8 May 2019, Wednesday
Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates, although its largest city is Dubai. The official religion is Islam and we are here during Ramadan which means no eating, drinking or smoking in public. There is a large population of Indian expatriates here (in fact they make up the largest ethnic race in the UAE) which means the local food has a variety of Indian food ranging from biryani to samosas.
After breakfast we headed out to the largest mosque in Abu Dhabi, the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. The construction for this mosque began in 1996 in honour of the founding father of the UAE, HH Sheikh Zayed bun Sultan Al Nahyan. It is made primarily of marble, and has some stunning crystal chandeliers and thousands of marble pillars with flower motifs. It’s beautiful but no real historical value because the UAE is relatively a pretty young country. I had to wear a robe which I thought made me look like a friar. A fabulous friar of course!
The weather is extremely hot outside and coupled with the fact that we can’t drink in public it was quite a feat just to go the mosque and back. It is about 37 degrees Celsius outside which is not that much different from Malaysia except that in Malaysia, because it’s our home country, we hardly venture out in the heat.
The people here can speak English and are reasonably friendly and helpful. We travelled by the local bus everywhere except that the buses are not on time (some locals told us the schedules have changed in the light of Ramadan) and sometimes buses with different numbers from what we were looking for turned out to be the right bus, so that we always had to ask the bus driver before boarding.
On the way back from the Grand Mosque we stopped at Madinat Zayed Shopping and Gold Centre and went into Lulu Hypermarket. Dinner was chicken shawarma at a cafe near our hotel and we walked around the hotel past the Abu Dhabi World Trade Centre, a nearby park and past Al Lulu island beyond which is the Persian Gulf.
Overall I had a pleasant stay here in Abu Dhabi. I find it quite safe and the people quite friendly and helpful. If not for the scorching heat and the fact that we were travelling on a budget (no air cond taxis, only buses) we would’ve made it to more places.
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