UAE National Day

December 2nd was UAE National Day. Which is equivalent to the fourth of July celebration back in the USA. Jos and I spent the majority of the day in Abu Dhabi, hanging out with some friends on the beach. The weather was perfect: low 80's, sunny, no humidity, light breeze. There are pretty much 3 kinds of beaches: Public, Family (cost $), and Private (cost $). We went to the public beach, which was a good time. The only down side is there are a ton of 3rd Country nationals (pretty much all dudes) who stare at the ladies the whole time. Not ideal, but they are harmless. After spending the morning on the beach, we went and grabbed some food on the Corniche, checked out the event they had set up for the upcoming soccer tournament in Abu Dhabi, and then headed back to our friends apartment.

Abu Dhabi Corniche

Digital "football" at the

Paul and his team

Playing some foosball with friends

On the way back, I saw a barber shop, and me and my buddy got our haircuts. It was my first "local" hair cut. For $5 USD, you get a pretty quality hair cut, with a complementary head massage. The head massage lasted for about 2-3 minutes, and was intense, I had a laughing attack at the one minute mark that lasted until the end of the head pounding. Needless to say there was a major language barrier, so I just held up a picture of my drivers license, and the guy tried to replicate the hair cut. The guy from India did a good job, the only thing that made me nervous was he used a "straight blade" to trim around my neck and ears, but Jos thought it looked pretty good.

After the haircut, we showered up, ate, and decided to head back down the Corniche for fireworks and see how the local celebrated their National day. The firework show was advertised to start at 7:00/7:15pm. In classic Abu Dhabi style, the show began around 9:30pm.

We decided to take the bus back to the Corniche
because parking would be impossible...
it was a little tight

The fireworks show was pretty good, but they really didn't get the fireworks very high in the air, which was kind of surprising. Anyways, the firework show was one small part of the experience on the Corniche that night. One word to sum up their celebration: CRAZY. There were men (30-50 years old) covering one another in silly string. Locals running up to cars driving along the road, and spraying silly string, and shaving cream into the cars and SUV's. Majority of the Cars/SUV's on the road had removed their exhaust pipes...and revved their engines for long lengths of time until the exhaust would backfire, creating a deafening "popping sound" in your ears....this happened thousands of times all evening long. Nice Cars (Porches, BMWs, Range Rovers) that had "UAE" spray painted....yes, Spray Painted on the side of the vehicle. The whole time I was thinking to myself "Wow, these people are acting crazy/insane...and they have not been drinking all day long!" In the States, we have the crutch line of "oh, that guy has been drinking too much, that is why he is acting wild..." Out here on National Day, I guess the locals in the UAE were just "high on life" - and excited to celebrate the 39th year of their country's existence as a recognized nation.

Typical decked out car

Driving down the Corniche

The silly string, etc.

Anyways....we knew it was going to be crazy on the Corniche, but we wanted to experience National Day for ourselves. Needless to say I don't think we will be celebrating UAE National Day on the Corniche next year....but if you get the urge to spray some stranger in the face with silly string/shaving cream, this is place to go!