Dubai Shopping

January is the month of the annual shopping festival in Dubai.  All the stores are required to offer some type of sale on a majority of the items in their store.  This is the time you may be able to get that couch you have been eyeing for 30% off or those shoes you want for 40% off.  It seems like the whole month of January is like Black Friday in the US.  Depending on what you're shopping for, it may or may not be a good deal.

By my count, there are 13 "Galleria-sized" Malls in Dubai, over 50 shopping centers, and 10 more malls/centers under construction.  Because 60+ shopping centers is just not enough for the population of 2M, y'all.  To date I've been to 2 Malls and a handful of shopping centers. Temporarily we are staying at a hotel near the Mall of Emirates and I've been there almost everyday. At first, the sheer size of the Mall was intimidating. Flash forward 1 week and 5 days later, I know where everything is. Before you judge, you should know that most of the Malls have grocery stores (a whole different blog topic) in them so it's necessary for me to go the Mall everyday, okay? Okay. Moving on.

There are some other cool types of markets here. The most popular are the Souks. (Reality check, we're not in Europe anymore!) There are a few Souks in Dubai.  When I think of a Souk, the scene from Sex and the City 2 instantly comes to mind:

Blast from the past!
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In Dubai, I've only been to the Madinat Jumeirah Souk.  It's smaller than the one in the movie, but it's really artistic and I fully intend to buy a thing of two for our house from there.  I was too lazy to snap pics there, so here's one that's an accurate image of what I saw:

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The area surrounding this Souk is filled with restaurants and you get a great view of the unique architecture and buildings that draw people to Dubai (if you're into that sort of thing).

Today, I visited Satwa, another open air market that's nicknamed "Little India."

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I was on a mission to find a merchant to get our UK IPhones unlocked so I didn't really look at the other stores. Apparently, it's a good place to get things repainted, reupholstered, and misc. items for a bargain.

In Dubai, the cell phone companies do not believe in the whole 'sign a contract & get a free/cheaper phone.'  Nope, over here, the IPhone5 costs ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS and the IPhone4 is around nine hundred. Had I known about this rip off scheme, I would have purchased unlocked IPhones in the US or had our UK ones unlocked before we left. (Reality check, we're not in Europe anymore!) Of course, asking a posh Mall merchant, located conveniently within walking distance of my hotel, to unlock my phone was greeted with roaring laughter in my face.

But I've been hearing that Satwa or Karama are the places that will take care of this sort of thing for 150 AED ($43). The cell phone merchants at Satwa must've been confused with my American accent and olive complexion because they wanted 370 AED ($105) for each phone and I had to leave it with them for 1 week. Um, yeeeeaaaah...NO. I'm pretty sure you're ripping me off fellow Indian. My attempts to negotiate were ineffective.  After he offered to come down 20 AED ($5), I did the whole "forget it" and walk away bit but he didn't bite. Fail.

I intend to check out another market called Karama this weekend. I plan to take the beard along and let him do all the talking. Hopefully the beard will prevail. Of course this is all anti-climatic since I cannot get a phone plan until I get my residency visa, but at least all this nonsense is keeping me entertained.