UAE FTW
January 27 - February 6, 2020
Guess what this is? That’s right, another work trip. Again, my company got hired to do high pressure testing, this time at one of the largest oil refineries in the world, in the middle of the desert. We landed in Abu Dhabi and spent a few days there in the Traders Hotel, Qaryat Al Beri. During this time we had to get some safety training, attend some meetings with the client, and get a health screening at an absolute madhouse of a clinic (this was right before covid). We went to this health clinic where there was a constant stream of workers who were all trying to get the same things done as us. We had to get our vision checked, an x-ray, our breathing checked, an ekg, and a few other tests done while we didn’t speak any Arabic. We got a lot of dirty looks when our client liaison grabbed our paperwork and walked us to the front of the lines for each room and told them to take us next, even though we were okay with waiting. Following the time in Abu Dhabi, we made our way west to Al Ruwais, where there is a small town near the absolutely monstrous oil refinery that is out there. We ended up staying at a small company town ran by the refinery as we were told the royal family rented out all the hotel rooms at the hotel we were supposed to stay at for two weeks for a wedding. There were individual little houses with a living room, bedroom, tiny kitchen, and bathroom (and surprisingly wifi). They had a mess hall where food was cooked for us every night. A fun story in the mess hall: they had something that they called “green peppers” that literally looked like peas in the pod that were RIDICULOUSLY spicy. One of my coworkers accidentally ate one and started coughing and his face flushed, and we said, “there’s no way it’s that bad”, so we each tried one. It was the hottest thing I have ever eaten. My face got bright red and my eyes watered a lot while my throat was on fire. It was insane. Another fun story from the camp, my coworker brought his PlayStation, and we were able to play Fortnite online (hey it was still big then) and I was actually able to get a win in the middle of the desert. #gamer. After about a week in the camp/working at the site, we headed back to Traders in Abu Dhabi. The client organized for us to go on a “desert excursion” where we drove a couple hours east and slightly south of Abu Dhabi, again in the middle of the desert. While there, we jumped in a SUV and the driver drove us crazily over the tops of some sand dunes, we rode camels, we rode quads (I flipped mine getting some air off of a sand dune lol), and then watched some traditional dancing while eating and smoking hookah. And that pretty much concludes the UAE escapade. I also want to shout-out Gope and JB who were our site contacts and they cracked me up.
Here’s the first set of photos from driving around and through Abu Dhabi. The large temple is the Sheikh Zayed Mosque; unfortunately we were unable to go inside or explore it. We had a few meetings in the city, and had an adventure where the driver had to track down SIM cards for our phones, which we didn’t even end up using. The food photo at the end was called “pure” but I don’t know if that’s right.
The next set of photos is from Trader’s Hotel. It had a private beach with access to the small waterway that leads to the Persian Gulf. We did not swim in it, the water looked kinda nasty. The chairs were super comfy though. Also reread the sign for the playground. The ending photos are us driving to the desert camp in Ruweis, and a cool looking bridge. I dunno, architecture. The small shack was were I stayed in Ruweis.
Next up is the desert excursion. The contact set it up for us, and a driver picked us up and drove us into the desert. We had no idea what was happening as we got out of our drivers car and immediately got ushered into an SUV of a stranger. He then absolutely tore ass across some sand dunes while blasting some Arabic trap bangers. It was a blast. After about 20 minutes of that, he pulled back around to where we started and we rode a camel around a track. Then we jumped on some quads and drove them around an enclosed area. There was a photographer taking pictures of us, hence the amazing quality of the photos below. I managed to flip my quad by punching the throttle while going over the dune, somehow no one saw it besides one of the other guy's riding quads. After the quads, we ate dinner and smoked hookah while watching belly dancers, some traditional dances, and some fire twirlers. I will upload some videos of that if possible.
This is the last photo from the UAE, which was most of the crew (minus Dad, not my literal father, just the one project manager that AJ and I call Dad) with our two client contacts Gopendar (Gope) and John Benjamin (JB). They were dope, look at Gope throwing up the DEUCES. I hope you enjoyed these photos, let me know which ones caught your fancy.
