Aside from trolling around Dubai, the second and third legs of my trip in the United Arab Emirates centered around spending copious amounts of time relaxing at the Stevens' Family home located at the American University of Sharjah (where Mark works) just outside of Dubai, as well as a trip into eastern UAE to check out the desert mountains lining the Gulf of Oman. The American University of Sharjah was built in the mid/late 1990s and is located in a "University City" neighbored by other institutions of higher education such as the University of Sharjah, the Higher Colleges of Technology, and the Sharjah Academy for Police Sciences. There are all sorts of little specialty "cities" along the Arabian Gulf which are built in order to attract foreign investment and advance the local economy. They are more zones than anything else, but seem to serve their purpose well.

The University City where the American University of Sharjah is located is built in the shape of a huge rectangle with a long central boulevard running down the middle graced by a pleasant grassy island divider and the other schools branching off in their different directions. There are plenty of open lots left so I imagine that the entire area will be built up further in the future as demand for higher education grows. The American University of Sharjah appears to be the crowning jewel of the development project thus far and sits at the terminus of the central boulevard with its large auditorium complex highly visible from afar. Below is a bit of information I sourced on the university's homepage:

The American University of Sharjah (AUS) is a comprehensive coeducational university on the American model being developed in affiliation with the American University in Washington, D.C. AUS is Licensed by UAE Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research & also licensed in the USA by the Department of Education in the state of Delaware as an institution of higher education authorized to offer degrees. Students can earn degrees in 23 majors in addition to MBA, Executive MBA, and MA in Translation and Interpretation, offered by one College and three Schools: Arts and Sciences Architecture and Design Business and Management Engineering The American University of Sharjah (AUS) is a not-for-profit, independent, coeducational institution of higher education formed on the American model. AUS will admit students solely on the basis of their academic qualifications regardless of race, color, gender, religion, disabilities, age or national origin. The creation of a multicultural, coeducational, international academic community is both a means and an end in the mission of the University. The American Model Adapted to Arab Culture AUS takes the example of the great American universities of the 20th century as its point of departure and then carefully adapts that model to the cultural setting of the Gulf in preparation for serving the educational needs of the world of the 21st century.

Fees per Academic Year as of 2002-2003
College of Arts and Sciences	US$ 10,000
School of Business and Management	US$ 11,500
School of Architecture and Design	US$ 12,200
School of Engineering	US$ 11,500
Intensive English Program	US$ 4,800

Here I am standing upon the grassy knoll offramp from the E88 Highway that loops you up and drops you into the entrance of Sharjah University City. Interestingly, the entire area is surrounded by the natural environment of the northeastern Emirates which is loose shifting sand and scrub brush. This makes the university city is a little green gem in the middle of a bone dry desert. I wonder what their water bill runs each month? Above: the university library perched beside the E88 Highway interchange. Above: the entrance gate of Sharjah University City. Above and below: objets d'art ;-}   Above: College of Arts and Sciences

Above: campus mosque Below: View of the auditorium through the late afternoon sunlit arches of the Arts & Sciences Department.

Above: modern rendition of the 19th Century gas lit street lamp. Mercury vapor lights reside within the upper crown of the light fixture which then shine down into the glassless encasing (which I guess wouldn't be an encasing if it doesn't encase anything??) In the background is the minaret of the campus mosque, and like virtually all modern stone-looking architecture anywhere in the world these days, it is made of an artificial lightweight stone which will echo if you walk around tapping on it with your knuckles. (I do this wherever I go and have heard the hollow pings in response from Las Vegas to Riyadh, and I believe that most of this modern architecture won't make it out of the mid 22nd Century in one piece.) Above: fountain in the desert Below: frozen in time, a formation in water which will most likely never occur again. Every moment is unique.   Above and below: more from my interest in foreign street signs. Literally: "Reduce the speed the now" and: "You make spacious the road"

On the last day of my visit to the United Arab Emirates, Mark, Jennifer, Diana, Joey and I all piled into their car and set out along the Emirates 88 Highway and headed out due east toward the Gulf of Oman in order to take a nice drive through the desert mountains near the sea. We had though about heading north of Dubai to meander through the rocky outcropping of the Omani Musandam Peninsula jetting into the Strait of Hormuz, but figured that since Mark didn't have his passport on him that it might be best if we just stuck to the Emirati side of things since we didn't want to get to the boarder and then subsequently be rejected entry. Driving out to the east along the E88 Highway let us swing south of the Peninsula and avoid the rather tricky border forming both countries in the this area. As you can see in the accompanying map, the main part of Oman to the south and then two enclaves peppered to the north, including a *tiny* piece of land just inland of the Gulf encircled by a series of Emirati highways, and then the Musandam Peninsula just north of that.

The trip started with us leaving the grassy oasis of Sharjah University City and entering back into the rolling sandy landscape of the Emirate of Sharjah. Since it was the beginning of December, the weather was clear and beautiful with temperatures in the mid 70Fs/20Cs and there was no overbearing heat or sun to zap our energy levels, as there most definitely would have been if it had been summer. We drove for about an hour along the E88 Highway which isn't that terribly scenic, unless prickly little bushes and dust are your thing. We passed through the small down of Ad-Dhaid, which was definitely much less cosmopolitan and ritzy than Dubai, and continued back into the desert where we filled up at a conveniently placed roadside gas station. (Interestingly, virtually every gas station in the country has a full sized restaurant right beside, a partnership business apparently).

Above: an Arab man standing beside an Emirati government highway sign listing the good things the Sheikhs are doing for the country, namely, financing the construction of the roadway. Below: a group of Pakistani laborers walking along the highway through an oasis of date trees most likely returning from or going to work.

Above: a rather nice shot of the roadway racing off toward a rocky outcropping. Above: roadsigns stating, "I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is the messenger of Allah." Above: a somewhat more secular message. Above: Dibba upon the sea, just 20km (13mi) away. Above: while this may seem a bit far fetched, as we descended the final slope toward the opening of the mountains near Dibba and the Gulf of Oman, I was reminded strangely of the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz, an odd modern industrial Arabian desert version of it at least. Needless to say, we weren't greeted by anyone upon entering the valley below who might have air-ballooned us back to Kansas! Above: entering Dibba Above: a man and his vegetable Above: life in the eastern Emirates along the Gulf Coast. Pakistani/Indian laborers riding in the back of trucks while the Emiratis wandered around. The eastern part of the country seemed quite a bit more conservative than did Dubai and Sharjah and I was suprised by the near total absence of women in public, excepting this woman above. If you look closely, however, you will notice that she is sporting a muzzle across her face which apparently prevents her from conversing with any unrelated males, thereby preventing her from falling into sin. Above: two Emirati men walking along the street beside a Japanese Nissan Maxima. You can tell that the men are Emirati by the way they tie their head covering in the back. Above: a Gulf Arab walking along the street with a small group of Indians chatting it up nearby. Above: me upon a breakwater jetting out into the Gulf.

Above: the Dibba coastline looking south Above and below: a small harbor along the Dibba waterfront   QuickTime Movie : 8.7mb A Man and an Emirati Breakwater Recommended for broadband users only! Above: strangely, the spelling of Dibba changed to Daba somewhere between this picture and 20km back when we last saw a sign for the town. Now, I can understand the transliteration changing in English since different people spell things differently, depending on who's doing the transliterating, but the name also changed in Arabic by gaining the extra squiggly letter hamza on the far left of the word! Or maybe I was really in a place called Daba and not Dibba after all?!? The mind reels. . . Above: Welcome to Oman! Somehow we had all expected that entry into Oman would be a little trickier than simply smiling at a sign and walking across the street, but so it was. Our fear of traveling north-east out of Dubai up to the Musandam Peninsula and not being granted entry was proven unfounded as we had circled around south on a different route and landed at the south-eastern frontier of the Musandam Peninsula totally unimpeded. Passports not required! As a matter of fact, there was nobody even there at the border as there wasn't even a border patrol crossing booth! Clearly Oman and the United Arab Emirates share very friendly relations with one another if a sign is all that's needed to jump back and forth between nations. Since entry into Oman had been so easy, we all thought it'd be fun to drive into the Omani mountains a little bit to see what was there and that perhaps we could just spend the rest of the day making our way up to Musandam's capital city of Khasab, which my Lonely Planet: Middle East book describes as "bursting with activity, much of it involving the smuggling of US cigarettes to Iran." It sounded like an interesting enough place to visit, so after walking around the harbor breakwater and corniche, we sped off toward the mountains thinking we could reach our destination within two hours perhaps. Above and below: unfortunately for us and our dream of traversing the mountainous peaks of the Musandam Peninsula, shortly after exiting Dibba (Daba?) along our way north we were greeted by a sudden cessation of pavement and a sign which said Khasab 110km this a-way pointed straight toward a rather ominous set of jagged mountains faulting off into every which direction. "Hmm. . . 65 miles along this little dirt road in a Toyota Corolla that goes only God knows where and it's already 3 p.m. . . Maybe going up to Khasab isn't such a brilliant idea after all?" We sat there in a wafting cloud of our own kicked up dust and pondered our options for a few minutes and then decided that Khasab would have to wait for my next trip to the Emirates when we would have both more time and an all-terrain vehicle to get us there. In the mean time we would just drive until we spoted somewhere interesting to photograph and then turn around and head south toward Fujairah around sunset in order for everyone to break their day's fasting, and then eventually back to Sharjah later in the evening.

After driving a little ways into the Musandam mountains in search of somewhere or something interesting to photograph before the road got to treacherous, we stumbled upon just what we were looking for: a pile of rocks. OK, it might not have been the most exciting find imaginable, but at least it was something! So we stopped, disembarked the little Toyota, and started snapping pictures. The dilapidated structure was unmentioned in my little book, so I just told myself that it was the ancient burial ground and worshiping site of generations of nomadic tribes people long since gone. In reality though, this crumbling pile of rocks was probably no more than 20 years old and most likely made by space aliens. ;-} Above: someone's ass on a rock. Above and below: a dry river bed descending from the mountains.   Above: space junk? Above: Daniel and a tree in a riverbed somewhere in the Middle East. Above and below: mysterious stone structure   Above: unknown

Above: this random ass was following us around everywhere we went and we eventually slowly chased it down the dirt road back into Dibba for at least a kilometer or two because for some strange reason it insisted on running IN FRONT OF the car instead of just jumping the little 6-inch (15cm) embankment along side the road to get out of our way. I suppose they're called jack asses for a reason. . . If they were smart, they'd be called something else. Above: zany little trees and rocky hills along the southern frontier of the Musandam Peninsula. (274kb, 36sec) Above: after walking around the dry riverbed area for a while and snapping some pictures of the hilly surroundings, we decided to head back toward Dibba so that we could hop on the E99 Highway and head south along the coast of the Gulf of Oman toward Fujairah where we would then jump on E89 to E88 and finally make our way back to the Stevens household in Sharjah. Since Mark and Jennifer had been fasting for the Ramadan holiday and hadn't eaten all day long, we decided to stop at a little Indian roadside food stall which served up all sorts of greasy fare as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon. See that big round vat at the bottom of the picture? That's a giant tub of boiling hot oil where *anything* that falls into it gets fried to a heart-clogging crips and then gets tossed into a series of little paper bags and then wrapped in blue plastic and handed over to you to scarf down as you get back on the highway. I don't think I've ever eaten so much grease in one setting! But hey, it was cheap, and when you're in the middle of nowhere and you're hungry, you can't exactly be choosy, ya know? As for the audio file, it's just a little snippet I took while standing there waiting for our food with a sunset prayer call in the background. Above: sunset over the eastern United Arab Emirates. Above: yet another street sign. Below: blurry night image as we raced through Fujairah.   Above: street signs and more street signs! We eventually made it back to Sharjah long after sunset and were totally bushed once we straggled through the the front door of the Stevens house. I tell ya, driving across a country and wandering through the desert is a lot more energy intensive than you might think! The evening turned out to be a short one (going to bed at midnight instead of 4 a.m., which is more common during Ramadan!) and we turned in early. I had a flight to catch the next morning so I packed my suitcase before bed and prepared myself for the second half of my vacation adventure: Muscat, Oman. P.S. - Unending thanks and gratitude go to Mark and his family for their generous hospitality in opening up their home for me to stay at for an entire week. I had a wonderful time and look forward to seeing them all again in the future!

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