anyway, friday we went to dubai to dragon mart, which is a huge "chinese" mall shaped like a dragon (it zigs and zags and has pointy roofs like the scales of a dragon). i put chinese in quotes b/c most of the vendors inside (over 4000) are chinese corporations. lots of the goods are from china (what isn't, really), but not all. my favorite was checking out the corporation names on the storefronts. my two favorites:
east china vibrator company (but they didn't sell vibrators)
rambo domination (sly must have really made an impression on someone)
we were looking for stuff for the factory (and i wanted to check it out since i heart asia), but didn't find everything. it was interesting (they sold a LOT of quads and ATVs, and had a large selection of off-road vehicles for young kids, not kidding), but on the whole, too overwhelming.
we got there early-ish (like 12:15 - hey, it's the weekend), but saw that it didn't open until 2. dragon mart is situated near "international city", which is a development of apartments (condos?) that is still being constructed. there are different clusters of buildings, and each is supposed to look like the country after which it is named. some kind of catch the feel of the style, like italy. the others were not so close - france, england, spain (that one was okay), china, morocco, persia...russia was hilarious because it was all gray and drab. all of the other buildings were more colorful. nice tribute, eh? i don't know who came up with that!
on the ground level of these buildings, there are supposed to be shops and markets and restaurants (so people don't have to leave the "city" for every day things). a lot wasn't done, and the place was so huge, that we didn't see over in italy and spain that there was more available. we were somewhere in the middle where the development company was (on the other side of persia) and found a chinese restaurant called "ming palace".
it was super yummy! and the waitresses just LOVED julian. he ate a few nibbles, but amused them by running around back and forth between the rooms of the restaurant. the owner was carrying him, the waitresses - taking him and having him help them push the buttons for the micros screen for the orders. sooooo funny.
people who know me well know that i don't really like chinese food. i should say, i don't like american chinese food. the best food i ever ate was from our neighbor when we were growing up - and they were from taiwan (incidentally, there is a town here called "tawain" and the first time i looked at it closely, i thought it was called "taiwan"), so i don't even know if you can eat food from taiwan from a restaurant.
i ordered stir-fried water spinach, because i LOVE IT, and as usual, anywhere outside of vietnam, no one ever has it because someone has come along before me and ordered it already. :( we had a delicious fried rice, way different than anything i've eaten. singapore-style noodles, which was a thin transparent vermicelli with some greens, curry, egg, chicken and prawns. and a chinese roast chicken, which had SO MUCH FLAVOR. i tell you, the chicken here is damn good. i made some on thursday night for some dinner guests, and it was soooo juicy and tasty. mmmmm.
on the way home from dubai, we stopped in ajman at a nursery to get some plants for our boxes out on the front "porch". got some lovely little flowers, plants and a jasmine tree! yay, i hope it doesn't die. we all know that if i'm left to care for these plants, their days are numbered, unfortunately.
i have to post pictures to this post, but they are still in the camera. i'm going to post it anyway and come back later and add them!
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