Something I drew attention to back in November was Dubai’s tough anti-drug laws.

It’s surfaced again because there’s a web campaign under way for the release of German citizen and UK resident Cat Le-Huy, who was detained under the laws. The campaign says that he is not guilty and was falsely imprisoned, the medication he was carrying was not banned and the ‘marijuana’ he was accused of carrying was in fact specks of dirt. Several bloggers have joined in, while the main site pushing the issue seems to be thetruthaboutdubai.com.

According to these sites, Le-Huy was detained on suspicion that the (legal) Melatonin bottle found in his bag contained other pills. They say that tests conducted by the authorities indicated that the bottle did not contain any other substances and the Melatonin was cleared, that Le-Huy’s urine sample also tested negative for any drug use that the German Embassy expected that Le-Huy would be released at this time, but authorities have called on an option to extend his detainment in order to investigate the specks of dirt that they found.

Because I have no way of telling the truth of Le-Huy’s case I won’t comment on it. Except to say that if he is indeed innocent then he should be released immediately with at the very least a fulsome apology and some sort of compensation.

I must point out though that there are some tabloid-style hysterics on the site though that are misleading for travellers in general, and that’s dangerous.

They also make ridiculous demands of the tourism authority.

I’ll go into both later.
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When I first landed in Dubai, I was taken in by the sights, by the traffic, and above all, by the roads and by what to me then looked like perfection. Few months in, and I can see clearly the chink in the armour. I can spot the places where paint has peeled off and the brickwork (figuratively) shows through.
Rahul Bhatia talks much the same thing in this post:

The feeling that Dubai had moved on lasted a few years. Then, quite recently, a visiting cousin mentioned the spate of robberies and murders. Another spoke of seeing beggars for the first time. The city had poverty, it had crime, labor unrest, the traffic situation was incredibly bad - these were real problems and the newspapers were reporting them. This, ten or even five years ago, was unthinkable. They didn’t exist. Zero-crime place, we told everybody. But what to tell them now? That it is a city with real problems? In a funny way, this is rather satisfying. The city has overtaken everybody, its planners included, and is now something else. Now the fun begins. Now concerts will be chaotic, now social norms will change, now its pristine image will lose some shine, now classes of people will be more distinct and there will be markets for each of them. It will produce art and literature and all kinds of creativity. This is immensely exciting. It’ll be a real city.

Read the whole post. It’s brilliant.

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I’ll vouch for Automatic’s good-ness. Many a lunch hour has found me walking into/calling in Automatic.
But, this post is not about Automatic. This is about a cozy place called Stefano’s, in Al Barsha, past teh Mall of Emirates.

Stefano’s is an Italian restaurant. Though, I am not sure if the term restaurant applies to a place like it. Paintings line the wall (and are for sale), the overall ambiance is warm and rustic. And the food. The food is (of what I ate) fantastic. I had pasta (the name of which eludes me right now - but it had aubergines, tomato and something else) and a brilliant Tiramisu. Meal for two came to about 90 dhs. Which, to me, is a spiffy deal.

The chef I hear is an Indian. Which makes this place even better in my eyes.

On a scale of 10, I’d give it a 8.

One of the nice things about Dubai is that it’s easy for us to indulge in one of our favourite pastimes - eating out.

We have hundreds, maybe thousands, of cafes, coffee shops, restaurants from horribly expensive signature restaurants in five-star luxury hotels to little neighbourhood street cafes. And cuisine from just about anywhere in the world, so the choice is amazing.

We like to ‘graze’ rather than have a set meal - the Spanish tapas, Chinese dim sum, Arabic mezza style with several small dishes of different items giving a range of textures and flavours.

I’ll talk about mezza another time because I wanted now to highlight something that has always surprised me - the amount of free food that comes with an Arabic meal.

Salad, olives, pickle, bread basket are all normal complimentary items, and not in small amounts either.

For example, here’s what we get in Automatic, which is a small chain of restaurants dotted around the city. We go to the one in Beach Centre Mall at the top of Beach Road in Jumeirah where I took this photo of the free inclusions:

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Let me just continue Seabee’s previous post. The Dubai Airport is truly staggering, especially if you come from a not-so-glittering-yet-efficient-and-decently-run airport that Chennai (MAA) is. And, DXB is tiringly big. Arriving passengers have about a mile and a half to walk, just to get to the visa collection area. Throw in a few stairs (oh, well, Escalators) and a long queue at the passport control, and you have what’s a brilliant way of keeping me hungry for a long time.

But, well, introductions, first. I’m Chandru, till recently a resident of Chennai, India.

Chennai, they say, is one of the best airports in India. And one-heck-of-a-city. I’d like to think so. But, Dubai will be home, I think, for a little while more. Give me a few days (or weeks, more likely) to explore this city, and some time to settle in, walk around, get my bearings. And I shall blog this city up for you all.

Well, schools are opening, people are back from vacations, and hell is loose once again on the roads of Dubai and linking emirates. Since last week, if you want to get to work on time, you will have to subtract another half hour from your departure time from home. Some easy ways of navigation help to navigate through traffic and should help you squeeze your way to work in time:

1. Identify chronic bottle-neck areas and try to avoid them by taking linking routes.
2. If you’re thinking of changing lanes, make sure you gain a pace of atleast 2 cars by doing so. Mostly, we see a lane progessing and move to that lane but the next minute, we’re even behind the spot where we were.
3. If you know totally alternative routes, time them! There would be days when particular routes are most efficient.
4. Try and avoid getting stuck in a ‘mesh’ of traffic (where you have no choice but to keep following the same lane).
5. Some ‘usual’ routes are good to avoid - for example: People usually take the Al-Mullah underpass while entering Dubai. Trust me, it is ALWAYS better to take the signal unless the underpass is totally free-flowing.
6. Identify patches of lane that are slow or fast. Every lane, during the course of a route, will have patches where it will either speed up, or be entirely blocked. They mostly follow a pattern over particular days. All you need to do is to switch to the correct lane on time and you’re home free!
7. Once you catch up speed, or get to a less-crowded patch of the road, watch out for “boxed” formations. Avoiding boxes and looking for “zip” spaces to overtake multiple cars at a time will definitely help.

These simple, yet effective ways might take a couple of days or weeks to get used to, but they really help in the long run.

The use of plastic cups to serve drinks have been banned by the UAE health ministry due to obvious health reasons.

Any cafe or office still using plastic cups is to be reported to the ministry.

Our office has also discarded all its inventory of plastic cups and replaced them with ‘thermocole’ paper cups.

There is however, one issue here: these paper cups are not a good idea for hot drinks.

Today morning, as I returned to my seat with the morning coffee in the new cup, it ‘melted’ under the hot beverage, ruining my clothes.

Important note: make sure that you use atleast 2 of those cups when using for hot beverages.

Furthering Crawler’s entry about his son’s accident, I would like to comment on the Dubai/Sharjah cab drivers as well.

I believe everyone of us, at one point or another have travelled in a cab and a lot of us would also have had a conversation with the driver.

I have had the chance of having a good conversation with quite a few cab drivers from various nationalities and one thing that all of them complain about their job is the traffic situations.

Most cabbies agree that if the traffic situation was better, their targets would seem justifiable.

A cabby told me that one cab is shared by 2 drivers in a day/night shift, but some drivers do double shifts to meet their targets. Anyone commuting from Sharjah/Dubai to either emirate would be very well aware of the effects it has on your health!

Having said that , there is however, one point worth noting here (A personal experience):

While I was taking my driving test, there was also a “National Taxi” driver taking the test in his uniform.

The way this guy drove, I was pretty sure that he would keep failing the rest of his life.

The guy didnt remember to put on his seat belt till around 5 min on the road, he never gave any signal while turning, took a dangerous U-turn, and changed lanes on a roundabout!!

Yet, he passed!!!! Upon probing further (from other cab drivers), I found out that the cabbies are giving too much of leverage while giving licenses and the general public is advised to watch out for cabs as they are allowed to stop anywhere. Also, these company’s apparently have a setup with the government which would give them very lenient testings for their drivers.

On last wednesday, my three year old son, met a road accident. He was getting off from his school bus when a speeding cab hit him just outside our apartment building in Sharjah.

That happened around 1215 hrs. I rushed from office to home as soon as I heard the news. My wife also reached home from clinic where she works.

My son’s left leg was hurt badly, as it was directly hit by the Sharjah Transport cab, with single spiral fracture, now his left leg is plastered from toes till mid thigh. The Plaster will be taken off on 06th May 2006. For next one month, he will mostly be on bed, which is hard for a three year old boy, specially when he also got another twin brother around.

BUT the main problem is, why that accident happened in first place?
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Recently, all the dhow cruises were restricted from sailing, then they were allowed to cruise, reason for allowing them is still un known, same story was posted by Farrukh on this blog.

May be authorities just wanted to ensure that safety measures are taken care of OR may be some big shots were not able to tolerate hefty daily income loss.

But what about the water taxis (abrahs), does anyone stopped them from ferrying people from Deira to Bur Dubai and back?, no I don’t think so. These abrah masters are not trained sailor, neither they have any safety equipments / measures on board in case of any emergency. Each abrah carry atleast twenty passengers at a time and cross 200 meter wide creek atleast 50 to 76 time a day and there are atleast 15 boats on Dubai creek alone, with only one life guard boat, which has to take care of Jet Ski area near Garhoud.

BUT, still it’s a cheapest way of crossing Dubai Creek and commuting from Deira to Bur Dubai. Sometime, when I don’t have any urgent work at office and want to stretch my legs I go for a round in abrah. It costs me AED 1 but gives me a good 15 minutes refreshing ride, really its good fun, crossing creek with atleast twenty people standing in 20 feet boat. Try it if you dare !!!!!!