We also visited the world market Global Village, part of the Dubai Shopping Festival. This is a huge shopping/theme park about an hour outside Dubai that can best be compared to the Epcot Center, but with much more of an emphasis on shopping. Each section of the park is divided by country, with a large shopping section with products perhaps that originated in that country. In addition, there were many stages with performances, and a small amusement park with rides. The shopping was a little hit and miss, with some stalls featuring the same as-seen-on-TV knife sets over and over.

The biggest drawback to visiting the shopping festival was the cost of transportation – about $20 each way for the taxi.

The Bur Dubai Souq, across from Deira and right next to the abra station (this is where the boats drop you off when you cross the creek) had some of the best deals we saw in Dubai. Lots of knockoff watches, handbags, as well as beautiful textiles, rugs at rock bottom prices (after haggling). I picked up some nice shirts for $2 each.

The Karama Shopping Center / Market is a little difficult to get to (due to the scarcity of cabs) but has a lot of great shoe shops, more gold shops, and lots of clothing. It had a very local feel to it and was a good experience.

Another mall we checked out was the Ibn Battuta mall. This mall is at the far end of New Dubai, so was a little costly in a cab to get to. It was worth it however, and was for our money the most unique shopping mall we visited in Dubai. Every wing of the mall is themed after a country, and while not all the shops are relevant to the theme, the décor is very impressive.

The last mall we checked out was Deira City Center. By this point we were pretty tired of malls, and it didn’t really impress us. It’s very big, and very busy, but the stores were not that different from the ones we saw at the other malls.

Ski Dubai and the Mall of the Emirates is another must-see in Dubai. Despite being Canadian, we’d never actually been downhill skiing, but why not start in Dubai? Attached to the shopping mall, Ski Dubai is a massive indoor structure, 60 stories high, with some impressively good slopes.

The whole Ski Dubai experience is very polished and well organized. They provide *all* the equipment – boots, skis, jacket, and snowpants. A shop right outside sells hats and gloves at reasonable prices – and these are also some of the best souvenirs we got from Dubai.

All the equipment is very clean – in fact my jacket and pants were brand new.

The ski lift drops you either half way or all the way up. Since this was our first time on downhill skis, we didn’t really graduate past the half-way-up. There is a TGI Friday’s overlooking the slope, so others can enjoy your spills.

You can also rent snowboards, and they even have a couple of moguls. For those not daring enough to try some easy downhill, you can get a “snow park” pass which lets you run around in the snow and toboggan/sled down some small hills.

The shopping mall itself is a huge mall, but not really themed as other malls in Dubai are. A lot of the stores are western chains – with prices pretty similar to home.

Right beside the Burj Al Arab is Souq Madinat Jumeirah. This is a high-end shopping mall/”souk”, which is the cleaned-up, high price version of the souks elsewhere in the city. This is more of a tourist trap than a legitimate place to get a good deal on souvenirs. That said, we did find some crafts for sale that we didn’t see elsewhere.

We opted instead for viewing the outside from the public beach, about a 20 minute walk away. The hotel is surrounded by beautiful beaches, but all the ones close by are exclusively for use by hotel guests. The public beach was a nice long stretch of sand, and if we had our swimsuits, we would have felt more than comfortable going for a swim here.

One of the “must-see” for any visit to Dubai is the Burj al Arab, a beautiful tall modern hotel in the “New Downtown” of Dubai. It is a six star hotel and costs a ridiculous amount of money to stay there per day. Unfortunately, to get in costs $65 US per person just to step inside on a tour, and you need nice clothes – our ratty old running shoes really didn’t cut it. So not only would we have needed to part with a lot of money, we would have needed to buy a new wardrobe. So, the “must-see” quickly turned into a “see-from-the-security-gate” and move on.

Our next destination was Sharjah. Shajarh is actually another emirate, not too far from Dubai, but there are no highways and it is non-stop city. Without traffic, it would probably take only a quarter of an hour to get there, but traffic made it closer to an hour. We took a bus to get there, which left not far from our hotel.

The bus dropped us off and we made our way into Sharjah to explore. We got lost pretty fast, but after a lot of walking we found the two markets we were interested in., Souq Al-Arsa is an older, smaller craft market, with lots of interesting little shops. While we were there, it was very empty, and it was obvious that some of the vendors were quite hungry for business.

The other market we checked out was the Central Souq. This was a huge 3 story 2 building market, with lots of gold jewelry, electronics, textiles – everything you can imagine. This market was quite a bit busier. The opening hours made visiting a little difficult, as both markets shut down for most of the afternoon.

We also wandered by the plant and fish markets.

We easily got a bus back to Dubai, which dropped us off at a very different location, but still close to our hotel.

Our driver took us back to the hotel, where we waited for our second tour, the evening/night tour. The second tour (Starlight Express ) started on time and, although we were worried about the idea of combining two of their tours, it worked quite well. The new guide we had was a great driver and very friendly, again with great English. We headed out to the dunes (apparently in a different direction then we did earlier in the day). We met another Arabian Adventures vehicle at the start of the desert, and started our “dune bashing”.

The dune bashing is basically a roller coaster ride through the dunes. The driver deflates the tires to get better traction in the sand, and tears up and down the dunes at incredible speeds, barely maintaining control of the vehicle. Since there were two vehicles, we were able to get some great shots of the other car. The dune bashing is limited to a small area – perhaps to minimize the environmental impact of the activity.

After the dune bashing, we went to visit another camel farm. A camel farm is basically an enclosure in the desert with many camels inside. The animals were very friendly (and healthy, unlike most of the animals we’ve seen in our travels). We did a little bit more dune bashing, and then arrived at camp. The ‘Bedouin camp’ was very luxurious – flush toilets, electricity (until they shut off the generators so we could sleep better). They pitched a tent for us, which was underneath a larger structure. We started the evening with the other group who did the dune tour with us. We had the opportunity to do a short camel ride (actually less then a couple hundred feet, with the camel being led by a Bedouin. We had a great BBQ meal, and sat afterwards and smoked a sheesha (water pipe). It was the first time I’d tried it, and it gave me a very pleasant buzz, and tasted nice. The other tour group left us to head back in to the city, leaving us, our guide, and the guy who ran the camp as the only people there. The camp looked like it was built for probably 50 to 100 guests – so tourism really isn’t doing well, especially given that this is their peak season.

We didn’t sleep very well, because the camp was unfortunately located very close to a major new road that had just been put in. Sound carries very well in the desert, and so this sort of ruined the quiet sleeping-outside-in-the-desert experience for us. The guide apologized for the noise, and we made sure to mention it to Arabian Adventures – I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already moved the camp by now.

In the morning, we watched the sun rise over the dunes, had a nice breakfast, and went to try sandboarding. It wasn’t as scary as we thought it was, and the driver was very relaxed about it – starting on bunny hills and working our way up to more impressive hills. After this we headed back to town. Although the tour was supposed to end at Abu Dhabi, we found out that the driver was heading back to Dubai, which is where we wanted to go, so he just took us directly there. He dropped us off outside the downtown area, and we got a cab back into town. We had booked again at Le Meridien and checked in.

To see the rest of our photos and videos from our safari, please click here.

On the way back from the dunes, we stopped at the Rainbow Sheikh’s Car Museum. Though not officially open to the public yet, a security guard offered to let us in. It’s a huge warehouse with the Sheikh’s car collection, complete with what is probably he largest truck in the world. His personal RV, a giant globe sits outside. Inside, there were cars from all over the world, back through time to the Model T. There were CHP police cars (complete with all the official documentation – I guess it fell of the back of a boat somewhere). We tipped the security guard $10, and he seemed happy with that. We didn’t spend more than 20 minutes in the museum, but it was an interesting experience – at least for me.

To see the rest of our photos and videos from our trip, please click here.

Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear also visited the Sheikh as part of his “Motorworld” series, and got to see inside the large truck and the museum. Check it out here.