Wonderful week spent in the real, old Dubai

SWMBO and I had a wonderful week in sunny Dubai in January. We last visited in 2014 with some friends and stayed in one of the 27-Star hotels (well, probably 6-Star) on the man-made marvel that is The Palm.

Pure luxury, great staff (if a little over-attentive) lovely pools etc. etc. But we were disappointed. Nothing to do with the hotel but the fact that we could have been staying anywhere in the world that had good hotels, warm weather etc. etc.

We vowed to go back but to stay in one of the “older” hotels in downtown Dubai.

Abras still ply their trade across the Creek in Dubai.

That proved to be the right choice. Our hotel was right on the Creek, which meanders through the old part of the city separating Dubai side from Deira side.Getting about was easy – a cross-creek trip on an Abra (water taxi) cost 1 Dirham per person – that’s about 25 pence. It was about that price when we lived in the city in 1980s so we were pleasantly surprised.

We also visited the gold souk (credit cards not used but plenty of windows shopped!) and the simply wonderful spice souk.

Twenty minutes haggling for six packets of the finest spices brought back many happy memories. Like many tourist traps, traders will always start very high so you, as the customer, must start very low.

You have to ignore the pleas about “I have six children to support” or “I cannot possible sell for so little” and stick to your guns. At the end of the process you have probably paid more than you should have done but you have had some fun and you beat the trader down (a little).

Then there are the general souks, selling everything from material to mattresses and Pashminas to plastic buckets.

These, unfortunately, have changed. We had to walk through one general souk every time we used the Abra on Dubai side and by the end of our stay I was sick and tired of being tapped on the arm and told that I was a “diamond geezer” and being offered various goods that were “lovely jubbly”.

Most disturbing, however, was how they approached female tourists by touching them on the arm and placing a Pashmina over their shoulders.

As many older people would say, it wasn’t like that in our day. And they would never do this with local women or men but obvious tourists are easy prey.