Friday Markets, Forts and Da Bulls!

This is my 100th post on the United Arab Emirates!  Wow!  This is my 5th year here!

This weekend, I was looking forward to see what this "bull pushing" was all about.  Would it be like the cow-tipping I had always heard about growing up?  For those of you not in the know, cow-tipping is a favorite pastime of redneck teenagers that sneak up on sleeping cows and tip them over.

I really hoped this would not be like that.

But first, we would stop at the Friday Market on the way to Fujairah.

Fresh fruits for sale.  I hate fruit.

Coconuts, boiled corn, and cotton candy!  I hate coconuts (it's a fruit) but love me some cotton candy!

This is an ancient petroglyph of a man holding his game that he caught.

We drove up to the Al Hayl House.  It is one of the most famous palaces in Fujairah.  It used to be headquarters/home for the ruling Al Sharqi family.  It has been renovated and is an example of a large fortified courtyard house.   Mangrove wood was used in the building materials of this house unlike palm dates that are normally used on this side of the mountains.  The house is surrounded by a village made up of a different tribe.  The last original member left around 1979.

Inside the Al Hayl house with its mangrove wood accents.

Finally it was time for "Da Bulls," or the bloodless bull pushing which is a type of bovine sumo wrestling.  This is a fairly new tradition that started with 25 or 30 owners in the 80s, to about 60 today.

Two contenders, but who will emerge victorious?

Humpbacked Brahman bulls cost over $3,000 each, and an additional $1,000/month to care for them.  The more a bull wins, the more valuable it becomes.

The contests begin each Friday at sunset. The Brahmans, which have characteristically floppy ears, snort, lock horns and kick dirt inside the arena. If one bull is too strong and risks hurting his rival, men rush into the arena to pull the beasts apart. The bull that pushes his opponent the furthest is the winner. While a fence and metal barrier surround the arena to stop rogue bulls from running down the street, most spectators still prefer to watch the excitement inside the ring.

I managed to catch the best fight of the day here!  Check out the 1:00 mark!

Another good match!

Pulling the bulls apart

Catching crabs, but it looks like they caught more moon jellies!

Just use a truck to straighten out your nets!

Selfie at the beach!

43rd Birthday! Eid Mubarak!

This year I was lucky enough to have Thomas fly in from Germany to celebrate it with me.  I haven't celebrated a birthday with anyone since my 35th!

This year my birthday coincided with the Muslim holiday of Eid Al Adha. It was both a blessing and  curse because since my birthday fell on the first night, there was no alcohol to be served that evening.  Also, I had to teach class until 7pm.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that 1/2 of my class actually showed up.  Since it was Eid, I knew most students would skip class in order to enjoy their holiday and the upcoming four day weekend.  But the thing that made it even more special was that they bought me not one, but TWO birthday cakes!  They even sang happy birthday to me!  How sweet.

The La Brioche cream cake my students got for me!

So, I had a four day weekend, but so did everyone else in the Muslim world.  We decided not to go to Oman again this year, but what was left for us to do?  I really wanted to travel up the coast of the Gulf of Oman and check out the beaches and do some snorkeling at least.  I don't think the scuba diving is supposed to be that great.

It was crazy.  Saudi Arabia got 3 weeks off and, it seemed, the entire population of that country decided to come to the UAE for the great shopping.  The malls in Dubai were open 24 hours during this period.  Every hotel we called was either completely booked or was charging some ridiculous price.  Not to be deterred, we decided to pack up the tent and try to rough it on the beach this year.

Friday afternoon, we made the 3 1/2 hour drive.  The weather was great and there was virtually no traffic.  So far so good.  We made it to the beach we wanted to camp on just as the sun was beginning to set.  It was already pretty packed with people. The people themselves weren't so much the problem, it was the people with their giant tents and bright lights and generators and really noisy 4 wheelers that were the problem.  Ugh.  No way. Dumb ass me forgot to bring my passport, so we couldn't go over into the northern part of Oman known as Musandam, which I suspected was probably pretty deserted.We drove around in vain searching for a hotel room or another camping spot.   Finally someone suggested we go to the "family area."  Only "families" are allowed to camp there I guess.

Um. Ok.

A mosque in Fujairah

We drove over there and that was pretty busy too.  We managed to pull over and take a look around at a possible camping spot. I looked over at the one tent that was already pitched and said to Thomas, "Hey, look, it's white people."  I went over to them and said hi and asked them if they minded if we pitched our tent next to theirs.  They were happy to have the company!  He was French and she was British.  They are roommates in a big house in Dubai and are now dating.  They were pretty funny.  He had a thick French accent and would occasionally go, "HUH?" to his girlfriend because he couldn't always understand her English.  We had a nice evening hanging out with them and the noise in the area wasn't too annoying.

Early the next morning, we each got up and packed up our tents and refreshed ourselves in the warm ocean water.  We drove over to Sandy Beach Resort and a popular snorkeling area called "Snoopy Rock."

A view of the beach we camped on the night before.  It was strewn with the garbage people left behind.  At least they have people that clean the beaches and pick up the trash.

Thomas and his first time snorkeling.

Thomas swims with the fishes.  Look out for those nasty jellyfish!

The aptly named Snoopy Rock

Me & Thomas

After an afternoon of snorkeling, I wanted to get something out of my car.  Damn where are the keys?  I couldn't find them.  We looked everywhere.  I concluded that we (or I) must have locked them in the car.  We had to have maintenance come over with a wire hangar.  Thomas twisted it into a tool that would flick open the lock.  Good thing I have an old car!  Success!  Almost.  Turns out my keys weren't in the car afterall.  They were in a small bag.  I guess I put them there for safe keeping.  Oops.

That night, we had a nice dinner at the Meridian.  The crowd seemed to have subsided that day, so we decided to relax and head back to our previous camping spot.

After breaking in to my own car, we went and took showers and returned to find this note:

I have no idea why my little Honda is so popular.  I had a second offer while we were driving to buy my car!

Sunset at the Meridian

These instructions for the bidet were in my bathroom stall.  However, there was no bidet.  Thomas reported to me that his did have a bidet, but no instructions.  Hmmm.

Cool old VW in the lobby!

After dinner, we headed over to our previous camping spot.  Yikes!  It was jammed packed with cars.  I didn't even know where to pull over!  It took us forever to even turn around and get out of that camping area.  We were disappointed, but we decided it was best to just make the drive back to Al Ain.  It took us over 4 hours, but we were still home by 1 a.m. and were able to at least sleep in in a bed!

Al Badiyah Mosque.  It is said to be the oldest mosque in the UAE.  The mosque is believed to have been built in 1446 a.d. along with two watchtowers overlooking the mosque and the village.  There were hundreds of people there for the Eid prayers, so we only managed to get a good shot of the watchtower.

We saw a lot of this over the weekend!

I think next Eid we will stay home!