We Explore Around Ruwais and Ghayathi

The town of Ruwais is about 15 minutes away and the other night we went in for some groceries. We had Arab Fast Food for supper!! Chicken shwarmas, faelefel, pita and humus - I was in my own little heaven - it was all so good. The town boasts 3 Mosques which are quite lovely and I can't tell you how mystical it is to hear the call the Mosque when you are in an Arab country. There are Mosques everywhere, at every gas station, in the camp, and one down by the boat yard too. I do really like seeing the men and women in their traditional clothing. There seems to be such grace and dignity that goes along with the garments. The road into the town is lined with palm trees and flowers and the town is very clean. Actually the entire highway from Abu Dhabi to here (about 250 km.) is also lined with trees - mainly palm and behind them all you can see is sand. The camp also has lots of flowering trees and flowers planted throughout. The government seems to spend a lot of money and time to nurture the greenery.

Les has Thursday afternoon and all day Friday off work. On Thursday afternoon we drove to another neighbouring town - Ghayathi. This town is another extreme example of poor versus well off. The drive into town was along a lovely road lined with trees and flowers. Very large villas spaced quite far apart could be seen from the road. As we got into the town we passed by the other "homes". Tenement row housing, almost all filthy looking on the outside - hopefully much cleaner on the inside - old unusable furniture and garbage just piled here and there. Store fronts with goods for sale and garbage spilling out into the street, very tired looking shop keepers beckoning passers by in. I was surprised by the number of schools in the town - boy's schools and girl's schools - never co-ed.