An Arabian Adventure: Weekend in Dubai: Part 3

Just realized that I didn't finish my blog entries about our weekend in Dubai. I'm sure you have all been waiting anxiously to hear about what else we got up to (not).

After tea on Friday we headed to the World Trade Centre where we had tickets for the regional final of the Red Bull Car Park Drift competition. Except we didn't have tickets, we had a receipt that needed to be swapped for tickets before we entered the arena, or should I say car park. The problem was that no one seemed to be able to tell me where to collect our tickets from. The first counter I went to directed me to the metro station some distance away. The man there looked at me blankly, then sent me back the way I had come to another ticket desk, and so on, until I had been to five different desks.

By this time the start of the competition was only ten minutes away, so Jo had taken the kids to wait by the entrance we were supposed to use. Whilst she was waiting she got talking to someone, who informed her that we could get our tickets from a counter right next to the entrance. Irritating? Not at all!

We finally got our tickets five minutes after the competition had started, and joined the throng at the gate. There was a mass of people waiting, and no queuing system in place (where are the numbered ticket dispensers when you need them!). The security guards were taking a very relaxed approach to checking tickets carefully, then checking bags, then putting a wristband on.

The throng of people trying to get in

Finally we got in, found some seats, and settled back to enjoy the action. For the uninitiated car park drifting is exactly what it sounds like, competitors driving round a course set up in a car park, skidding as much as possible, and generally making as much noise and generating as much smoke as they can (very much like driving on the roads here). The winner seems to be (I think, I never quite worked it out) the person who can complete the course quickest and with as much skidding as possible.

My iPhone camera didn't cope well with the conditions

The event seemed to consist of a lot of sitting around listening to an excitable (the only drink on sale was of course Red Bull, and he seemed to have had more than his fair share) commentator gabbling away in Arabic, punctuated by 20 second bursts of action. Whilst the bursts of action were exciting, they were few and far between, and the competition seemed to fall further and further behind the timetable, not helped by the local favourite managing to get his car stuck in the crash barrier, and nobody being able to shift it.When it became obvious that the competition was likely to go on until the early hours we decided to call it a day, especially as Archie and Flossie were getting tired.

All in all it was a surreal experience, but one which we enjoyed in a strange way. Who would have thought a year ago that we would be sat in a car park next to the busiest road in Dubai, in view of the Burj Khalifa, watching cars doing their best to destroy themselves!?

Saturday was less surreal, but we had a great day at the motor show. Archie in particular was in his element looking at all the super cars, and both he and Flossie (and Henry) enjoyed getting as many freebies as they could (although Jo did best of all as demonstrated by the photo below). We didn't manage to get round the whole exhibition before it was time to make tracks back to Abu Dhabi.