Dubai: The Burj Khalifa from Bottom to Top and Top to Bottom

At 2,717 feet (818m), the Burj Khalifa is pretty spectacular! This picture above was taken on the bridge that is visible in the picture below which was taken from the observation deck on the 124th floor of the Burj Khalifa (of 162 floors). That tall building there is The Address Hotel, which is a "mere" 63 stories and 1,004 feet (306m). 

Oman: Khasab and the Khors of Musandam

Over the weekend, I headed up to Khasab in Oman with my best friend. He needed to do a visa run to refresh his UAE visa, and Oman is a popular destination for doing just that in addition to the attraction of the natural beauty of the fjords and the wildlife that lives there. While it's easy to get to Khasab today, it obviously hasn't always been that way and even today the minuscule villages in the fjords themselves are accessible only by boat. After the break, I'll have some photos from Khasab and from the dhow cruise in the fjords.

Getting to Khasab requires a drive along a twisty coast hugging road. In extreme high tides, this road can be flooded but it was just fine this time around. It's a high quality road and relatively recent: Google doesn't even show that it goes all the way to Khasab on their maps!

Once there, there really isn't much to the town itself. It's a small town with apparently some aggressive expansion plans (judging by the new central mosque and a couple of other smaller ones scattered around town in odd, desolate places). Tourism is a big draw here, but even with that there's only two or three places to stay. Another source of income is smuggling electronics and cigarettes to Iran using high speed boats.

As with the rest of the region, night is when people start to come out and when things get active. People meet and eat later here than in Seattle, which makes sense given the heat here, but the mix of people is also obviously different here. In total, we saw perhaps six women during our night out, and three of them were westerners. Public space here is dominated by men at night.

There aren't too many restaurant options, but this one was both busy and offered a spot to sit outside (a sure fire way to get the tourists: It's not that common here). Fortunately, we got lucky and the food was really good. Even though the tables were packed, there main business obviously came from take out since at one point ten cars were lined up to pick up orders from this place.

 The next day we headed out on the fjord. They actually aren't technically fjords, since these are formed by the pressure of tectonic plates versus glacial movements like in Norway, but it's easier to talk with them as if they were. The main difference is that these are more like crumpled paper, with the layers of sediment going any which way according to the pressures while fjords are like a cake slice: Each layer goes more or less the same way.

The area is pretty amazing, but we also had a couple visitors. Dolphins!

Our destination inside the fjord was actually a place called Telegraph island, which was used as a relay station by the British back in the mid 19th century. Today it's a popular (if over used) snorkel spot and the end of the line for us for this particular trip. After an hour or so here and a half a sun burn later, it was time to head back to the UAE and back to Abu Dhabi! Next time, I'll have a piece on Abu Dhabi and the effects of transportation choices (plus a little something from Ferrari World and the world's fastest roller coaster Nah, Ferrari World looked lame)!

Telegraph Island

No access by anything but boat

Food Fridays: Persian Deliciousness

Being in Abu Dhabi and so near to Iran seems like a pretty good excuse to bring up one of the cuisines that I've been introduced to back in Sweden: Persian food. While Seattle has a lot of great foods, one thing that is definitely absent is middle eastern food. To give an example, there are 6 restaurants listed on yelp for the category "Presian/Iranian" and 24 more listed under "Middle Eastern", while there are 123 places in the "Sushi" category listed and 240 listed under "Japanese".

Yeow. We're just well known for it, so it was only here in Stockholm where I first encountered it. Let's take a look at what you might if you went out for Persian Kebab!

Naan o panir o sabzi, to start

 We'll start off with this appetizer, but after the break before moving through our kebab dishes, a traditional dessert from Shiraz, and finally a treat to go with after dinner tea from Esfahan.

Persian food is basic, refined food. They are dishes that are deceptively simple, but at least with the appetizer this one I can actually do at home. Naan o panir o sabzi literally means "Bread and cheese and veggies", which is exactly what we have here. Thin, fresh bread from the oven, feta cheese, walnuts, onion, and in this case fresh basil make for a great combo. It's basically unprocessed, deconstructed pesto and bread, but without the foodie lingo. It would also make a great party or potluck contribution because it's so simple.

Koobideh and Chenjeh Kebab, along with the classic sides.

Shishlik aka Lamb chops

On to the main course, where our meat is waiting. In these pictures we actually have three different kebab types, ranging from a basic ground meat kebab all the way up to fresh lamb chops. The first is called koobideh, which is seasoned beef and lamb mixed cooked on a spit. It's a rich flavor and much more seasoned than the other two, where the flavor of the meat takes center stage. Chenjeh is your classic lamb kebab: Simple, lightly seasoned and perfect with a little onion and lemon, but shishlik is considered to be top of the class. They're lamb chops cooked just like the other kebab: on a spit and over an open coal grill. Like ribs in the States, half the experience of shishlik is using your hands and digging in.

Faloodeh and Saffron Ice Cream

For dessert we have two traditional frozen desserts: Faloodeh and saffron ice cream. The saffron ice cream has a subtle flavor that matches well with the pistachios on top, but the real interesting thing here is the faloodeh. Faloodeh is from Shiraz and is similar to a sorbet made with rose water, regular water, sugar, and rice noodles.

Yes, vermicelli rice noodles. For dessert. Frozen.

While it might sound odd at first, the combination is excellent especially once you add the mandatory squeeze of lime or lemon on it. The mixture ends up being sweet, sour, floral, and just a bit crunchy. It's also an exceedingly light and fresh dessert in comparison to, say, the saffron ice cream pictured here.

Of course, after dessert, it's time for tea. Iranians don't really drink all that much coffee (while here in Sweden diner-quality black coffee is mandatory after virtually every meal, and a latte standard in Seattle), but tea is welcome. To go along with it, there's one last thing for this meal: A bit of gaz.

Gaz

Gaz is a nougat from Esfahan, in central Iran. It's made from the sap of a desert tree, rose water, and pistachio combined into a final candy that is soft, sweet, and highly addictive. With a cup of black or saffron tea, it's the perfect tea snack.

Flight Report: To Abu Dhabi with Lufthansa for $130

Two nights ago I touched down in Abu Dhabi, so visit a friend who is working on the regional rail system that's being planned. The only reason I could afford to come out here on such short notice was that my round trip ticket was a grand total of $130 for taxes and fees.

I used my miles (earned from my trips back to the US last year) to come here, which is why it was so cheap. An award ticket between Europe and the Middle East is only 35,000 miles, which is a steal when you consider that a regular ticket at such short notice is $616 right now. That means a redemption value of 0.014 cents per mile, which is a above average. In short, it's a good deal thanks to the mileage game. If it wasn't for mileage programs I simply wouldn't be here. :)

But how were the actual flights? Well, read on!



The first flight from Arlanda was on an airbus A320 and left at 6:20am. If could have avoided it, I would have especially because getting to Arlanda that early from where I live means being on a bus at 3:20 am. All in all, I'm glad that I did catch this plan because there was a great surprise when I landed in Frankfurt (more on that later).

 

If you read my last report on my flight to Berlin, you'll notice that spring has come to Sweden! The snow has melted and the weather is starting to get warm. The country side is starting to turn green and all of the trees are starting to bud. It's a welcome change to winter!

Overall, the flight itself was pretty uneventful, except for one thing: Down by Denmark, the airspace seemed far more crowded than usual. Two planes past within what must have been one or two thousand feet of us. The first flew directly over us (the top plane), while the second past us flying in the other direction at the same altitude. It's amazing how fast these planes actually travel. From the point that I saw the first plane going over us to the time it past was less than 10 seconds. I barely had enough time to get my camera out and take a picture.

The real treat of the flight was when we about to deplane: As I was pulling down my backpack, a woman says hello. At first I don't believe my eyes, but it was my old professor returning to Seattle from Stockholm! We had enough time to grab a cup of coffee before she had to get to her flight.

Next stop was the A340 to Abu Dhabi, which happened to be the last plane on the tarmac. The bus ride out there was a good 15 minutes alone, but at least we got to "race" an A320 on the way over. Also, I never knew this, but there are a lot of Porsches at FRA driving around on the tarmac. I wonder why, exactly?

On board, I lucked out with a window seat with no one sitting beside me, but was stuck over the wing (I always seem to be over the wing). The flight less eventful than the first, with a red curry chicken dish and a little easter bunny for dessert.

As we started our approach though, there was an amazing sight that I couldn't get on camera for the live of me: The moon here turn bright orange because of all the sand and dust in the air and the city of Dubai is lit up at night. I caught the moon juxtaposed behind the Burj Khalifa. The sillohuette was just visible with a red dot marking the top leagues above any other building in Dubai. It was a great sight, but impossible to capture from a moving plane (especially with the cabin lights on). There was only enough light to get a couple shots of the ground.

Abu Dhabi Airport

Overall, a good flight! I was really happy to see my old professor and be able to treat her to a cup of coffee. Such a random encounter!

Where am I now?

More soon....

What people do for miles: An Epic Mileage Run

I mentioned in an earlier post that the mileage game can work in your favor if you watch out for the pitfalls, but some people take this stuff seriously. In this post, I give a tribute to a FlyerTalk member known as "colonius" who decided he wanted to keep his top tier elite status with United in December of last year, but found that he was some 47,000 miles short. What to do?

A mileage run of epic proportions: 47,000 miles in 11 days.

SEA-DEN-HNL-LAX-SFO-SYD-MEL-SYD-SFO-LAX-HNL-SFO-ORD-MUC-CGN-MUC-FRA-SFO-HNL-SFO-SEA.

That's Seattle to Denver to Honolulu to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Sydney (Australia) to Melbourne back to Sydney back to San Francisco to Los Angeles back to Honolulu and back again to San Fransisco then to Chicago to connect to Munich (Germany) to Paris (France) to Frankfurt (Germany) to, once again, San Francisco and out to Honolulu one last time before heading back to Seattle via San Francisco one final time. All in 11 days. $3,000 for the tickets, all economy (before his upgrades). I don't even want to calculate how much time he actually spent on the plane and in the airports.

So why on earth would you do this just for honor of being "1K", or an upper tier elite? Does this sort of thing even make sense?

Well, maybe.

Consider:

• With his current elite bonus, he'll earn 94,000 redeemable miles. That's almost two tickets to Europe or two tickets to the Caribbean plus one domestic ticket or one and a half tickets to Asia or half of a round the world ticket.
• During his mileage run, he got several upgrades to first class due to his elite status. If he is flying a lot next year, he'll keep getting those upgrades.
• Those 47,000 miles go towards his lifetime mileage on United, which at 1,000,000 miles gets you free elite status for life. That's 4.5% of that goal done in 11 days. 
• In his case in particular, he did have business in Europe so at least PART of the trip was work related

colonius, I salute your tireless pursuit of miles and your truly epic mileage run.

Hey! You! Follow me!

Over the next few months, I'm going to be traveling more than usual which means fresh and interesting places will be appearing here between now and the end of the year. If you've been enjoying my blog and where I've been so far (not to mention my tips and tricks for making travel even easier and better), why not subscribe?

Here's a preview of where I'll be going between now and August (yes, August):

• I'll be headed to Abu Dhabi and Oman for a week to visit a friend working on a major planning project there. While there, we'll be headed up to Dubai for a couple of days to visit the Burj Khalifa. 
• Istanbul and the Greek Isles are also on my list for late May. My girlfriend and I will be headed to Athens, Milos, Santorini, and Naxos before heading back to Stockholm.
• A week after that, I depart for Russia. I'll start in St. Petersburg and work my way east through Moscow, Vladimir, Tomsk, and Irkutsk before swinging south for a few days in Mongolia.
• Plus, there's always my regular tips, international McDonald's reports, and food Fridays. 
• Oh, and any developments in regard to Kindlefish will be posted here as well.

Sound interesting? I think so!

Kindlefish - Update for K1/K2/DX Users

I just wanted to give an update on what's going on with Kindlefish and to clarify the situation for users of the Kindle 1, 2, and DX models. I've had some great help from Charlie Wallace of Encinitas, CA with getting Kindlefish to working on the K1, and recently my friend loaned me his DX Graphite to get to the bottom of what can be done for previous generations of the Kindle. Combined, it's given a clear picture about what's going on.

For users of the Kindle 3G, you can ignore this post. Kindlefish works for you. If you can see the site, you can translate! If you can't, it's a temporary outage of the website and not an issue with your device. :)

For users of the K1, K2, and DX, Kindlefish works for you two, but with one caveat: There is no support for languages that use non-Latin characters, like Japanese, Greek, or Russian, among others. Unfortunately, this is a limitation of the Kindle itself. ごめんなさい! I will keep an eye out for a solution, but the tools that would be able to solve aren't available through an API to the public from Google yet. If I see a work around, I'll put it in there. In the mean time, I've finished up a Kindlefish version just for you guys. It's available here.

A more permanent fix that you can do yourself is to jailbreak your kindle and install the expanded font support that Amazon left out (plus you'll get the ability to set custom screen savers!). The MobileRead Wiki has the details on how to do this, and there's another nice write up over here at howtogeek, but as with all unofficial modifications this comes with a disclaimer. Font and screen saver hacks seem to be very safe and easily reversible, but the usb networking hack comes with a more strongly worded warning. While these hacks should be safe, please do your research before hand!

Kindlefish has been tested and works on the Kindle 1 (B001), the Kindle DX Graphite (B009), and Kindle 3G (B006). 

Asian languages are unfortunately not supported by the device itself

Kindlefish ought to work on the Kindle 2 (B002, B003), Kindle DX (B004, B005), and the rest of the Kindle 3 family (B008, B00A) as well, but has not been verified. If you own one of these devices and can test it, please let me know by filling out this brief survey here so I can update this list.

Food Fridays: Winkel in Amsterdam

Apple pie is not just an American tradition, but a Dutch tradition too. While in Amsterdam, we ended up in a great little cafe called Cafe Winkel, over in the northern part of the Jordaan. The highlight of the visit was definitely the apple pie: Delicious, great balance of cinnamom and apple, and a crust that's a little more like a crumble cake than a full on pie. In the background: Mint tea and the square that the cafe sits on.

Amsterdam: Good (17th Century) Urban Planning

It's said that we shape buildings, but thereafter they shape us. Nothing could be more true. Buildings are a reflection of the values and social structures of the period when they are build, and are designed to enable (and reinforce) the social norms of the time. When a particular building style or convention takes off, it literally does reshape the social interactions that are possible within that space. Similarly, we also shape cities, but thereafter they shape the lives of all residents within the city. So far, Amsterdam is the best example of this that I've found.

The canals of Amsterdam are the result of urban planners of the 17th century grappling with the challenge of how to facilitate seemingly endless trade in the city of Amsterdam during the dutch golden age. Being a low country, any canal dug will fill with water easily and this was used to put virtually every building in old Amsterdam within walking distance of a point where boats could bring goods in and out. The steam engine didn't exist, which meant that all serious trade happened by way of the water. Building canals was like building superhighways: it made trade and travel cheap and easy inside of Holland. It was a practical solution for the time, but today it's more seen as charming than functional.

The choice to build extensive canals gave us Amsterdam today. The signature buildings that we find today along the canal where built with hoists to offload cargo from boats and designed with large loft spaces for craft and business (as well as living quarters). Today new shops shoehorn themselves into these tiny but functional spaces, using space vertically instead of horizontally to fit the new function into the old form. Investing in water traffic also meant a practical limitation on how much ground transport the city could support which has made cars relatively rare in the center of the city. Of course, it's not that the Dutch dislike cars, but the center of the city doesn't cater to them and the thought of trading a canal for a street is unthinkable today.

But what else is there in Amsterdam? More photos of Amsterdam, Tulips, and late night local street food after the break!

This is typical central Amsterdam. Canals, trams, bikes, and tons of unique and very nice buildings along them, plus cafes and shops everywhere. The biggest thing to watch out for is that many cafes shut down between 4pm and 6pm, which if you're used to eating about 5pm (like me) means that your options will be severely limited.

Spring also means flowers, and near to Amsterdam is the Keukenhof gardens. We were there a little early, but luckily they have a green house area where the tulips were in full bloom.

Lastly, a late night snack of a croquette. The automat is a style of restaurant that I wish would make a comeback in the states. It would be a great draw, and would go really well with a lot of the cafes that are popping up. For example, this with cupcakes? Yes please.

However, in this one it was all late night street food, and this deep fried cylinder is something that has to be for local tastes only! It's basically a bitterball, but longer. What is a bitterball? It's like a gooey scalding hot savory beef and (almost) curry flavored snack wrapped in a crispy deep fried shell. You have to try it to understand, and even not I'm still not sure if I like it or not. It's definitely a local thing!