Adventures In Dubai Day 6: Visit to Old Souk and Taking A Dhow Boat Ride

Since it was the weekend, Max decided to bring us to a nice place for breakfast again. And he brought us to this place called Paul's which is similar to Delifrance but much better and nicer!


Then we made our way towards Dubai Outlet Mall.. which is a large shopping centre filled with factory outlets!

Just before we arrive, there is this universal studios gate tat looks perfect but it is seated in front of a piece of waste land... I wonder if they built halfway and stopped or built it and scrapped the whole thing because they were not making money... (I googled it.. financial crisis crippled their plans.. http://www.thethemeparkguy.com/park/universal-studios-dubailand/)

Anyway, after walking around, we went to the arcade and it was such a boring arcade! And then this BLING BLING machine caught my eye.. can you guess wat they are asking you to "catch"?


Hairclips! Hahahahahahahahah

Then we went to Dragon mart and walked around trying to find a toy for Ace.. the place is so big lor and finally after trudging up and down for a few hours, we found a poilceman set for him.. Max's best 10AED investment because it kept Ace busy for many days after that during the day..

On our way home, we drove past this sanctury place for flamingos and there were so many of them.. I wonder if we can go in and visit..

We went home, took a rest and went back to SINO CHAI.. the restaurant that was closed onthe first day we wanted to have dinner in Dubai... it is rumoured to be the best Chinese food in Dubai and the BEST bubble tea in Dubai too! :) And I really think the taiwanese food here is delicious! It aint a rumour.. IT IS THE BEST! hahahaha... Too bad they are in some ulu ulu health care district and so there are not many customers.. I wonder how they survive.. I would certainly love to go back again...





After dinner, it was still early and Ace said he didn't want to go home, so Max brought us to the Old Souk (Souk means market in arabic) .. he said that he has never visited all these places of interest the 6 months he is here and it is because we are here that he has a vested interest to visit these places.. hahaha....

But the souk was very quiet.. just a few people walking around.. and some people eating in the restaurants.. and then we came across an empty piece of land where there is like this group of old folks starting a campfire, eating and talking and singing songs.. i wonder if they are paid to do tat.. cos they are apparently leading the original lives of the early pple living in Dubai...

And then Max said that AC said she loved to take a boat ride along the creek. They have this sort of dhow taxi (a type of boat) that helps people cross the creek easily for 1aed. It is like a 3-5 min ride and AC said that when she is bored, she loves to go on the boat.. but we couldnt find the taxi stand.. so in the end, we tried to ask a taxi driver on the road and he finally gave us proper instructions..

That's us on the boat.. initially, Ace was really scared.. but he started to enjoy himself more and more...
It was really quite an experience.. I wish we had something traditional like that in SGP.. the dhows here dun have railings and in the dhows, there is just this box where people sit on with a hole in the middle that houses the engine and the boatman.. if we had this in sgp, you for sure will see railings and orange floats all around.. HAHAHA...



Ace really enjoyed it and asked if we could come again...

Then we walked around the Textile Souk to buy some stuff and of cos.. get a yoyo for Ace.. who kept bugging Max to buy him a yoyo.. we searched high and low for it and finally found it! :)

In addition to the YoYo, we saw a car that looked like the Forrester that max drives in Dubai and Max bought that for Ace too :)

And then we went home and it happened so that Transformer was on tv and so we watched the show together and Ace slept at 1.30am that night...

Previous Post: Adventures In Dubai Day 5: Festival By The Pool An...

Adventures In Dubai Day 5: Festival By The Pool And Mac Donalds Lunch

Day 5 in Dubai is a Friday.. which means the weekend is here...

And it is GREAT! Because we get to spend the WHOLE DAY with Max.

Though I had not totally recovered from my flu, I was feeling much better.. except I was prone to bouts of coughing which seem to start for no good reason.

Anyway, we headed out early in the morning to a place tat AC recommended Max to bring us.. because it is by the sea, it was a really nice view.. and we were lucky because they were having some sort of festival and there were alot of children.. Ace even got a handful of sweets!

When we arrived, there was a strange assortment of people on this boat and the clowns were all painted with black faces.. and there is this santa claus like man who was dressed like the pope.. we were thinking it might be some sort of italian festival of something..

Anyway, after breakfast, we walked around the mall...

Having been cooped in the small apartment for so many days, Ace was really excited when he saw a playground in the mall. We paid 50AED for him to go in and play for an hour while me and Max made our way shopping around....

After that, we went to Toys R Us where Ace had a field day... and then, we went to this bookshop called Magrudy's to buy a notebook for Ace to do his special diary where he would draw or write down interesting things he did and saw...

Then we wanted to have lunch and Ace asked if we could have Mac Donalds because he wanted to get the Megamind Toy.. hahahaha.. and so we had veggie burger.. I wonder why they dun have it in Singapore.. it actually tastes quite nice:) Ace didn't like it though and prefers cheeseburger without patty.. Incidentaly, Mac Donalds is the cheapest meal we had here... Most meals cost about 35AED per pax (and tat is the cheaper ones, tat's like S$15)

After that I felt really tired and needed to go home and rest...

When we reached home though, Max took a nap and Ace kept disturbing him.. so I asked Ace not to disturb his daddy. Having no one else to disturb.. just as I was about to sleep, he came to DISTURB ME :S So I woke up, and felt quite awake... and when I turned around.. the cheeky little boy was fast asleep in my bed, on my pillow.. SIGH...

Anyway, when Max woke, we decided that since we had alot of veggies left, we would cook them and so we had a home cooked ai xin eggplant spaghetti ;) (Spaghetti kindly sponsored by Ai Ching.. hahaha)

My son goofed around for a while and then he went supermarket shopping for ice cream with his dad while I finally could fall asleep in peace.. hahahaha..

Previous Post: Adventures In Dubai: Day 4 - Sick Bird

Adventures In Dubai: Day 4 - Sick Bird

Day 4 was a rather uneventful day for me and Ace.

The reason? I was too sick to do anything!

The most exasperating thing was that everytime I tried to sleep... just when I am about to fall into slumber, my son would wake me up with silly reasons like he needed to ask me a question about something (unimportant) or he needed to tell me about what he saw on TV... and I could only function enough to make him is breakfast and lunch..


And so, Ace was basically just watching TV and in the afternoon, he got so bored he started making a MOVIE with my iphone video function lor!


By dinner, I was feeling a teeny weeny bit better but when Max suggested going to the supermarket, I decided I would pass and so Ace and Max went to Lulu hypermart to buy some gloves for Ace and also to buy some snacks and fruits.


In the end, I fell asleep by 9m but like the past few days, sleep was not sound for me as I kept waking up in the middle of thenight either to sneeze or to cough...


Well, the weekend is round the corner.. I pray I will get much better or at least good enough to be able to enjoy our first weekend here in dubai with Max...:)


Previous Post: Adventures In Dubai: Day 3

Adventures In Dubai: Day 3

I think by day 3, I sort of ran out of things for Ace to do. After helping me sweep the floor, wash the veggies for our salad lunch, Ace finally realized or understood that even if he refused to sleep in the night.. there is still nothing to do lor..

So on day 3, after lunch and after he ate his popping sweets and when the Ace took a really long nap that lasted for 3 hours while I enjoyed my peace and quiet blogging and surfing the net in peace... however, the air conditioning in our unit was too cold for me so I started feeling strange and I knew I probably caught a chill..


Come night time, Max was playing soccer today and Ace said that he wanted to go support and watch Max play.. and so i went along.

But it was quite a chilly night... the downside of it was that it made my cold worse... and the upside, because of our support, Max scored a goal.. the first time he has scored a goal since playing with this team.. and they had a rather strong opponent too:)

Anyway, to self entertain, we sang songs and played funny games while watching the match.. took a walk.

Ace was cheering "Daddy win! Daddy win! I want daddy to win!"

And he was also making videos using my iphone telling daddy how much he love him and how much he wanted his daddy's team to win.. hahahaha

Alas, the opponent proved to be too strong and because Max's team's usual goal keeper was not there, their opponent managed to score many times during the game..

But well, Ace was just happy to be out of the house:)

Previous Post: Adventures In Dubai Day 2