April 27, 2023

We are into the 5th segment of our Around the World cruise, day 103. New passengers came on in Dubai and this segment will end in Singapore on May 18.

Here are some pictures as we left Dubai. It isn’t as colorful as the Hong Kong harbor, but it is still pretty.

Norm took some pictures of the huge aquarium tank in the Dubai Mall. It is hard to see the beautiful sea life because of the blue, but here is one of them. The mall facing area is huge (like everything in that mall). We didn’t go into the actual aquarium.

We sailed into Fujairah for a 9 AM arrival. It is our 4th time here so we planned to take the shuttle into the mall and do some shopping. Here are some pictures of our sail in.

You can see that the landscape is much like the other countries in this area with a city immediately in front of massive rocky areas. It is amazing to see that they have cleared these mountains to create the city areas. Our first visit here was in 2015 and there is much more expansion since then.

Fujairah is the 7th largest city in the UAE and is the only city on the UAE’s east coast. The city has a population of about 97,500. The main mosque is the Sheikh Zayed Mosque which is visible from many locations in the center of the city. It can hold 28,000 worshippers! We visited it in the past.

It is still pretty hot here but was breezy so it didn’t seem as bad as some other days.

We were able to get a Pandora charm at the mall and Norm bought a pair of shoes. Interestingly, in the Dubai Mall he couldn’t find what he was looking for and the shopkeepers told him that he wouldn’t find his size. At this mall, he found a pair in the Under Armour store! The mall is MUCH smaller than the Dubai mall and it didn’t take us long to go through the whole thing. There is Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks as well as many stores that are familiar in the US.

We relaxed in the afternoon and had dinner in Toscana. As we were seaated in the back of the restaurant, we caught the last of the sunset.

We now have 2 sea days before we reach Mumbai, India. We received information about the conditions in India and Sri Lanka and the public/religious holidays that will occur while we will be visiting. In Mumbai, the State Foundation Celebrations will take place and many sites would be closed or extremely crowded if open. We have private tours with friends in all of the ports in India so we will see how it goes. In Colombo, Sri Lanka, the Full Moon Poya Public holiday will take place and it will be two days off for the public so all public offices, schools and most businesses will be closed.

Many of the upcoming ports are not well established for tourism, like the ports in west Africa. English competency varies greatly and there is no formal guiding qualification so most of the guides will be locals that are happy to share their knowledge. Most buses won’t have air conditioning or be very modern and rest rooms are far from our standards. This is what it means to be a traveler, not a tourist!