Global Village
Dubai, UAE
March 8, 2018 Global Village, Dubai, UAE
My niece, Ivy, who lives here in Dubai with her husband Ali, took us to the Global Village. I had been led to believe that we were going out for Arabic food, so I had anticipated spending the evening sitting in a cheesy rundown middle eastern restaurant eating strange food that I would be unsure of its origin, age and sanitation.
We caught a taxi and after negotiating Dubai city traffic we were heading southwest along the Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayad Road, a rather well maintained, and very modern highway. As we traveled along I couldn’t help but notice the vacuity and emptiness of this part of Dubai. It was vast and open and all I could see was the spectacular Dubai skyline far off behind us. There was coral-colored sand everywhere and the new construction that was so prevalent in the city proper of Dubai was almost non-existent out here.
After a few minutes of leaving the city proper of Dubai, I hadn’t seen anything at all that closely resembles a place where we could find something to eat. For that matter, there were hardly any buildings at all. I am thinking that this could be quite an adventure and I secretly hoped that wherever we stopped for dinner, it would be a low risk since this was only the beginning of our trip. I had no desire to do the Travelers Trot from some hole-in-the-wall restaurant!
I could not have been more wrong. Instead, we went to what is called the Global Village, a massive, Disneyland style complex. It bore a slight resemblance to Epcot Center but on steroids, filled with dazzling lights and huge pavilions dedicated to virtually every country on earth. It followed the same pattern as much of Dubai: the biggest and the best. We met up with several more of our family who lives here in Dubai.
I was truly mesmerized by the dazzling lights and the overall huge scale of the complex. The smell of spices and cooked food filled the air. Families strolled about, ducking in and out of massive pavilions. They rode the high-tech amusement rides and we watched as screaming riders defied gravity and were plunged many stories down a tall tower, or flung haplessly round a hyper-speed, 3-dimensional Ferris wheel. One young passenger was spinning madly out of control, apparently having not paid attention while specific instructions on how to navigate the ride that looked like many small airplanes. You apparently control the yaw and the pitch by levers on the wings next to you. But this kid was spinning madly and screaming loudly.
A cool video:
A cool video:
I tried several samples of food from the pavilions we entered. Yemen, which I had no idea, is famous for honey. Inside their pavilion were hundreds of gallon-sized jars, all filled with different types of honey. I ate sunflower seeds that were the largest that I have ever seen, and they were, without doubt, the best tasting. I ate some things that I have no idea what they were, not bizarre things, but things that looked appetizing and tasted good.
We ultimately found our Arabic restaurant, thanks to a nice Filipino lady who was hired to entice customers into their restaurant. Since our group was mostly made up of Filipinos, we were glad to have her help us with our food order. However, I think we could have just pointed our fingers to anything on the menu and we would have been just fine. I was delightfully surprised at the good quality of the food, the great barbeque flavor of the skewered meats and basmati rice and even the wonderful lemon-mint drink concoction. If I were asked to put together a listing of the top ten places that I have enjoyed visiting in my lifetime, this Global Village would have to be near the top!
All photographs are the copyright of Jim Jackson Photography
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