Skiing in a shopping mall

First day in Dubai. Arrived at 4:50am and cleared customs within minutes. Killed some time in the arrivals terminal with an excellent cup of coffee so as not to wake my old friend up too early.

Grateful enough to have the use of the spare futon without beginning my stay by pressing the doorbell at 5:30am.

The hazy, early morning light does nothing to diminish the scale and magnitude of the desert city. Glinting steel, chrome and reflective glass stretch up into the sky on the entire trip from the terminal to the apartment block. There is a metro rail now, too, which glides above the Sheikh Zayed Highway like a skytrain from Star Wars.

Pleasant enough flight on Emirates but it was packed and sleep was impossible. Not quite so impossible on arrival at the apartment, however, as it duly arrives in mid conversation. On the sofa. With coffee in hand.

Later in the afternoon I head towards the Mall of the Emirates to find a simcard and search for a good value hire-car. The Mall is the size of Sandton. Not Sandton Mall; Sandton. On my way around I find a ski slope and luge track, complete with ski-lift. There are people in full ski suits and boots. They are skiing. It is 36 degrees outside.

The ‘resort’ sits behind triple-glazing and is, I am told, nought degrees inside. A lady asks me if I would like to enter. I look down at my t-shirt and shorts. She says the skiing clothes are part of the price. 200 Dirhams is about R350. I decline. But I find a simcard and hire car for R250 per day.

“What are the hidden costs?” I ask. “The speeding fines, which you will definitely get,” replies the Phillipino man without a smile.

Day Two:
Was keen to sample some camel riding (from the Grandstand) close to the apartment block but was informed by a local that, since they are no longer ridden by people, the event has lost its allure for everybody except those genuinely interested in the physical attributes of the camel.

Camels used to be ridden by small boys as young as eight or nine years old because of their weight, or lack of it. This is odd for two reasons. If a camel can cross a desert with tonnes of dates on its back without having a drink for a week, why can’t it run a couple of hundred metres with a man on its back?

Also, how come the humanitarian carers who objected to the young lads riding the camels don’t care about the thousands of emaciated, self-starved, dehydrated and delusional adult men who ride horses everywhere in the world for a living? Never mind.

The camels are now ridden by small robots which are remote controlled by the camels owners or trainers who ride behind them in 4x4s, presumably giving the camel the occasional electronic whipping. (Where are you, camel-rights activists?)

Instead of camel riding I’m given a short tour of the recently opened ICC Global Cricket Academy where I meet coaches Rod Marsh and Dale Hadlee. It was a jaw-dropping experience, not because Marsh punched me (he didn’t) but because cricket has never, ever been taken to such levels of innovation and science before. There net pitches laid with soil from Perth, Brisbane, Pakistan and Surrey in England so that playing conditions can be simulated from around the world.

They have Hawkeye technology and indoor centre big enough to simulate a middle practise once the nets have been lifted up into the rafters. You’ll be hearing a lot more about it in future.

The drive from Dubai to Abu Dhabi is successful because I am neither hit by an out-of-control Hummer doing 160kmh nor caught behind a 20-tonne truck with a burst tyre. By the sounds of it, anybody who makes it alive by road from one Emirate to the other can count themselves lucky.

I cannot help feeling this is an exaggeration, although Kepler Wessels tells me on arrival that the highway is “well known” as being the “most dangerous in the world.” And Kepler is usually right. Onto the match, the first ODI. Ah yes, the match. Pakistan reach 140-1 after 30 overs and seem set to post a competitive target.

Then everybody decides to hit as many of Lopsy Tsotsobe’s remaining deliveries as they can in the air and the total dwindles to a feeble 203. That’s the problem with Pakistan these days. Such is the rottenness of their reputation that they won’t be able to undergo an innocent collapse for decades to come without everybody being suspicious. Not that this one looked especially innocent.

Easy victory for the Proteas coming up. Of more concern is the latest injury to one of Graeme Smith’s poppadum…err, fingers. Could it be break number four in the last two years? Shoaib Akhtar bouncer hit the same part of his left pinky that Mitchell Johnson broke in January 2009. Bad news. Maybe.