I’m hot. I’m wet. I can’t see a thing and I can’t eat a thing either.

The temperature is about 38 degrees, humidity is about 65% and visibility is only about 1.5km, due to a sandstorm that has enveloped the city for the last couple of days. Looking at the sky alone, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s just another overcast day in Britain. Step outside your air-conditioned apartment/car/shopping centre however, and you’d know you were some place else altogether.

It’s not that I don’t want to eat anything: it’s Ramadan here in the UAE which means that it’s actually illegal for me to eat in public during daylight hours. In spite of the sapping heat and humidity, Squiffy and I attempted a stroll through the beautifully manicured Creek Park towards the Abra boat station to take us across the creek to get to the gold souk (market). The stroll didn’t go so well: within minutes both of us were exasperated and I had to leave Squiffy pretty much collapsed under the shade of a tree while I hunted out a taxi.

We crossed the river and headed to get lunch. Even though it’s illegal to eat in public during Ramadan, we had been told that it would be possible to get food in a handful of licensed (read: Western) outlets. We asked some non-Muslims where we could go and were given that choice of KFC or McDonalds, great! After buying our food at the counter in KFC, the less than helpful staff informed us that we could only take-away; eating-in was not allowed during this time. The cashier had no answer to why he didn’t tell us this before we had ordered and paid and asked us to take our food back to our hotel room for consumption. We weren’t in a hotel and our host’s apartment was the other side of the city. Ashamedly, we barricaded ourselves into the restaurant’s toilets and ate our food as quickly as possible. Half way through, we got moved on by the staff anyway and so sneaked into the toilets of a nearby hotel to finish off our meal. I’m happy to confirm that the hotel toilets were much cleaner than those of a fast-food joint, as one would expect, and made for a slightly less-awful dining experience.

We spent a little while wandering the gold souk, with all its gawdy bright-yellow Indian gold before finally giving-in to the oppressive weather and headed for the safety of Annie’s air-conditioned apartment.

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