Frankies Travels - Global Village

so to continue on tomorrow Global village is a new open air venue that has a flea market style venue for a lot of countries. a lot of the countries correlate with the nationalities of the ex-Pats living in UAE so India, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Qatar, saudi Arabia, Egypt, Philippines, China. Two quirks i noticed was that there were a lot of Middle Eastern countries Even ones i have hardly heard of and then Europe is one tiny stall as well as Southern Africa also in a single stall. I guess if it was in SA we would have tons of Southern African countries (starting with 11 different stalls just for south africa Yaay for diversity!) and then one stall for the middle east. my only complaint was that all the stalls had a very strong overpowering smell of perfume and inscense. I was getting a monsterous headache. it smells kinda like peach and meat and burning. grim and sweet.

Then part of the Global village is a huge fun fair. Imagine the fun fair you see in the movies with the candy floss and the ferris wheel and the throwing balls at skittles for soft toy prizes. Like 1950's style. THAT kind of fun fair. You can see the ferris wheel from far off along the highway so oviously we went on the first. It was a bit of a waste since we only got to go around twice. then we wandered around some more and considered a elastic slipshot style ride where you are in a cage that is attached to two elastic lines which are attached to two long poles in the ground. they pull the cage to the ground and then when you are securely strapped in... they let go! It was way expensive and it is over very fast so we turned our attention to a ride called HI SPEED . imagine a marching band leaders stick with a knobbie on each end. and the marching band leader twirls it around the middle. (forget the funky cirles around the head bit for a moment here.) so the HI SPEED ride is four seats on each end (two seats back to back each) attached at the middle of the 10m (aboutish)long "stick" to the piece tying us very nicely to the ground. (Gravity... it's the law... Centrifugal force... break the law... until it catches up with you) the seats also swing in their attachments. so the ride starts with a slow turn so you go around like a chicken rotisserie seeing the surrounding pretty lights with your feet below you and your hair sitting nicely on your head. Then it speeds up. and by the second turn you are upside down for at least half a revolution. the bit that made me scream is as you come around over the top of the spin the carriage is at a possition where you are facing the ground. So.. lets get theis straight.. you are going fast enough to make a heavy carriage turn upside down and for several seconds, at that speed, you open your eyes to see what looks like that you are moving straight towards nice hard concrete. WOOOOO HOOOOOO!!!! they do slow down and reverse the ride. so again you are swnging at high speed and for quite a lot of the time I was out of my seat pressing against the harness. Way Way Way way awesome hair-streaming-in-the-wind feet-touching-the-stars cool! Did I mention I am not afraid of heights yet?

Then we ate soem candy floss and went home for a very very late dinner. and proceeded to sleep like the dead.

Today was shopping day. firstly we went to buy Brian clothes for cold winter italy and then christmas shopping. I picked up some pretty nice stuff but i am struggling to get things for a few people. wish I could ask them but I still wanna surprise them. Then we went to a place called Mudinat which is like a modernised Souk It was very fancy but I did pick up a few more pressents there. They have an entire shop dedicated to camel tourist curios! Soft toy camels, camel bags camel tshirts camel fridge magnets camel notepads. At least in SA we have the big five to work from That is like 4 extra animals at least Ha Ha Ha I made a mean joke!

Then we were flippen starving so we decided to indulge in a bit of homesickness and we got take away spaghetti bolognaise. which we gobbled down like a teenage boy with a peanut butter sandwich at lunch time. The unanimous agreement was that the spaghetti bolognaise was pretty good but our mommy's one was better ... of course!

Gotta try for an earlier night tonight... gotta finish Christmas shopping tomorrow and start packing for Italy!! Yaay! \o/ \o/ \o/ \o\ /o/ \o\ /o/ \o/ \o/ \o/ Yaay!