Twitter Rant Reprised - Bored in the Emirates?

If you wanted the places I outlined in my Twitter diatribe earlier this week in one handy post, you need go no further. Here, for your delectation and delight, are a number of interesting places in the UAE you can go visit at the weekend - particularly as the cool weather she is upon us. Links in bold are to Google maps pins.

I'll be posting a lot more of these, in more detail, but here are the original candidates just for starters.

Meet Al Dhayah Fort, which you'll find north of Ras Al Khaimah. 400 men women and children holed up here for three days withstanding British bombardment in December 1819. There was no food or water for them - many were simple farmers from the date plantations inland of Rams, chased through the plantations by British bluecoats with bayonets. The fall of Dhayah marked the fall of the Al Qasimi Federation and led to the Trucial States. You can park up next to the fort and take a walk up to it: I'd recommend something to cover your head and a lot of cool water to hand.

Have a walk around and wander up to the Iron Age fort at Jebel Buhais - the largest and oldest necropolis in the UAE, it dates back 7,000 years and tells of a human history of nomadism as well as giving us clues to the 'dark millennium' when humankind abandoned the west coast. You'll find Wadi Suq and other burials littering the sides of the mountain and this here Iron Age fort, discovered by an Iraqi archaeological team back in 1974, which you can walk up to and explore freely. Again, cover your head and take plenty water. Please note, I got this shot in before the drone fly zones changed and Jebel Buhais is now WITHIN the no-fly zone, so please don't try and get an aerial shot. If you want one, ping me and I'll send it you.

Mahatta Fort in Sharjah. Here landed the HP42 Heracles, the biplanes that connected the 1930s 'Empire Route' from Croydon to Australia. You'll find the history all in the museum, housed in the fort built in 1932 to house the Imperial Airways passengers and guard against 'improbable bedouin raids'... There's more info from me here about the fort and museum.

Take a trek around Jebel Hafit in Al Ain and visit the reconstructed 5,500 year-old Hafit Era tombs that litter the foothills of the mountain - they're a bit Star Wars, TBH. Zip around the other side of the mountain to take the 13 KM climb to the top. You can stay up on the mountain at the Mercure Hotel, overlooking the forbidding Rub Al Kali desert or just have a chai at the café up top...

Wander around Ajman Fort, probably the most charming museum in the UAE. It was the Ruler's House right up until 1967 and, oddly enough, was invaded in 1920 by the headman of the place in Sharjah where I live, Abdulrahman Al Shamsi. He made a bit of a mess in the process... The displays include an 'old souq', which is just cute.

The nice thing about Ajman Museum, BTW, is its very authenticity. It's not trying too hard, it's not all consultants and glitz. It's truly a snapshop of life here before modernity came a-knockin'...

Here's Masafi Fort, up in the cool mountains above the Dhaid plain. There's an example of an old falaj waterway inside the museum, which is surrounded by traces of the Iron Age settlement of Masafi, including copper mines that used to provide exports to Sumeria 5,000 years ago.

This is a 'Murabbaa', a fortification or watch-tower. These are to be found all over the UAE and every one tells a story - from Deira's Burj Nahar through to the three towers (this is one, the Western Tower) which guard the wadi at Falaj Al Mualla, deep in the desert. Every one of them is a piece of human history... Falaj Al Mualla has a sweet fort/museum and the wadi here is usually lush and a great winter drive - so is a nip up into the desert and the amazing ghaf forest you'll find there.

Here's Sheba's Palace in RAK (properly, the Shimal Fort), an early Islamic era fortification in Shimal - there are extensive Wadi Suq Era burials around here, too. RAK is also home to many Umm Al Nar and Wadi Suq era finds, the world's longest zipline, the lost maritime city of Julphar with its links to C8th trade with China. RAK Museum is fab, too...

Have a trip to the East Coast, pass by the 10,000 graves of men lost in the Ridda Wars at Dibba, visit Bidya Mosque and marvel at the Portuguese Fort there, itself built of stones recovered from an Umm Al Nar fort and burial site. Stay at Al Aqah's beach hotels or camp there...

Stay in one of my favourite hotels ever, the Hatta Fort Hotel - famous, of course, for its chickens - or glamp it up in style at the Adventure Centre with its bike tracks, ziplines and outdoor activities - including kayaking in the mountain lakes of Hatta. Or you can visit the Hatta Heritage Village...

Here you go - a bit of indoor fun. Visit Rain Room in Sharjah, an immersive art experience which lets you walk in the rain and yet stay as dry as a bone (as long as you don't move too fast!). You have to pre-book online for this one, it's a 15-minute giggle-fest. With a Fen Cafe!

See this? This is a carnelian necklace from Saruq Al Hadid, the 'iron path', a major Iron Age metallurgical centre out in the desert near Marmoom. Most carnelian jewels found in the UAE come from the Harappan Civilisation of the Indus Valley. Mysterious and amazingly rich, the huge trove of bronze, gold, jewellery and weaponry so far found at the Saruq Al Hadid archaeological dig out in the desert near Marmoom (the whole thing, BTW, was discovered by Sheikh Mohammed - and a ring from Saruq Al Hadid gives us the Expo 2020 logo) can be viewed at the Saruq Al Hadid Museum in Shindagha, Dubai.

If you HAVE to go to the Louvre, enjoy things like this decoration from the early Christian church at Sir Bani Yas. You can chat to @Peter_Hellyer about it - he found the whole thing. While you're in Abu Dhabi, visit the Founder's Memorial, an amazing monument to Sheikh Zayed...

Go visit the Heart of Sharjah and enjoy a lavish coffee at the Chedi-managed Al Bait Hotel (take out a mortgage) or any one of innumerable teashops and cafes lining the cool walkways of the souks by the creek. Enjoy museums, art galleries and restoration projects aplenty...

Do let me know how you get on - @alexandermcnabb...

Dubai, the Good Old Days and Sundry Confessions

Okay, it's a fair cop, I'll come quietly. It was me. I done the blag.

We had a bit of a clearout yesterday - chucking out bags of that cruft that seems to assemble around life: old user manuals, bits of laptops that had long been consigned to the inexplicably green 'general waste' Bee'ah dumpster outside our villa. The blue one is meant for recyclable waste, which is a novel idea to implement in a place where there is absolutely zero awareness of recycling, let alone which materials are recyclable (actually depressingly few plastics are actually recyclable) and which are not.

I digress.

We found, as usual when you do this sort of thing, some old treasures. My pair of 1995 'Emirates Internet' 3.5" floppy disks, for instance. Eudora and Netscape Navigator, anyone? The edition of Paris Match featuring an interview with British Expat Alexander McNabb hanging out at the luxurious boutique Park Hyatt hotel, which got me into trouble with France Telecom, with whom I was working in Jordan at the time. "We are paying you too much!", their outraged CEO bellowed at me when we met. He'd read the magazine on the plane over. Oops.

But I digress.

The Internet in just two disks! Marvellous!

One of the things we unearthed was a tatty manila file. And inside it was evidence of My Great Crime, perpetuated the very year those two disks were first clutched in my sweaty hand as I danced out of Etisalat's Sharjah HQ with my Emirates Internet subscription confirmed.

You see, I am - was - TE Chapman.

Not unnaturally, you will be puzzled. That is likely because you won't recall the Emirates in pre-Internet days, when the Gulf News letters page was the nearest thing to a forum or chat room, Facebook or Twitter, you could get. It was all very charming. You'd fax (fax, eh?) your letter in and the next day it would be printed. Then the day after, you'd get a reaction to it. Quaint, no?

The pastime of writing stupid letters to Gulf News was popular before we had electrons to play with. The trick was to write something so blindingly stupid that only a drooling idiot would fail to realise that nipples were being tweaked and toes pulled. But to pitch it just right, so that the letters page editor would let it pass. It was a skill I was to hone over the weeks and months.

I recall one particularly mad thread developed around the issue of plant pots on apartment balconies. One prominent expat got away for weeks with a correspondence based on his keen interest in scatology and wondering if there were any other like minded scatologists interested in grouping together to found a society. It was a common thing to find, expats writing in to say they were interested in Scottish history from 1814-1826 and wondered if there were etc etc. It was, literally, weeks before the GN letters editor was apprised that scatology is the study of faeces and the correspondence abruptly closed.

We had more time back then, alright?

Anyway, I digress.

Many of the contributors to the GN Letters Page back in the day were (arguably) unduly concerned with British imperialism, colonialism and any other ism you care to name. It seemed to be the work of just a few seconds to conceive a character who would be a rabid colonialist and set about baiting various hapless victims who had otherwise been passionate about exposing the evils of orientalism and the like.

TE Chapman was actually one of the various names adopted by arch colonialist, hero figure and shortarse Thomas Edward 'TE' Lawrence (Ronald Storrs, the British governor of Mandate Palestine, referred to him as 'Little Lawrence') AKA Lawrence of Arabia. See what I did there?

For quite a while, the GN letters page lit up with fiery denunciation and towering polemic. Chapman incited controversy and thundered away, enraging his audience with joyful consistency until, one day, a foolish young colleague 'outed' him as a nom de plume and Chapman's career was brought to an abrupt end.

They're all in that file. Yellowed, stuck to the daily faxes that went off to GN, a record of my undoubted glee at being quite so successful in being a right royal pain in the butt to so many people.

I was younger, back then, m'lud. That's me only defence.

But yes, it was me alright...

Back

See you, pal? See you?

It's been nigh on a year, don't yer know. Have I missed y'all? Truth is, not so much. I've spent some time doing face to face chatting with some of the people I've known online, which has been lovely. I've been busy with one thing and another and have rarely had the time to think about blogs and suchlike. I've even been taking Twitter very lightly.

One issue with my little online Tamagochi was feeding it. What do I have to say every day? When I started this here thing up in 2007, there was loads to say and I was happy to devote half an hour or so each day to saying it. A whinge here, a snark there, a giggle every now and then - it was all such fun, Pip. But with the passage of time, it started to feel like an obligation - and that, as I wrote in the last post almost a year ago, was when I decided to leave things lie a while.

But the other day, I had cause to post a bunch of tweets about what's around us, here in the UAE. And an awful lot of people perked up and said things along the lines of 'Really? I didn't know about that!'.

And, for reasons which shall become clear in the weeks and months to come, I have had reason to explore many of these things and places myself, often with a depth you'd not normally, reasonably, afford 'em. Added to that, one of my favourite things is taking friends and family around the place - I confess to greatly enjoying the role of tour guide.

So I think I might take to posting about the UAE that's around us, often hidden in plain sight. Let's see where that takes us...