My trip to the Global Village!
If you're looking for an interesting and different place to visit in the UAE that is at the same time a hugely tourist-oriented location then the Global Village (and this post) is for you. The Global Village is located at Exit 37 on Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road and Emirates Road in Dubai, but you should be able to find it from the tens of signs all along the main road and on pretty much every other advertise-able area. The Global Village is basically a massive shopping center that is cut up into separate buildings devoted to either a specific country or region from different parts of the world. As you might imagine things in there are pretty expensive and after it gained some popularity it has now been bumped up to one of the top tourist attractions in Dubai. The amount of work that has been put into the place and the amount
of things that go on inside at any given time is pretty impressive, and they were nice enough to make the entrance fee pretty cheap. So even though you will be bankrupt in seconds if you try to buy anything inside, at least you can watch all the traditional performances and stuff without paying too much.
The Global Village is open from 4pm to 12am Saturday through Wednesday, and 4pm to 1am on Thursday and Friday. Mondays are "ladies and families" only days so if you happen to be a lady, that would probably be the least crowded time for you to go on your own. We went on a Saturday around 9ish so you would expect a ridiculous crowd but thankfully it wasn't as bad as it is known to sometimes be. Now I will say that I have been to the Global Village a couple times before when I was younger but it has been several years since then and the few things that I do remember have since been changed or renovated. Outside the village is a massive parking lot so there was plenty of space for us to rest our car while we went inside. Upon exiting our car we were immediately swarmed by Indian tuk tuks looking to make a quick buck by offering to drive us to the entrance so we could avoid a few minutes of the dreaded walking. Although I am severely out of shape we chose to skip the two minute ride and just walk the distance to the ticket counter. When arriving at the ticket counter you can either buy one through a computer or go up to the selling booth, and once you have your ticket you can make your way through the entrance and into the lavish buildings that greet you at the village gate.
So I've thought for a while about how I'm going to evenly mention all the countries/regions that we visited without making this the longest blog I've ever written. The way that I have decided on to showcase all the places is that I will cut them up into continents/regions so I can summarize each continent while mentioning all the exact places that we went to, then round it off with a few pictures from the most relevant places.
So the first "continent" that I'm going to talk about is the Middle East, and before you freak out I know that it is technically part of Asia, but there was such a focus on the region that it just makes most sense to me that I count it separately. The Middle Eastern countries that we visited were Yemen, Iran, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Bahrain, Jordan and Lebanon. As you might imagine several of these countries -- namely Jordan, Palestine and Syria -- were pretty similar in terms of what they were selling and what traditional shows they had going on. The highlights of this region for me were the "Dabke" dancers, the Egyptian trumpeters, the Iranian rugs, and the insanely expensive but almost equally delicious Yemeni honey.
After Arabia the next continent/region that I'll touch on is Africa, which unlike the Middle East was not as plentiful in its countries that were on exhibition. In fact there were no specific African countries at all, there was just one slightly larger than usual building that represented all of the African countries together. My favorites from the Africa section (although it did not have quite as much to show) were the traditional bead bracelets, wood carvings, and the traditional African drummers/vocal singers band.
The next region for us to moon walk into was South Asia, disclaimer: there is no North Asia because it is basically just Russia and I'm counting it in Europe. The South Asia region probably fits at my top because I liked almost all of their countries' shows, the highlights including the Indian Bollywood-style group dancers, the Japanese flutist, and the Afghani coats.
After we finished getting into the zen mode we moved on to what is our second to last section, Europe. Now Europe is a bit strange because it has two outliers, namely Russia and Bosnia who get their own buildings, but then all the other countries are put together into a slightly bigger building adequately labeled "Europe". Much like the Africa building this "Europe" building is a jumble of stores presenting products from all the different countries of central and western Europe. I am sorry to say that this region probably impressed me the least, but I can still point out some of the highlights including the Italian pizza shops, the plentiful jewellery stores, and the Russian dolls of course.
The last region that we find ourselves traveling to is the Americas, the homeland as it were. I'm sorry to say that we got the short straw here, because there are no individual countries for us and in fact there is not even a South and/or North America. Instead in what I believe is one of the smallest buildings (second only to Bosnia), they have squeezed in all the cultures of both continents and slapped an "Americas" label on it. Now I don't want it to seem like I'm being a cry baby but for about one whole third of the world's landmass you'd think they could differentiate it a bit more. Regardless of the space issues the Americas section has some of my favorite buy-able items including cowboy boots, mini llamas, dream catchers, Mexican sombreros, and neon T-shirts.
So after we finished admiring our own culture like the narcissistic people we are, we went and ate dinner at UNO's (which does seem pretty fitting) and then went home for some much needed sleepy time. That does it for this post, I hope y'all enjoyed and always remember that no matter how great you think the place your living in is, there probably is another culture out there that's more interesting. Thanks for reading and I'll catch you guys in a couple weeks.