Sunday, June 10, 2012

Caught by the magic of the Middle East

Dubai, a shopping heaven...

Hey all welcome to our last entry!!!

After a long time of humidity and Thai food we are quite happy to experience a desert feeling again. Dubai is one of the most influencing cities in the United Arab Emirates due to its growing economy and wealth. One of the main status symbols is the highest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. If you are born in Dubai, Sheikh Muhammad bin Raschid Al Maktum provides you a home for you and your family. However, if you look at the population of Dubai you realize that almost 90% are foreigners. However, you still see many Emiratis where men wearing white robes and their wife’s are covered in black.
Although the skyline looks like a part of the future Dubai has still houses of living with a strong oriental flair according to their sand colors, round windows and lots of flowers and palm trees. Next to that you have huge shopping malls that contain really all kind of shops and articles your heart dreams of…especially mine.
For that reason we went on the first day to the Mall of the Emirates, which has next to millions of shops also an artificial ski hall! I went crazy and I think I spent too much money here. Mike couldn’t stop me this time…

220 000 square meters of shops!!

Let's go and have fun in the snow...
The idea that someone would be that crazy to build up a ski hall in the middle of the desert was so fascinating that we couldn’t resist the temptation and got us a ticket for a Arabian “Hüttengaudi”, do zorbing, “rodln” and going up the artificial mountain via a chair lift.


A chair lift fixed on the roof...

Rodln...

Snowboarder with kaftan.
The ice channel, called mountain thrill, is really exciting. This was the fastest and best “rodl” ride we ever did.

A clearly astonishing experience is the contrast, when you walk out from -10°C (cold nose, no feelings in my feet) to +50°C – it feels a little bit like walking straight into an oven…

The next day we had enough of snow and went to the Jumeira Beach Park, a huge park with access to the white beach and the crystal clear water (>30°C). It is not allowed to take photos at the beach and as a woman you have to wear a swim suit. Nevertheless, no one accepted this rule. Spending the morning on the beach we realized that the women here are really looking, like in the fairytale of “1000 and one night”; no wonder most of them are covered during the day, although they haven’t covered their incredible beautiful eyes so the whole thing is pointless. Mike even saw one or two ladies which were wearing just a g-string under their black robes – even strong religious constraints cannot prevent the slut in some of us to break free ;)

Jumeira Beach Park
In the afternoon we went to Burj Khalifa. As I said before that is the tallest building in the world with a height of more than 800 m providing 200 floors of luxurious apartments, congress centers, hotels, Armani mansions, etc. Imagine, its surface equals 17 soccer fields and it has more than 24000 glass windows, from where they collect more than 15 million liters of condense water a year. The elevator that brings you up to the observation platform (just 124th floor) takes just 1 min…yes you ears are plugged when u arrive there.

We could see the Burj Khalifa already from our hotel!

The park infront of the Burj Khalifa
infront of it...

Let's go on the top!

Have a look on the skyline...and the sand...
 On the observation deck (452 m) you feel already very high but if you look up you realize that it can be even higher…

Look up on 124 floor...

...and at night...
 Next to this astonishing monument, you have again… a shopping mall (the biggest in the world)…Dubai mall!

Dubai mall from inside...

...from the top...

...and at night!
 My shopping sensor was activated again and my little demon inside forced me to go into the GUESS by Marciano shop…
Finally outside the shopping mall, u can experience one of the greatest water fountain shows in the world; it starts playing classical music along with a water fountain ballet dancing to the music.

That was definitely a great final for our journey and we are happy to see u guys again and share some of our exiting stories and pictures (and videos) with you!



 Kisses jiny and Mike

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Castaway in the Gulf of Thailand

Dear all;)

Get ready for our new travel blog entry...there we go:

After we managed to get ot of Bangkok without a hangover or getting into serious troubles, we arrived safely on the beautiful island of Samui (Ko is the Thai word for island). The visit of this island had just one purpose...I wanted to learn Muay Thai kick boxing - and I did.

The gym
The schedule was pretty tough: session 1 was from 8-10 in the morning and session 2 from 5-7 in the evening. In between I couldn't really do anything else than just relax and there was almost no time for party, as I really needed the sleep to survive this thrill.

...you're in the army now...
Take that!
Kick it...
Mike isn't really into kicking people or objects and decide to spend most of the time in the gym. They had a fully equipped fitness gym next to the boxing rings and as he hadn't been in a gym for so long, it was really hard to get him anywhere else.

After a few days I started to NOT feel my body all the time anymore and finally became friends with the punching bag...


Our kinky mascot still didn't get it's punishment for the turmoil it caused at the airport in Singapore and now we were at the right place to do so:


One thing you defenitely have to do when you come to Thailand is elephant trekking; this was an incredible experience. Compared to horseback riding the elephant doesn't really seem to feel any difference, if someone is sitting on it or not - and there is literally nothing in the jungle, that could stop it. It's really funny when the tiny Mahoud (Elephant guide) is trying to make the elephant to continue on the trek, when it decided to eat the next tree - there is only one thing you can do...wait!
We could also ride on the elephant's neck - that felt really odd. This gives you an idea, what real power is:)







Well, no party at all doesn't really work for us, so we jumped into the night life of Samui on a Friday night  - with ambivalent experiences. We went to club sound, which is a very nice club with good music but the gogos are an absolute no-go...


The situation is pretty much the same as everywhere in Thailand. First the guys try to pick up a Western girl - meanwhile the concentration of Thai "girls" in the club rises exponentially with every hour - at around 3am the lucky ones leave and the others are left behind - but not for long. As soon as the amount of foreign girls (a natural spacer) decreases, they start to attack. Most of the times it's really hard to tell if it's a girl or something in between, but one thing is for sure: nobody goes home alone unless he really, really wants to.



On that night we unintentionally stumbled into the shop of a tailor with very convincing sales skills. After initial doubts we decided to get ourselfs a tailor-made suit/dress as the price is really unbelievable low. To our surprise the first fitting took place already the next day. As the results were convincing, Mike decided to get himself two more suits and 6 tailor-made shirts - just to point that out: It was Saturday evening and the tailor knew, that he would have only until Tuesday...it was 7:45pm...and at 9:30 Mike had already the first fitting for the new suits!!! If you order a suit in Austria, you usually wait about 4-5 weeks for the first fitting. On Sunday Mike decided to also get 3 vest to his suits; on Monday evening I ordered another tailor-made dress - and on Tuesday evening we picked up the complete order of 3 full suits, 6 shirts, 3 dresses and 5 ties for free - for about €1000. Its also worth to mention that this price includes only the finest material - everything we ordered (except the shirts) is made of 50% cashmere, 50% silk. For that material you'd pay in Austria at least €2000 for one suit alone... Have a look on the results:

The suit Mike wanted to have...
Mike with Peter before the final adjustments...
me and Mike dressed up;)
Peter and his crew did really an awesome job, for an unbeatable price and at the speed of light. If anyone is interested in having tailor-made stuff (suits, dresses, shirts, shoes,...) let us know - they ship worldwide. Anyway I would recommend to go there the first time so that they can take your measures, and then you can re-order at any time. 14 days of Thailand + a couple of suits is still cheaper than one suit at home...and very often the Austrian tailor just take the measures and order from Thailand; Mike's last one did that too and this is probably the reason, why it takes them so long to get them ready.




After getting beaten up and dresses in Samui it was time to party again and so we took the ferry to Koh Phangan.


We stayed at Black & White bungalows at Haad Rin beach, were the world famous full moon party takes place. Every evening there are fire shows, games and lots of party on the beach.


One game was to set a pole on fire by breathing fire - I hadn't ever done it with liquids before, but my skills were good enough to win the competition immedieately - have a look:


I even won a bucket of alcohol for that, but I didn't get too much of it because of my thirsty mascot :(


 Well, not all of the contesters did it with so much style as I did...

Borat on fire...
Beside partying every evening I did a wakeboard course for 4 days - really, really cool!!! I think I will continue wakeboarding on the Donausinsel this summer...as well as Muay Thai boxing;)

A gas station on the way...

I'm to sexy for my board...
On Sunday a friend of us we got to know in Rio visited us in Pha ngan. As we had one extra bed in our hotel room...and we got to know each other on couchsurfing, we hosted him for three nights until the full moon party.

Our friend Faou with our mascot;)
The full moon party took place on Thuesday evening...and it was savage. Thousands of people on the beach...in the pouring rain!

me, Faou and Mike

...but as you can see in the next pic, I was in party mood and there was nothing that could have stopped me...

me in party mood
...not even Thai rain. Its not like rain we have back home - its like beeing under the shower...

Mike under the "shower"
The party continued until dawn and around 6am the beach was still full of peolpe. As we had to catch the ferry back to Samui at 11:40 it was time now to go home and say good bye to Pha ngan.


Thailand is really and awesome place to work out, relax and have fun...

Tomorrow we will get on the plane again and fly into the desert...to Dubai.

With this nice shot I say good bye this time and see you soon in the UAE.


Kisses

Jiny