Roaming Newton: Chapter 6
So being the cricket loving fanatic that I am, I decided to track down some cricket in the desert. I mean if they can ski here why not have a bit of the civilized game! Well cricket in the desert was exactly what I found! Sand everywhere with a rubberized mat in the middle of this makeshift oval. These guys loved the game so much that they went out into the boiling desert and played cricket on sand. Interesting to see but not an ideal surface for those looking to perform Jonty Rhodes maneuvers. After watching for about an hour I decided that as much as I like cricket, I preferred the grass version. Though I gained a new found respect for the international cricket lover!
After checking out a few sights around the emirate, I decided to go for brunch. Yes, brunch is a popular past time in Dubai, a buffet meal and a lot of drink flowing. It’s basically an excuse for the ex-pats living there to mingle and get a bit silly. Well after paying a fortune to get into a brunch at a local hotel, I found the silliness a bit too silly, looking around I felt I wasn’t in Dubai anymore but back in England again. Watching Englishmen and Australians dancing to old school tracks such as Rick Astley and Jason Donovan was something of a mind bend! It was defiantly not my cup of tea and I decided the next day I would look at doing Dubai based things only.
Looking through my tourist map of Dubai I found a place called the Global Village. At the time it sounded interesting and the feedback I got from some of the locals was promising. One crazy taxi drive there, this time the driver was adamant on not talking but breaking a land speed record of some sort. I got out of the car to find, I was in a Village alright, a crazy open market place full of hustle and bustle. What was described to me as a really cool open flea market area full of traders from various parts of the world turned out to be a flea market that consisted of traders from a few countries trading the same things. Nonetheless I gave the place a shot after drifting through the various stalls and finding nothing that I wanted to buy. I decided to find something to eat…
Turns out KFC is almost as popular and easy to find (even in the Global Village) as a can of Coke is in Mozambique. So in the middle of the desert in a so called Global Village packed with traders that looked like an old school Durban West Street there I sat eating the Cornell’s finest chicken and thinking to myself well if this is Dubai I guess I am just going to have to wing it…
