15 May 2016, Dubai

Sunday, 15 May, was a working day here in Dubai.  It is their equivalent of Monday as their week is Friday - Saturday.  

We decided to sit and have breakfast at the street side cafe at the street corner near the hotel.  My travelling companion was the only female sitting there.  Where do all the women sit to eat around here in casual places?  Being a foreigner has some advantages.  You are not expected to adhere to tradition especially the merchants who are trying to make a living. 

Breakfast was fish burger with chips, something that looked like MacDonald's fare.  Unlike Turkey where breakfast was delicious, freshly prepared with a variety of local produce, here most of the corner stores are run by ethnic Indians so one suspects that the fare is more Indian than traditional Arab.  We love Indian food but not for breakfast.  However, the traditional coffee was similar to that available in Singapore and delicious.

As we ate breakfast, we noticed several men picking up heavy sacks and loading them on to a truck.  They were dressed in the usual traditional long thin cotton over-shirts over loose cotton pants of the same colour.  Manual labour is not even considered manual labour (if you can get my gist).  Everything is manually executed in this part of town - I did not see trolley or lifting mechanism.  The men were paid a few dirhams each for the 10 minutes of ferrying sacks of something between two points.  And they then sat down on the sidewalk.  I wonder if this is the reason why there are so many men sitting around on sidewalk in the old city .... are they casual workers indicating their availability?

After a quick breakfast, we decided to check out the Deira fish market - it is the largest in the city and a traditional one to boot.  It opened at 5 am.  Having visited fish markets in Tokyo and Busan, I wonder whether these would also offer breakfast of fish ....  
There was only one offering cooked breakfast - grilled shark. There was a dry section as well as a wet section.  The dry section deals with dried fish of all type.  The wet section was the busiest with the workers in uniform cleaning the fish for sale that day.



All the work was done by men, including buying the fish.  We spied only two foreign women in the entire fish market. Never had we felt more conspicuous.

We next head to the fresh fruits and vegetables market. There were few women there too. It was quite a surprise as in Asia and Africa, usually the womenfolks tended the stalls at the market and did the shopping for the family.  

All commodities were being moved around manually on trolleys with some in wheel barrows operated by men.  And if one happened to be shopping heavily, one could even get help to move the boxes of goods.  We did not stay long to browse.

We made for the nearest metro station - Palm Deira station to go to our next destination for the day - the Palm Jumierah.  The metro was more packed so the ability to ride in the women and young children section was a plus.  It was really packed but not as bad as the general cabin.  There is even a gold class cabin on the metro where one pays double the fare of others to sit in comfortable seats.   Expats stationed in Dubai appear to be those frequenting this section.  A fine is payable for anyone caught in that section who does not have a gold class card.