The view from my hotel…

My final full day here in my hotel room here in Dubai. The experiences I have had here in UAE and at the hotel in particular are somewhat mystifying. For example, everytime I have ever gone into a hotel in the US or Canada, there has always been a Gideon Bible in the drawer. I’m not big on evangelization, but I will say that it is a very subtle but effective way to bring the Bible to people who might otherwise not have occasion to actually open the Good Book up. But a through search of every drawer in this place yields not a bible, nor even the Koran! In the Islamic world, there are many parallels to the Christian world. For example, They have the Red Cresent, whereas we have the Red Cross. (No idea if they have Blue Cresent/Blue Shield). They go to the Mosque, we go to church. They go to Mecca, we go to Graceland. But there are appears to be no correlation to the Gideons. Since my grandfather is a member, I know how the Gideon Society works. This is something that is not terribly hard to port over to Islam, unless they simply don’t want us to read to Koran. But I really can’t imagine that that is the case. Some of us are only infidels because we don’t know any better, right?

So no Koran in the hotel room. But they DO have a golden arrow on the ceiling, pointing to Mecca. That is very convenient. In fact, I am surprised I haven’t seen it in more places than just my hotel room.

And you know how in America they have started putting coffee makers with real coffee in all the hotel rooms, so you can make your own pot of coffee? This is even in the Motel 6’s and Super 8’s. Well, they have something similar here, but over here, it just heats up water. Once you have the water hot, you get to either put “Nescafe” or Tea in the hot water. No actual brewed coffee.