mean selling our UK property. Call me overly-cautious, and not to detract from the wondrous nature of the Dubai property market and the breathtakingly brilliant future prospects of the Emirate, but I think the London property market may be a slightly safer bet for the risk-averse.

“Big” landlords

Him Indoors and I are trying a new experiment this time by renting directly from a developer, to see if dealing with them when it comes to things like maintenance and renewal of contracts is any less irritating. Some developers have kept certain developments and derive income from renting the entire thing out. They have maintenance offices onsite with technicians ready to answer calls for set fees. I am also hoping that when it comes to renewals, if there is a rent increase, they will increase according to the government rent increase calculator and that’s it. Hoping. Examples of “big” landlords are Arenco and Al Ghandi Property.

Know your stuff

Don’t get caught out like him indoors and I did when we got kicked out of our first apartment. We got evicted because we were told our landlord wanted to live in the property himself. This is legal, but the landlord has to give you 12 months’ notice, rather than kick you out straight away like ours did, ditto if they want to sell the property. As far as I’m aware, the law states that Dubai residential tenancy agreements are automatically renewed at the end of the year unless 90 days’ notice is given by either side prior to the end of the contract. Technically, if you’re planning to leave, you need to give that 90 days notice before the end of the contract, or you could be liable for the next year’s rent. However, I have never heard of a landlord enforcing this. You also need to know that tenancy agreements are technically enforced by law, so if you want to leave early, there may well be penalties to pay to your landlord, for example, an extra two months' rent. As for rent increases, they are supposedly regulated by the government, so your landlord can only increase the rent if the rental increase calculator says so. Click here to check it out. 

..      Good luck

You have my sympathy. Really. If you end up with a duff landlord, you can consider opening a case at RERA  the Real Estate Regulatory Agency. 

                                                           

Mum (to be)'s gone to Iceland (with apologies to my friends who are of Icelandic heritage)

For Brits, Iceland is not just a breathtakingly beautiful island state between Greenland and Norway, it's a cheap supermarket where you buy frozen foods high in additives and low in nutrition with the slogan "Mum's gone to Iceland".

Let's all take a moment to think of those mums, dejectedly pushing their trollies between aisles of frozen chicken tikka bites, sausage rolls and arctic rolls, thinking: "Why the f*** have I gone to Iceland again? Why? Why hasn't Dad? It's the normative gender stereotypes of modern day advertising that really piss me off, as they seem to reinforce my position as the poor sod who has to brave this vision of fluorescent-lit hell to buy frozen polystyrene masquerading as food."

Anyway, that's the feminist bit out of the way, let's get on with this "What I did on my holidays" post. 

Last summer I was pregnant with Desert Baby, a fact I may have mentioned one or two times in the course of the past nine months or so, and due to a saga involving passports, we were confined to the UAE for the duration. Spending the hot season here can be trying at the best of the times for a spoilt ex-pat, but when knocked up, it's a form of purgatory, because you can't even partake of the consolations of brunching and swim up bars to pass the searingly hot and humid days quicker.

By the time we had resolved the passport debacle and cobbled together our annual leave, we were more fed up than usual and desperate for cool air. And so, in late October we chartered a long boat to Iceland, home of Vikings, sagas, rotted fermented shark-based snacks and fantastical prices. We found found ourselves a place to stay through airbnb and spent a week trotting around Reykjavik, hiring the world's smallest four-wheel drive to explore the countryside and generally wrapping up in winter coats, turning our faces into the bitingly cold wind and saying: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh."

We saw the Northern Lights, which locals refer to as "dancing Elves". I think at six months gone and up in the middle of the night in freezing conditions to view them, I may not have been entirely predisposed to appreciate them, but the pictures (taken by him indoors as I lack the technical ability and patience) suggest it was a pretty impressive sight.

 We also visited the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa, described by the guide books as a "shameless tourist ripoff" which may be true, but, frankly, we have lived in Dubai for getting on for five years, so an attraction has to be fairly far beyond a shameless ripoff to put us off. While you are there, you can get a massage, which means meandering through the naturally heated water to float on a rubber mat while said massage takes place in the open air. You are dunked under the warm water every now and then to make sure you don't get too chilly on the cool air.

Ripoff it may be, but I enjoyed the heck out of that massage. The attraction was also pretty popular with a large party of British teenagers, presumably all from the same posh school, providing him indoors and I with plenty of opportunities for snorting laughs. For me, it was at the girls stressing about their super model, St Tropez sprayed and designer bikini clad figures in the changing rooms, while I looked on in frank envy as I squeezed my pregnant bulk into a swimming costume. For him, it was overhearing a bunch of teenage boys say: "I'm gonna exfoliate sooo hard" while smearing on gallons of the restorative pots of gritty white mud placed at convenient intervals around the main pool. Times have changed since us 30 somethings were teens and applied Biactol to our pimpled complexions under cover of darkness, I tell thee.

One of the fascinating things about Iceland is its natural geothermal resources, which I managed, somewhat ineptly, to capture on video at Geyser. Because, you see, geysers are all named after Geyser, the place where this rather brilliant example of the  phenomenon is located. I am not even going to begin to try to explain the science behind them because I will make a total t*t of myself, but from what I gathered, this incredible natural force provides sustainable energy meaning Iceland is far less reliant on fossil fuels than the rest of us.

I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking, apart from my four other favourite fascinating facts about Iceland.

1. Icelanders refer to each other by their first names, even in formal situations. For example, Snorri Sturluson, writer of some of the most famous Icelandic Sagas and 13th century politician, who met a bloody end typical of the age, is largely referred to as "Snorri".

2. Icelanders like to eat fermented, rotted shark as a snack, washed down with a spirit, the name of which translates as "Black Death".

3. Many Icelanders believe in elves, and that rocks are the homes of elves, and that terrible things will happen if these homes of the elves are moved or destroyed. So, you will find rocks built around or disrupting building projects, with claims that the rocks cannot be moved due to mysterious mystical or super natural forces, with bulldozers grinding to a halt, pneumatic drills breaking and shovels bending.

4. The population of Iceland is roughly 300,000 people. Many Icelanders can trace their ancestry back to the country's original settlers, ergo, finding someone who you are not related to in one way or another to marry can be tricky. A result of this is the foreigners often "do very well" in terms of naughtiness as locals are keen to look for opportunities to breed outside their own nationality. This crude generalisation is in the guide books and everything. It might have been that I was a bit touchy due to being Dubai Sand Witch with added beach ball stomach, but I had to give a very stern look to a beautiful Icelandic teenager who gave some rather lascivious glances to him indoors while serving us meat soup, the ancestrally Viking hussy.

Anyway, more pics below.

My actual dream home. 

Such vehicle owners, so at home in Dubai, have also made their way to Iceland, it would appear.

We popped down this road to see if Bjork would invite us in for a shot of Black Death, but she was a bit busy believing in beauty with Venus as a boy

Practical stuff: There are tons of options for flights to Iceland from Dubai, but no direct flights. We flew with Qatar Airways via Doha and London, picking up an Icelandair flight to Reykjavik. You can get a taxi to the centre of town from the airport, but it's far cheaper to get a bus, and unless you're a millionaire, you're going to have to watch your pennies while you're there as the cost of living is sky high. Bus tickets are available in arrivals.