What a weird f***ing place!

I've been to Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, so I already have the concept of Arab cities, dwellings, etc.  Abu Dhabi blasts all of those out of the water.

The Corniche

We went on a hunt for some of the pubs (mainly to get the hell out of our small house) and got lost again.  No one listens to me for some reason unless I say it really forcefully and then people tend to get defensive.  That's the penalty for stacking a group of A-types in the same space.  Something bad is going to happen eventually. 

We had a book that showed where we needed to be for what is called the "tourist section" of Abu Dhabi.  One of the guys left it in the car cause we obviously knew right where it was.  We ended up being in a part of town where there were no westerners and no Emiratis.  No wonder they stared in amazement as we weaved between them and up and down allies.  All the time, me saying, "I really think we're in the wrong place.  We need to go further south.  Eventually, dude actually says, "Ya know, I think we need to go further south."  Those of you who got my flurry of angry texts, sorry.

The Corniche...don't let the serenity fool you.  It's crowded and hot.

So we get to the approximate area and leave the book again and wander for another 30 minutes.  We decide to ask a cabby to take us to one of the pubs and he takes us across the city to within meters of our hotel.  We tell him to turn around and this confuses him, but he does it.  We stop at...wait for it...the mall...

The Corniche

We end up in the largest food court I've ever seen.  I find an Indian takeout place and order a whole Tandoori (I'm ravenous at this point).  The Indian dude says 20 minutes...lemme back up...  Some little shit with his girlfriend cut in front of me literally as I'm right next to the register, push me out of the way.  I probably shouldn't have been able to get away with this, but I jerked the little fucker by the collar out of my way and inform him that I'm 3x his size and he doesn't want any with his yuppie Hindu star tatoo which probably came from a henna painter (only women do that).  He profusely apologized.  Whatever.  That's not cultural, that's just rude.  Never get between me and my food.  I can get pretty primal.

So we wait for the food, and try to find a place to sit.  One opens up and we grab it.  I got TWO whole chickens and a flatbread that was gooey and soft like pizza dough (this is killing me, but I'm hungry).  I ate it all and regretted it immediately.

We left there and stumbled quite accidentally into the tourist area.  It's behind the Westin hotel.  It's a bunch of little sports bars, pubs and high-end restaurants setup like a small village.  Sorry, no pictures of it as I was pissed at this point.  We ran into three guys from work there and sat around bs'ing for a while, then went back to our rooms.  Yay.  What started out as a good night got boring quickly.  Oh well.  There's always today.

The reason I say it's weird is the surreal feel to everything.  It's like caricatures of what they think westerners would like to see.   I don't even know if I can explain it.  I'll try to capture some of it in photos today.