Fujeira- Day 11 Dibba

Um, I think it's Wednesday.

We got up and lounged about for a while, then Sulaimon came and fetched us from our apartment. This is Sulaimon's home town, so we're in his territory now. We started by looking at some gold and mailing letters. Then we went to get my shoe fixed. The guy who did it was chilling on a mat in the shade. It took him all of ten minutes and cost less than a dollar. My sandal is better than ever now, and I wish I had kept the ones I broke 4-wheeling earlier in the week.

After this we went to the Friday market, who knows why they call it that, but that's its name. This was basically for my benefit because I was interested in getting some rugs to bring home.

The Friday market is like all of the guys selling carpets out of their vans in Chicago, times 100 and smooshed together in one spot. They alos have plants, and pottery and other things, but there would be no way for us to get this stuff home so we ignored it.

It was pretty hot and we ended up going to three or four merchants until one guy finally got us to hang around long enough to bargain. All I can say of these few hours is that Sulaimon blew our minds with his negotiating skills. I don't know what ws being said, but he ended up getting three rugs, three silk sheets (for lack of a better name), eight hand sewened pillow cases, and four sodas for 625 AED, which is like maybe $150. My share was 300 AED not bad for the haul. Best of all I got a Sheik Zayad rug to hang on my wall. Try getting handmade crap like that back home for that cheap! I dare ya.

Next we bought lunch for us and Sulaimon in celebration, then he had to go do some stuff for his wedding and we chilled for a few hours. He came back, picked us up, and we cruised around Dibba for a bit. My sister and Lynn went into his wife's house for some mysterious womanly stuff, and we, the guys, went to find something else to do.

First we went to a bookstore where I got a few things for Miss Sage. They had some great books in here: translations of Michael Moore's Dude Where's my Country and Stupid White Men, and a bunch of books about Bush, most of them had fire and explosions on the cover, so that couldn't have been good. There was Mein Kampf (a bit scary IMHO) and a trilogy of boooks studying the Freemasons. Sulaimon had never heard of the masons, and was enthralled when I told him about them. He promptly picked up the first book in the series. I'm interested to see what the Arabs have to say about Masosns.

Next we picked his friend up and went to Le Meridian, a 5 star hotel down the coast. We wandered arouind the hotel, saw girls in bathing suits (first time since Dubai) and had some coffee. Then we headed back, got the girls and called it a night. It doesn't sound like a lot, but these days can be long.

Then I came on down to the Internet cafe and wrote the last two entries. They keep playing the same 7 80's songs over and over again. I don't understand, but if I have to hear Peter Cetera and Amy Grant again, I'm going to gouge my eyes out.

After this