I'm starting to write this post on the plane between Mauritius and Dubai. If I finish it here, I'll post it on the blog using the free wifi in Dubai airport. Then when we get back to Beijing I'll edit it and insert some photographs. Otherwise I'll just do the whole thing when we're back in China.
Before I start recounting our time on Mauritius, a question. Do most flights have mobile access now? I knew it was coming, but this is the first i've been on that actually advertises it. On the way here we were able to send and receive inflight text messages using the in-seat handset. That was impressive enough, but now mobile coverage onboard and at normal roaming rates! While I'm impressed by the technology I'm not so sure it's a good thing. Obnoxious mobile users are bad enough on the ground, imagine a 12 hour flight back to the UK stuck next to one! Hopefully the frequent users will be stuck in business class, poor fools...
Anyway, the holiday.
We spent the first four nights staying at a German-owned gästhaus in a resort in the south-west of the island called Tamarin. It is a small place with only a couple of small shops, restaurants and a supermarket. Like the rest of the island it did have a wonderful beach and beautiful blue sea to swim in. The accommodation was great, perhaps a little further from the beach than we would have chosen, but since we had a hire car for the whole holiday, it really was no hardship.
While in Tamarin we got a little pink underestimating the strength of the sun on our first day, factor 15 was insufficient! We didn't forget to apply plenty, just haven't been so close to the equator and therefore the sun before I guess. Anyway it was a quick lesson learned and taught us well for the rest of the holiday, we didn't make the same mistake twice. We walked up a steep hill in the national park and had a wonderful view of the coast. We swam with dolphins, which was a definite highlight for me. We visited Flic en Flac, a growing resort named either for the Dutch for free and flat land or the sound that the French soldiers' boots made in the marshland. We saw the somewhat unprepossessing hamlet of Wolmar where many of the five star hotels are based. We visited a beautiful rum plantation and tasted and bought some agricultural rum, made with the first pressing of the sugar cane, rather than the byproducts of sugar production as industrial rum is made. We also visited Chamarel where there is a waterfall and seven-coloured earth, caused by the different ores present in the soil and their oxidisation.
We also had time to read, relax, catch up on sleep, swim, snorkel, eat, drink and tan.
After four days, we rather reluctantly packed up our things and headed up the east coast, making it through the capital, Port Louis, mapless and with relative ease.
Finding our destination for the next week wasn't too difficult. Pointe aux cannoniers is the most north-easterly on the island. This time our accommodation was a little more basic, but the payoff was a seaview and beach 30 seconds walk away. From here we spent a morning horse-riding on a sugar plantation. We drove around the north coast, through the intriguingly-named, but in practice somewhat dull, poudre d'or and goodlands. We spent an afternoon exploring the markets of Port Louis and saw the world's most expensive stamp. We visited a sugar plantation and tasted rum and sugar, a tea factory and tasted tea and a vanilla farm, where just to be sure, we tasted some rum again. We met one of Caroline's former colleagues and saw the fantastic work they're doing establishing a diverse range of fairtrade manufacturing in Mauritius. We also visited the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam (father of the nation) botantical gardens and saw some huge tropical plants, palm trees and tortoises. Again, we also swam, snorkelled, slept, read, ate and drank.
I've inevitably missed somethings, but I'll add them in later with help from Caroline when I add the photographs too.
It was a wonderful holiday and a beatiful island, I only hope our photographs do it some justice. It's an interesting place too, with lots to see and do. And we tried to sample as much as we could. There's an interesting mix of cultures and communities on the island too, which I'll probably try and write some thoughts about in the next week or so.
But for now I'll call a halt in order to grab a couple of hours sleep so that we can enjoy our shorter, second visit to Dubai.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Saturday, 30 January 2010
Comparative analysis
I'm lying on the beach next to the Indian ocean. There are drums in the background and people fishing in the water which is about 25• they break every now and then to drain some local rum. I can see some mountains in the distance.
But before I start getting any more enthusiastic about Mauritius I'd planned to write a few words about Dubai and what it is like in 2010 compared to 2001.
When we went to Dubai last time, I lived in Brussels and had only really travelled in Europe. Now obviously we live in Beijing and I am relatively more widely travelled.
That said I still found Dubai an exciting destination. Even though we were there for less than 24 hours we saw a lot.
It is still a city under siege from cranes. And now like then there is some degree of uncertainty around the future. Then the burj al Arab had just opened and was attracting much attention. But if the anecdotes are to be believed the palm island hadn't even been conceived. It certainly wasn't the mass tourist destination that it became in the last decade although the beginning and the desire was clearly there.
We visited just over six months before September 11 2001. You'd have thought that this might have proved a challenge to the popularity of an Islamic country as a tourist destination, but it didn't seem to affect Dubai. However I have no way of knowing whatever happened to our Afghan driver, Mohammed who no doubt had to shelve his dreams of moving to London.
Now of course Dubai World (the company behind much of the highest visibility development) had to request a delay to payments leading. After much uncertainty Abu Dhabi, the oil rich neighbour with less vertiginous but seemingly more stable growth backed by natural resources, stepped in with support. Consequently the world's tallest building, constructed with the name Burj Dubai, was renamed Burj Khalifa on opening, seemingly in tribute to Abu Dhabi's ruler Sheikh Khalifa.
So with much schadenfreude from some financial analysts, it is no longer clear if Dubai will build the second and third planned artificial palm islands. The third and biggest of which is planned to be bigger than the ilê de France, on which stands Paris. Here is an interesting fact, the existing palm island required so much hardcore for its foundations that, collected together it could build a 2m x 2m wall three times round the earth! I don't know whether to be awed or terrified by this fact.
So that feeling of schadenfreude is understandable on many levels. Dubai is painfully shallow and nouveau riche. I thought Beijing was money-obsessed till I went back to Dubai. But at the same time I do have respect for their efforts to build an economy based on trade and property markets without the resource wealth of abu dhabi or the support-tinged with religious overtures given by Saudi Arabia to neighbouring emirate Sharjah.
One element of Dubai I have no problem admiring is it's openess and international atmosphere. You only need to take a walk along the working creek on the Deira side and note where goods are in transit to and from to feel a part of international trade and exchange. You'd think that rather than taking some delight in its financial stutters, western countries would be as supportive as possible of dubai's interpretation of Islam with freedom of different worship and acceptance of Egyptian legal codes rather than the sometimes scary-seeming Sharia law.
But of course, despite this openess, massive disparities exist in this 'society'. I use inverted commas because in truth there are none of the cohesive elements of a shared society in evidence. Little or no tax, no universal healthcare or education for resident migrants, hell there isn't even a postal service. As early as the queue for passport control, we experienced Emiratees treating workers from Asia with ill disguised contempt, whilst not even questioning our visas.
So in conclusion, despite building many of the world's biggest buildings and creating a man made island, Dubai for me remains a compelling and interesting place to visit, but way too disjointed a place to ever consider living there. Which is lucky really, since we've no pending offers.
Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
But before I start getting any more enthusiastic about Mauritius I'd planned to write a few words about Dubai and what it is like in 2010 compared to 2001.
When we went to Dubai last time, I lived in Brussels and had only really travelled in Europe. Now obviously we live in Beijing and I am relatively more widely travelled.
That said I still found Dubai an exciting destination. Even though we were there for less than 24 hours we saw a lot.
It is still a city under siege from cranes. And now like then there is some degree of uncertainty around the future. Then the burj al Arab had just opened and was attracting much attention. But if the anecdotes are to be believed the palm island hadn't even been conceived. It certainly wasn't the mass tourist destination that it became in the last decade although the beginning and the desire was clearly there.
We visited just over six months before September 11 2001. You'd have thought that this might have proved a challenge to the popularity of an Islamic country as a tourist destination, but it didn't seem to affect Dubai. However I have no way of knowing whatever happened to our Afghan driver, Mohammed who no doubt had to shelve his dreams of moving to London.
Now of course Dubai World (the company behind much of the highest visibility development) had to request a delay to payments leading. After much uncertainty Abu Dhabi, the oil rich neighbour with less vertiginous but seemingly more stable growth backed by natural resources, stepped in with support. Consequently the world's tallest building, constructed with the name Burj Dubai, was renamed Burj Khalifa on opening, seemingly in tribute to Abu Dhabi's ruler Sheikh Khalifa.
So with much schadenfreude from some financial analysts, it is no longer clear if Dubai will build the second and third planned artificial palm islands. The third and biggest of which is planned to be bigger than the ilê de France, on which stands Paris. Here is an interesting fact, the existing palm island required so much hardcore for its foundations that, collected together it could build a 2m x 2m wall three times round the earth! I don't know whether to be awed or terrified by this fact.
So that feeling of schadenfreude is understandable on many levels. Dubai is painfully shallow and nouveau riche. I thought Beijing was money-obsessed till I went back to Dubai. But at the same time I do have respect for their efforts to build an economy based on trade and property markets without the resource wealth of abu dhabi or the support-tinged with religious overtures given by Saudi Arabia to neighbouring emirate Sharjah.
One element of Dubai I have no problem admiring is it's openess and international atmosphere. You only need to take a walk along the working creek on the Deira side and note where goods are in transit to and from to feel a part of international trade and exchange. You'd think that rather than taking some delight in its financial stutters, western countries would be as supportive as possible of dubai's interpretation of Islam with freedom of different worship and acceptance of Egyptian legal codes rather than the sometimes scary-seeming Sharia law.
But of course, despite this openess, massive disparities exist in this 'society'. I use inverted commas because in truth there are none of the cohesive elements of a shared society in evidence. Little or no tax, no universal healthcare or education for resident migrants, hell there isn't even a postal service. As early as the queue for passport control, we experienced Emiratees treating workers from Asia with ill disguised contempt, whilst not even questioning our visas.
So in conclusion, despite building many of the world's biggest buildings and creating a man made island, Dubai for me remains a compelling and interesting place to visit, but way too disjointed a place to ever consider living there. Which is lucky really, since we've no pending offers.
Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
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