Jen and I had a week in Jordan planned and when looking at the flight options it made sense for us to meet in Dubai and then fly on from there. I’ve never really understood the attraction of Dubai, other than as a hub for going somewhere else. It’s a place where I’ve spent time doing some consultancy in the past, but other than drinking overpriced pints in the sunshine, I’ve never really found anything worthwhile to get up to.
We stayed down by the Marina, which has plenty of shade from the nearby skyscrapers. That made it ok for an early morning walk before the temperature rose sufficiently to make it uncomfortably warm.
I had the option of going to a lower-level football game, but it was a fair distance outside of town and would have finished quite late. We headed for the races instead, mainly due to it finishing slightly earlier than the football but also because it had the added benefit of plenty of bars. We’d got lucky in a way, in that this was the first meeting of the season at Meydan.
I’d bought tickets in advance for an enclosure managed by a pub-chain, McGettigan’s. Presumably that’s a name concocted to sound as Irish as possible. Basic admission was about a tenner, but we paid another fifty quid each or so for a wristband that allowed unlimited drink for a three hour timeframe.
There wasn’t any gambling, or at least there wasn’t for me as I couldn’t access my UK bookies account. Other people seemed to have no trouble placing a bet by phone, but I suppose as they lived there then they were up to speed on all the dodges.
Instead, there was ‘competition’ with a cash prize for anyone who could select the winner in, I think, six races. A sort of placepot, just without the variable pot. It seemed very popular, but I didn’t find out about it until after the first race had gone off.
After a month in Saudi, I made the most of my wristband and it was a pleasant evening sitting drinking as the sun went down. It reminded me a little of when we used to live in Seoul and we would pop down to the baseball after work. Then, as now, we had no real interest who won, the sport was there simply to provide a backdrop to the unwinding. It was just as well really, as we didn’t pick a winner all night.
Trail of the Lion King 