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After Dark in Abu Dhabi

Dusk makes a welcome arrival on the arid cusp of the Arabian Peninsula. In Abu Dhabi the desert sun dims and is replaced by twinkling neon and the promise of night.

Wealthy Emiratis leave their air-conditioned apartments to stroll the Corniche boardwalk overlooking the Persian Gulf. The men flow in white dishdashas (robes), while the women – all ankles and eyes – flaunt colourful stilettos beneath jet-black abayas. There is the sweet smell of apple-scented shisha wafting from alfresco cafes, while the mosques, malls, bars and restaurants draw disparate crowds from all over the world. Western travellers blend seamlessly into this cosmopolitan scene but can be identified by uncertain gaits and thirsty gills. Things are undoubtedly happening in this charged metropolis. But where is the Abu Dhabi action?

5pm
Cocktail hour is best delayed if you’re seeking the best from this devoutly Muslim city. Undoubtedly the city’s grandest and most iconic landmark is the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Named after the modern-day father of the UAE – who is buried beneath – the dazzling white, 82-domed mosque is comparable to India’s Taj Mahal for its breath-stealing grandeur and lavish detailing. Inspired by Persian and Moorish architecture, it utilises premium materials from across the world and can accommodate 40,000 worshippers. The mosque is especially beautiful at sundown and is worth the detour. Entry is free and it’s open to the public every day except Friday. Dress conservatively (no shorts or skirts).
Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Centre
5th Street
szgmc.ae

Relaxing by the pool at Saadiyat Beach Club.
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6pm
A short taxi ride away you can revel in the stark contrasts for which the UAE is known. The Saadiyat Beach Club sprawls languidly by the gin-clear Gulf, all poolside cabanas, fruity cocktails and sun-worshipping patrons. Bikinied Westerners with cosmetically enhanced outlines lounge by the water, while Emiratis in traditional attire sip minted tea nearby. Popular with expats, the club offers exclusive facilities for members, but day guests are welcome to visit the restaurants and bars. Turtles and dolphins are said to frequent the nearby waters – in fact, you could be in the Caribbean. Saadiyat can turn into a party scene on select nights, in which case you’ll be hard-pressed to leave, but the night is young.
Saadiyat Beach Club
Sheikh Khalifa Highway
saadiyatbeachclub.ae

Take in the art at Manarat Al Saadiyat.
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7pm
Saadiyat Island is in the midst of transforming into a globally significant cultural hub. By 2020 the formerly deserted sand patch is scheduled to be covered in luxury apartments and leisure facilities that will share a postcode with a number of iconic art museums, including a Louvre and a Guggenheim. Get a taste of what’s in store at the Manarat Al Saadiyat (Place of Enlightenment), which tells the history of Abu Dhabi and showcases its grand vision for a highbrow future that will distinguish it from nearby Dubai. Build it and they will come seems to be the philosophy underpinning the city’s post-oil future.
Manarat Al Saadiyat
Sheikh Khalifa Highway E12
saadiyatculturaldistrict.ae

Modern Cantonese fare at Hakkasan.
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8pm
Ready to be treated like actual royalty? Direct your ride to the Emirates Palace Hotel and be prepared to be dazzled. Abu Dhabi is not short of flash hotels, but this palatial seven-star wonderland is a tourist attraction in its own right. Gold and marble are used liberally throughout the sprawling, kilometre-long construction in a design motif that matches grandeur with opulence. Non-guests are welcome to wander slack-jawed beneath its 144 domes or loiter near the gold-dispensing ATM. Better still, the hotel has a royal abundance of cafes, bars and restaurants and most are open to the public. Reserve a table outside at Hakkasan for a dazzling view of the city and a gorgeous modern Chinese meal you won’t soon forget.
Hakkasan Abu Dhabi
Emirates Palace Hotel
hakkasan.com

9.30pm
For a more traditional experience and something sweet, try Le Boulanger, an alfresco cafe overlooking the water on the nearby Corniche. You can’t buy booze here but not buying booze is very much the local custom. Instead locals crowd around tables, drink coffee, talk into the night and take turns coaxing scented tobacco through water-cooled hookah pipes. Shisha is a mixture of tobacco leaves flavoured with molasses or honey and mixed with glycerine so that it heats evenly and doesn’t burn. A one-hour shisha session combined with sweet local coffee, two or three sticky baklavas and a pink cube of Turkish delight and you will be authentically abuzz  and ready for some nightlife proper.
Le Boulanger
Marina Village
Cornich Road

Head to the top of Jumeirah Etihad Towers for Ray’s Bar.
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10.30pm
If Abu Dhabi were a drink it would be a mocktail served in ornate crystal. The conspicuously wealthy city pulses with designer labels, soaring high-rises, blingy architecture and customised sports cars. It’s the sort of place a stubby of VB would be asked to leave on aesthetic grounds. Ray’s Bar on the 62nd floor of the Jumeirah Etihad Towers doesn’t stock blue-collar Aussie beer, but its expert barmen can mix up just about anything else. The spectacular views from Ray’s across the twinkling city explain why Abu Dhabi has been compared to Manhattan. The service is professional, the lighting atmospheric and the drinks tall, dark and expensive. It’s a good place to meet friendly expats, dig the view and the glamour and suss out where to hit next.
Ray’s Bar
Jumeirah Etihad Towers
West Corniche Road
jumeirah.com

Mixing it up at Etoiles.
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11.30pm
Ladies’ nights are a big deal in Abu Dhabi. They usually happen on a Wednesday and hinge on a tried-and-tested nightclub formula. Entice the female of the species and the men will follow with hungry eyes and open wallets. It’s a sign of how new the drinking culture is in Abu Dhabi that free drinks for the women are A) allowed, and B) don’t end in Caligula-style debauchery. Deep inside Emirates Palace is Etoiles nightclub. Here, you’ll find DJs playing mid-tempo beats as the club slowly fills with women and their admirers. Drink, mingle and have a dance, but don’t linger too late as there’s more ladies’ night action to be had.
Etoiles
Emirates Palace Hotel
West Cornishe Road
facebook.com/etoilesclub

1am
Lift-off arrives at Pearls & Caviar, a chic open-air bar with water views across to the distant Grand Mosque. Pheromones mix with designer scents and acrid tobacco smoke on a crowded dance floor. At last you’ve found some genuine party people and a DJ tuned to the tribal mind. The city’s reputation for tolerance will be tested by a posse of bumping and grinding expats, barely attired ‘ladies’ and a Busta Rhymes decree for the dance floor to “make it clap”. Clearly so much has changed and so quickly in this newly minted city. Forty years ago it was a fishing village, today Abu Dhabi reaches for the sky and screams “look at me now”. Tonight they’re twerking for freedom within sight of the Grand Mosque. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
Pearls & Caviar
Shangri-La Hotel
Khor Al Maqta
shangri-la.com

Free Camping in Oman

Enjoy a special camping experience with your own rooftop tent. Pack your things into a spacious Toyota Prado with your tent already stored on the roof and drive wherever you want, whether it be along the coast, up into the rugged mountains or through the desert. Once you’ve found the perfect spot (in Oman you can free camp anywhere), unfold your tent in a matter of minutes, light a nice fire and watch the sunset. And the best feature is waiting for you; the big, comfy mattress in your spacious tent will ensure you sleep like a baby, waking up to the sound of the waves, the birds or the muezzin’s call from the nearby mosque.

Enjoy a leisurely drive from Muscat, stopping at a wadi (valley) or two, and see the shipyard in Sur, where they’ve been building Omani dhows (traditional boats) for centuries. In the evening, take a guided tour to witness green turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs. Of the hundreds of hatchlings, only a handful survive to return to this beach to lay their eggs, so each journey is precious.

Ras Al Khabba stands out as another must-see highlight on your camping adventure. The point marks the edge of a cliff right above the water where the Gulf of Oman meets the Indian Ocean, about about an hour’s drive from Sur and only a couple of kilometres past the Ras Al Jiz Turtle Reserve. Set up your tent for a night under the stars, waking up in the morning to the waves breaking 100 metres below you.

Explore the Empty Quarter – The World’s Most Epic Desert.

Today we’re off to the desert! We leave Muscat in comfortable 4WD’s, and head for Nizwa, the old capital of the Sultanate and soon leave the tarmac road to cross Umm As Sameem (“ Mother of Poison”), Oman’s largest salt flat. According to Bedouin legends whole caravans have disappeared in the quick sands of this barren land, where we get an impression of the vastness of the desert. We see mirages before reaching the first giant red dunes of Rub al-Khali (Empty Quarter), entering the world’s largest sand desert. With a camp fire crackling, we spend the night under the stars or in a tent, the choice is yours.

“Ramla” is the Arabic word for sand and this is what we will see and experience in all shapes and colors for a week. After a hearty breakfast, we cross the dunes of Ramlat Abu at Tabul on desert tracks and go further down South. We experience ever changing colors of the sand and find a sinkhole filled with water.

Heavily loaded with water, fuel and food we then cross the Southern part of the Rub al Khali for the next 3 nights / 4 days. Dunes here are even bigger and many times we need to cross these massive sand mountains, it is not always easy to find a good passage and we might have to get off the vehicles occasionally if we are stuck – this is part of the adventure! Via GPS we head for Uruq ibn Humudah in the border area of Oman / Saudi Arabia / Yemen before turning East to Ramlat Al Hashman, where we might be lucky to find some geodes. On our way we pass the artesian wells of Shigag and Burkhana and will surely see camels somewhere. Whoever feels like it, can do some desert walking in the morning while our crew breaks camp and packs the 4×4’s for the day before catching up with the group. We do not have a fixed itinerary and hence have plenty of time to experience and savor the desert, we chose our camp locations at the most beautiful spots, usually higher up in the dunes for a great panoramic view. Our expedition ends right on the white beaches of Salalah.

Saudi Arabia

Chances are you’re not ever going to end up in this country, especially if you’re a woman. Some westerners end up there for work, and it’s common for Muslims to visit for the Hajj or Umrah – this after all, is the country where you’ll find both Mecca and Medina – but it doesn’t come highly recommended.

It’s an incredibly conservative place, and one of the few countries to employ religious police who enforce dress code, the separation of men and women, a ban on alcohol and attendance at prayer. Women were given the vote in 2015.

If you are tempted (and manage to get in), theattractions include the amazing pre-Islamic site of Mada’in Saleh, with its monumental, rock-hewn tombs, great diving in the Red Sea, and Jeddah’s Old Town where tall houses are built from blocks of coral and feature intricately carved wooden shutters.

Good luck to you, intrepid traveller.

Fast and the Furious

"You’re not going to do anything unsafe today, huh?” my husband asks as he’s getting ready to leave for work in Saudi Arabia, a short trip over a causeway from our apartment in Bahrain.

“No, no,” I reply, reaching for my abaya and slipping it over my shorts and T-shirt. “I’m just going to stay in camp and have a coffee with the girls.” The ‘camp’ I’m referring to is the compound where my friends in Saudi Arabia live. Every two weeks, to renew my Bahraini visa, I catch a lift with my husband across the border and catch up with my mates. The routine is part and parcel of the expat life and being the wife of a Saudi oil company worker.

After living in Saudi for almost two years, we moved to Bahrain, where I permanently reside on a series of temporary visitor visas. It means I no longer have to spend my days in a heavily guarded compound with my sanity leaking out of my ears.

He looks at me squarely. “Keep your head down. And no taxis. They’re crazy.”

“No taxis,” I nod firmly, knowing full well I’m lying. Since women can’t drive in Saudi, taxis are the main means of transport and my friends and I have already planned a shopping trip. With luck, our regular driver, Saleem, will be free and we won’t have to take our chances.

We aren’t so lucky.

“Good driver! Good driver,” our cabbie bellows three hours later, using the only two words of English he apparently knows beyond basic directions and negotiating our fare to Rashid Mall.

The words don’t instil much confidence. So far the only sign the man actually knows how to drive “good” is the fact he’s worked out how to start the engine in a car that smells like armpit.

Before I know it we’re hurtling the wrong way down a one-way road at more than 140 kilometres an hour through the centre of Khobar. Cars stream past, narrowly missing us. Horns honk and tyres screech. Our driver doesn’t bother looking at the road for more than a couple of seconds at a time. Instead he’s focused on the rearview mirror and the three of us in the back seat, flashing us a grin that I’m pretending isn’t manic. I’m trying to work out if gripping the backs of both front seats in the event of a crash will save my life since my seatbelt is broken.

“You two better stop me from going through the windscreen if he hits the brakes,” I say, looking from side to side at my friends.

“Definitely,” Aaliya says, giving me a firm nod.

“Sure,” Imeen seconds, checking her lipstick in a small handheld mirror.

Seconds later, our taxi rounds a sharp corner and the driver stomps on the brakes. Tyres screech. We all scream. I lurch forward, immediately feeling my shoulders jerk in their sockets as I brace myself on the seats in front, my head whipping forward and lashing back as we accelerate, the car we’d almost hit speeding past with its horn blaring.

Good driver?!

Heart thumping, I turn to look at my friends, only to find them both gripping the leather handles of their designer handbags, wide-eyed: “So your handbags are more important than me?”

The car jerks to the right as our driver answers the phone, holding the mobile in front of his face and speaking in fast-paced Arabic while rifling through the glove compartment. I try not to notice he is steering with his knee.

“It’s okay, George. We would have scraped you off the road,” Imeen says, patting my knee.

“What’s left of me.” I look out the window, and my heart sinks as we zoom past the gold souk. “Hate to tell you ladies but he’s not taking us to Rashid Mall.”

Our driver abruptly drops his phone, studying us in the rearview mirror. “Rashid Mall?”

“Yes!” The three of us cry in unison.

He looks worried for a second before nodding. “Rashid Mall… No problem, no problem. Good driver.”

Seconds later, the brakes slam on. My hands again fly for the seats in front of me and this time my friends catch me, albeit one-handedly, their other hands still gripping designer leather.

Later that afternoon, while waiting in our idling car for the hour it usually takes for Saudi customs to stamp our passports, my husband turns to me. “You have a good day today?”

“Yeah.” I nod. “Pretty uneventful come to think of it.”

Eating Israel

The diversity of immigrants to Israel has guaranteed a diverse culinary influence, but this can make the question of what constitutes Israeli cuisine a vexed one. Fortunately, indigenous dietary delights remain to be enjoyed in the Holy Land, especially in the capital Jerusalem.

State of the nation
If Israel had a national dish, it might well be hummus. This simple dip, composed primarily of crushed chickpeas and olive oil, is so popular in Israel that it’s become an ‘anytime meal’, a universal condiment and a serious point of discussion. Ask any Israeli where to get the best hummus and you should set aside an hour for the response.

Most agree that hummus is an Arab invention that has been appropriated by the Jewish majority and developed into an almost entirely different dish. Order a bowl of hummus at Akermawi in East Jerusalem and you’ll find it’s lemon-laced, dotted with cumin and as deliciously dense as setting concrete. This is the staple of many Palestinian workers who arrive before the crack of dawn to work in Israel. One large bowl is said to be sufficiently nutritious for a full day’s labour.

On the west side of town, the cumin and much of the lemon are absent and the hummus is soft and fluffy. This is because the Jewish establishments in West Jerusalem macerate the chickpeas in a blender, whereas the Muslim establishments in East Jerusalem pound them with a mortar and pestle.

The love of hummus spans cultural divides. Across the capital and the country it can be ordered plain or served with a sprinkling of meat, pinenuts, cooked whole chickpeas or ful (tangy, slow-cooked fava beans). Whatever the accompaniment, it is best eaten with pita. Arab-made pita tends to be slightly drier and more hummus-absorbent than the moister, stickier Jewish-made pita.

With 18 official religions, Lebanon and its vast cultural and ethnic diversity has historically been a recipe for civil unrest. Now, one charismatic Beiruti is nurturing his country’s shared love of food to promote reconciliation in the Middle East’s most diverse nation.

I meet Kamal Mouzawak at Tawlet, on the edge of Beirut’s Bourj Hammoud Armenian district. While gentrification is starting to take root in the city, the eatery sits amid gritty tyre-repair shops and smoky wood-fired bakeries that turn out Lebanon’s iconic flatbread, manoushe.

Mouzawak’s vision to create food that transcends cultural barriers is reinforced in Tawlet’s welcoming interior, which is more trendy Melbourne than troubled Middle East. Tawlet means ‘kitchen table’ in Arabic, and Mouzawak uses the universal pleasure of eating to bring people together, irrespective of their cultural, political or ethnic backgrounds.

“It’s not just the food that’s important,” he explains. “But it’s the getting together and the sharing of this food that’s important for the future of the country.”

Every weekday a different chef from across Lebanon prepares a buffet lunch, drawing on their own history, traditions and hometown flavours. Each of Tawlet’s 30 village cooks, shepherds or traditional farmers travels to Beirut for one day a month, often bringing their meals’ ingredients from their own gardens and small holdings.

Traditional flavours and local dishes, once threatened by conflict and cultural diaspora, are shared and celebrated. And the skilled cooks, whom Mouzawak calls producer chefs, enjoy the exposure.