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Dubai Global Village is the place to be!

when mr khairul first 'consulted' his friends on what's hot and what's not in Dubai Global Village, most of those who's been staying in Dubai for years claimed there's nothing much to look at since everything is the same year after year.*

* Dubai Global Village is a yearly event, running from Nov - Feb - when the weather is at its best

tan sri khairul anwar with puan sri syigim (the dream lives on..)

well we did go, wearing baju batik and baju kurung no less! We were coming from a raya haji open house at mr hadi's house thus explains the traditional garb. i must say, not only is his house so lovely - the food is - oh, man - i havent eaten nasi lemak for so long, and also pulut kuning! and my fav - bahulu too! thanks to the host for an open house well done. it's also nice to see familiar faces whom i've met just the other day during the raya haji prayers.

entrance
the weather was perfect for a day out - not too cold, and not too scorching. few meters from the entrance we were greeted with rows of beca (some even adorned with advertisement in indon language!) and i thought these beca would be taking visitors around the Dubai Global Village for a fee. well, they do take visitors for a fee of 5dhs - to take them for those few measly meters from where we park to ONLY the entrance! that's it!

add a few more meters, this is pretty much the length where the beca goes

what a rip-off! the thing is they do make money coz ade permintaan yang menggalakkan! guess those makciks REALLY didn't want to walk those tiring 5-6 meters...

anywho - we paid 10dhs each for adult and walked right in. khaleef goes in for free. did i mention the crowd was HUGE and it's only 30mins after opening hours*? i mean, really packed! mr khairul said he had never seen a gathering of pak2 and makcik2 arab as huge as this one. we didn't even let khaleef wear his slippers and leave the stroller for fear of getting lost in the midst of the HUGE crowd!

thankfully, he happily obliged and sat in his stroller singing 'mencintaaaaaaiiiiiimuuuuuuu' (an anuar zain's song) on top of his voice until we shut him up with a chocolate ice-cream. then he conveniently fell asleep.

*the Dubai Global Village opens at 4pm daily til night.


what is this place anyway?
the Dubai Gloval Village website claims that "the most unique element of Global Village is the pavilions* where you can buy merchandise of countries around the world without actually traveling there." agree! hey, you can just buy a hand-carved face mask from rwanda and claimed that you got them in one of your many travels! haha.


*pavilion is like detached buildings temporaryly set up by organizers. there are, for example nepal pavilion, pakistan pavilian or indonesia pavilion. inside you can find stalls selling items from that particular country

the Dubai Global Village - is as its name suggested - a place where different countries (most african countries, mid east & asian - sadly NO PAVILION FROM MALAYSIA!) set up booths in their respective pavilion - selling a myriad of items from jubah and scarves to intricate ornaments and handicrafts uniquely their country-made. i mean, what do you REALLY look for when you travel as tourists? fridge magnet? they got it! souvenir plates? yup! cloths with 'made-in-whereever' label? check! you can get it all right in one place!

imagine all the souvenir bazaars you could ever look for every time you travel to these countries? now imagine all those bazaars put in one single place. that's Dubai Global Village.

not only that, you can also try sweets and savouries from each country. what's more, come night time, there are cultural shows in front of their respective pavilions.

mr khairul took the chance to take pictures with some rwanda tribal heroes...


i absolutely love it!
some friends of mr khairul said there's nothing much to look at now that they've been staying in dubai for years now - but i don't think i'll ever get bored looking at different items from different countries - it's like going to a museum that's really alive with the hustle and bustle of buying and selling - not to mention the cultural shows too!

i think the Dubai Global Village is a brilliant idea - solely for the purpose of bringing the cultures and cuisines of different countries to ONE single place where anyone can enjoy and appreciate. and the place is BIG. sure in malaysia we got the occasional world or asian food fair - and once in awhile the thais would set up camp in front of a tesco for their thai fair - but that's about it - Dubai Global Village is really something a tourist-shopper-freak would die for.

what did i get for myself?
i bought a couple of gorgeous jubah from egypt - wonder why abah and umi didn't buy us these colourful jubah during their visit cairo? - bought a few - some for me and some for peeps back home. i also bought a butterfly-soft pashmina from nepal - and it's freakin SOFT. bought only two coz it's kinda expensive - will buy more in my next visit!

mr khairul bought some items from the egypt pavilion too - magnets for our fridge and some pyramid-paper-weights. but his favorite buy was this weird-marble hard-clay-thingy - shaped in such a way that it had NO END. i'm not sure if you got that but well - try coz i ain't got no picture for now!

khaleef? got himself a chocolate ice-cream. spoiled his baju melayu top. typical!

things we didn't buy coz it's too freaky-looking, too expensive or just plain too much even for me!

1> a fantastic lookin carpet made of sewn-up goat skin in different colours - brown, white and black - sewn together like a kaleidoscope pattern - from rwanda

2> a lovely aladdin-inspired sandals heavily laden with colourful beads - from nepal

3> weird seemingly broken black hard-thingy that doesn't really look like anything accept maybe charcoal - claimed to be paper weight - from philiphines

4> candle or soap? colourful substance that looked like a cross between melted scented candles and very lembik soap - from lebanon

the premature ending
we were forced to leave early since mr khairul made prior arrangement with a classmate from mckk to dine at this famous steamboat restaurant. i felt so sorry to leave since there are sooooo much more to see and enjoy - we didn't *go* to india, china, japan and few more african countries. the cultural shows have not even started yet!

and did i tell you about a barney show (for the clueless - barney is the purple dino), fun-fair rides and even a guiness world record pavilion where we can try and 'break' some world records? we didn't even get close to any of those!

i really want to go again - but doubt that it would be very soon since the Dubai Global Village runs up to feb only - (which is the estimated time when i'll be under pantang) then it will be, in the words of afza, mr khairul's mckk classmate - "jadi lah padang jarak padang tekukur" coz it will be closed until it opens again next nov 2009.

sigh. until that time comes, i don't think i will ever get bored visiting the Dubai Global Village. and when niraku or my sisters come and visit, i hope they come at the right time when i can take them to this place and be amused by the same things that did wonders to me!