A Pinay in Europe

It’s rather too late to edit my New Year’s Resolution now but I am bent on adding one more on my list and that is:  Using more herbs and spices for better health!

When I used to work in Dubai in the late ’90s, I always raved eating everything Indian and this passion stayed up to the present where cooking curry is part of my culinary calendar.  H always gets excited everytime it’s curry weekend and we even make it a point to buy pita bread to complete the Indian feast.

However, our month stay in Dubai has taken me into a gastronomic re-discovery of Indian cuisine.  My sister cooks great Indian food and my brother-in-law treated us to the best Indian restaurants and the most mouth-watering take-away meals.  And in most of our sightseeing stints, H and I unrelentingly sat in the most humble snack bars in Deira and raved about their most ambrosiac samoussas and other concoctions dipped in ”to-die-for” coconut sauce spiced up with cardamon and mustard!

This whole gastronomic experience got me more curious about Indian spices so I did a lot of research and discovered that they are not just there for flavour but also for their abundant health benefits.  As I’ve rambled about in my earlier posts, H and me spent majority of our time in Dubai nursing the flu virus which I contracted in Paris and eventually passed on to him.  That time, I wondered why nobody seems to be ill in that city.  We have been all over the place walking, dining, sightseeing but not a single soul coughed nor sneezed!  Has the desert dust blowing around rendered their lungs pollution-resistant and more immune to virus? 

Now I got the answer:  it’s the spices!

Take for example the cumin, its health benefits aid digestion, piles, insomnia, respiratory disorders, asthma, bronchitis, common cold, lactation, anemia, skin disorders, boils and cancer.  Cardamom’s medicinal uses range from relieving stomach dyspepsia, increasing appetite, soothing the mucus membranes, relieving gas and heartburn.  Cinammon can lower cholesterol.  Turmeric is a potent natural anti-inflammatory, clears toxins from the body and relief from sore throat, runny nose and blocked bronchial tubes.  Need I say more?

Here are the spices I brought home from Dubai. Our kitchen may now reek of Indian smell but who cares? It’s our health and dining enjoyment (or vice-versa) that counts!

These dried pink rose blossoms is great for tea. I made some last night after dinner and we slept like a log!  My research says rose petal tea  has an uplifting effect on the nervous system and can relieve insomnia, depression and fatigue.  Cool!

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One place that we almost missed exploring, thanks to my Dubai colleague Joe who suggested that we go there and curiously indeed we had a great time, is Bastikiya. It is the one last historic village in Dubai that is still left standing and perfect for tourists and residents alike who are in search of something artistic and cultural at the same time traditional. It providentially escaped demolition to make way for another shopping mall (or skyscraper, possibly), thanks to the pleas of a few residents who begged that their ancestral homes be spared.

The narrow lanes of the old Bastakiya district give the visitor a fascinating glimpse of old Dubai albeit in a sanitized environment.  The old charm is somewhat gone because of over-renovation…..

Wind towers are typical of traditional Middle Eastern homes

This is a wind tower or “wind catcher”, so called, because it catches the prevailing wind, brings it down the tower, thus cooling the interior of the building.  The number of wind towers a house has indicates the wealth of the owner family.

Courtyards like this are prevalent in Middle Eastern homes, not only as a place to cool off but also to provide outdoor living in utmost privacy.   

Bastikiya is a maze of covered pathways and courtyards.  You walk through a series of corridors and you can easily stumble upon a small courtyard.

And in every corner, there is always something that will catch your attention. 

There are galleries showing photos of the Middle East in the old days. 

My dream house?  it must have a courtyard, then I can fully express all my artistic self.

Melted candle art - fantastic!

The rooftop is also a maze of stairs and open spaces looking down to the courtyards.  In the burning summer, residents prefer to sleep here as it’s cooler.

Bastikiya houses a Coin Museum…

…some restaurants and a hotel

and a gift shop with eye-catching decor

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Deira, Dubai

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Spice shop in Deira

dried rose blossoms for tea drink

dried flowers for tea drink

dried flowers for tea drink

turmeric roots

Vanilla pods

Cinammon sticks

Five spices in a bottle

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It’s the Disneyland of water parks, and the view is fantastic!
Yeah, we went to Wild Wadi today to see why my sister and her son are raving so much about it, and I am not disappointed! Not only that the rides are out of this world, it is also set between the two icons of Dubai, the 7-star Burj Al Arab hotel and the Palm Jumeirah Beach Hotel.

Just when we were entering the theme park, we saw this helicopter hovering above the Burj Al Arab’s helipad.

This family in the inflatable boat just came sliding down the zigzaggy water tunnel.

Burj Al-Arab as seen from the water park

The hanging terraces of Palm Jumeirah

This pool stirs with artificial waves every few minutes

There’s also a pool for those learning how to surf

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We arrived in Dubai just when the 16th edition of the month-long Dubai Shopping Festival opened so I made sure that a trip to the Global Village is included in our list of  “places to visit”.   We did just that today and I noticed the many changes that have taken place since I last saw it in 1999.

- They moved the venue much much farther away that the taxi ticked 55Dhs worth of distance.  There is a bus but the waiting time is one hour.

- There are more countries represented now, each is housed in its own themed space.

Our first stop was Yemen.  This honey is so good and concentrated but extremely pricey at 125g for 15dhs!

What an attractive way to store your crispies and nuts!

Turkish coffee, anyone?

Spice cart

Cultural entertainment

Egypt, my favorite stall of them all

The African continent is also represented

I love this Afghan dress

Men washing their feet….

….. before entering the tent mosque for prayers

Four cars are raffled each night for the entire shopping festival period

A man-made canal is added to make way for abra trips (and to give it a Venice-y feel!)

Merry go rounds for the little tots

- The whole Village is dominated by Made in China goods.  It wouldn’t have mattered if they are concentrated in the China Stall, but no, every single stall has Chinese shops inserted, not to mention the Chinese goods which are rampant in every stall held by other countries

Everytime I see bunch of socks for sale, I always assume that they are Made in China so I don’t buy them anymore.  They don’t last long, you see.  They self-damage on the 3rd day so I end up throwing them or recycling them as pot holders.  I’m glad that Pakistan still makes its own socks!

- There is no truth that each country sells only the products indigenous to them.  Why did I see this same sweeper sold by the African stall and the Iran (?) stall, are they neighbours?

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For more photos, please check my album: Deira Market

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We are stumped for words. Nearly three weeks to our Dubai sojourn and we are still getting awed by it all. Dumbstruck! That only 12 years ago, when I left this sandy city comprising mainly of low buildings with very few high rises, would transform itself at superspeed levels into a city of skyscrapers and megalo-wealthy surroundings. To see it at a distance - as opposed to reading it in the glossy magazines - is already a mindblowing experience but to be put in the middle of the action courtesy of my brother-in-law is short of living the Paris Hilton lifestyle!

The Palace Hotel is a 5-start luxury resort in the middle of skycraper city and a man-made lake. It is listed in Conde Nast Traveler amongst the Best Luxury Hotels 2008

The Oriental feel with the modern skyscrapers in the background is like living in two different continents at the same time.

Above us is the towering Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, so tall that it could fit in 7 Boeing planes connected from end to end.

But there are problems in the shisha lounge:

- You can see this food because of the camera’s flash otherwise you would be groping in the dark because the lamp provided on each tent is simply not enough to serve its purpose.

- The wine steward, a 25 year old young man from Kerala, was struggling to uncork the wine.  You could tell a professional from an amateur and surely, a 5-star resort hotel would make sure that staff are trained before doing their job

I thought he is Ali Baba without the magic lamp but what impressed me most about him was his height!

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I don’t know why but there is something about Arabian attires that fascinates me. Men or women, white or black, from modernish to the extremist, they all look elegant to me.  alluring.  Whatever the weather, whatever the time of day, wherever they might be, they all seem neat and looking respectable…

The younger generation of women, notwithstanding their gradual switch to more modern clothing, still keep their veil intact. 

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On our way back home from a day out in Abu Dhabi yesterday (Friday), we stopped in Ibn Battuta Mall for a quick exploratory tour. It was getting dark and we still had to go to Dubai Mall before calling it a day so we made a dash for the entrance and wiggled our way out in 15 minutes.

Ibn Battuta Mall is named after one of the greatest Muslim travellers of all time who made his journey to the Islamic world and beyond, among them: Persia, Andalucia, Egypt, India, China.  The motif of the mall represent the countries he visited.

Entrance of the mall

A space-saving product display

The red ceiling of the China Court

A big junk ship takes centerstage in the China Court

The Elephant Clock at the India Court

The blue sky of the Persia Court

The mosaic artwork of the Persia Court

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