Christmas Day finally arrived… but there was no rest for the wicked. We were up abnormally early and back on the highway. It was a strange, surreal experience stepping out of my tent, in the middle of the desert… surrounded by “not my people”…. with no Bailey’s & coffee to greet me. As much as I love to travel, this was one of those moments when I desperately wished to be anywhere else but here.
Our first stop was a camel market. I’d been near a camel market before… in Oman? … or was it the UAE? I can’t really remember… but I do remember staying outside that time, deciding it was better not to go in because I felt inappropriately dressed. I later discovered that my outfit would’ve been just fine for a “camel market.” Honestly, though, what even is the proper attire for agriculture?
Silly.
Anyway… that was all thanks to Sue… who has the tendency to provide a quite condescending commentary whenever she opens her mouth. She has this uncanny talent of turning a simple conversation into a personal criticism. Maybe I should’ve dressed inappropriately again… at least it would have spared me the agony of what was awaiting me in the shocking camel market.
I hadn’t gone more than ten feet from Marianna when I saw the camels. I could see that the majority of them were sitting down because they were so brutally tied up. I’ll admit though… the sound of the camels hit me first.
Screaming.
They were screaming.
The camels were bound at their knees, feet and sometimes even their heads. Many were tethered to posts with barely enough room to move. It was horrific. Their panic was apparent. These camels were being sold for slaughter… and it was clear… they knew their fate.
This is why I’ve become a vegetarian. Poor animals.
I was heartbroken.
My eyes flooded with tears and immediately I turned around, heading back to the truck without a second thought. I couldn’t go any farther. I didn’t care about exploring elsewhere or finding a distraction. I just needed to escape.
The screams stayed with me all day.
So this was my Christmas morning… screaming camels destined for slaughter. Merry Merry. It wasn’t exactly stocking stuffers or egg nog. It was fear, agony and torture…
… and devastation.
Ugh.
The evening before, Christmas Eve, as I worked on putting together the birthday video, I overheard Mickey talking about a trip to Dubai.
“When are you going?” I asked.
“December 27th,” she replied
Tomorrow??? What???
“Why?”
There was no answer.
She made a few jokes that she was going for the alcohol… which made no sense at all. The whole thing was strange. Even stranger was the fact that she was planning to return the exact same day, late evening.
Who flies all the way to Dubai just to come back hours later?
No one.
It was nuts.
If I were making that trip, I’d at least stay the night. Queer. And yet, she was so evasive about it. So incredibly indirect with her answers.
Was it for an interview?
A Tinder date?
A visa or some kind of visa extension?
Visiting family?
I tried piecing it together, but when I asked, she just said, “That’s for me to know.”
Alright then… hint taken.
How rude.
Was it a medical thing?
I can’t figure this girl out. There is undeniably something “off.”
Mickey is, without a single shred of doubt, one of the strangest people I’ve ever met.
It’s like she’s a false projection of who she wants to be. Intangible. She’s cagey yet acts so cool, calm and collected… but it’s easy to read how entirely fixated she is on every move Rosanna makes. Everything she says seems contrived or rehearsed. Everything she does seems like it’s meant to assert this misalignment of power and to impress Rosanna and Martin. She craves their friendship and attention like her entire being depends on it. I still can’t quite figure out her tough-girl act. Her only attempt at humour seems to be randomly flipping people the middle finger. It’s not funny… it’s tasteless. Yet somehow, it fits the image she’s trying so hard to project. I keep searching for even the smallest hint of genuine personality, but there’s nothing remarkable about her that stands out.
She often refers to herself in the third person. “Mickey doesn’t like that,” “Mickey doesn’t do things that way” or “Mickey wants to go”… or sometimes she just smiles and says something absurd like, “Oh ya, Mickey.”
Points for confidence.
Points deducted for pretension.
Sometimes, throughout our travels, I’ll take photos of her and send them to her through WhatsApp. Very rarely will she respond with a simple thank you. Instead, I’ll occasionally get responses like, “There’s a Mickey!” or “That’s Mickey.”
It’s… queer.
The other day, we were checking into a hotel… and the front desk attendant was reading out names to come collect our passports. When he got to “Mickey,” she strutted up, grabbed her passport and said to him with a proud smirk, “Pretty cool name, eh?”
Sure.
If you’re a mouse.
It was such an unusual thing to say… but that’s just Mickey. Completely baffling.
She’s officially taken charge of Christmas dinner, strutting around like she’s Gordon Ramsay tasked with dealing with a crew of incompetents. The incompetents being us, of course. Every small taste of authority seems to go straight to her head… and the rest of us are left to deal with her power trip.
Not exactly the “trip” I signed up for…
Not at all.
I’m convinced someone needs to buy her a badge that says “passenger” because it’s obvious she’s forgotten her place. We’ve all paid the same amount for this trip…
While most of the group was exploring the devastation of the camel market, Mickey returned to the truck to be with Rosanna and Martin, who had remained behind to do some work. That’s precisely the moment they decided it was the perfect time to give Mickey her Christmas gifts. They actually commented, out loud, that now was a great opportunity for gift-giving to avoid explaining to the rest of “us” why there were no presents for anyone else.
Except… I was there.
The whole thing was painfully awkward. I had to sit there, clearly excluded from the gift exchange, watching as the guides and an overly enamoured and infatuated “Mickey” shared their merry little moment together. To make it even more uncomfortable, I’d just finished giving both Rosanna and Martin Christmas gifts of my own.
Why am I still on this tour?
I can’t control my facial expressions… especially in moments such as these. If I’m not having fun, my face makes it obvious. I can’t hide it. Pretending and acting casual just isn’t in my makeup. I can’t hide my annoyance with Marilyn or Sue when they get on my nerves. I can’t hide my disgust when the Geisha hacks up phlegm… or when Mr. Meat scatters his leftovers across the table. Disappointment, irritation, disdain… for food, people or situations… it’s all right there, written all across my face.
I can’t change my face. I just can’t. I’ve tried…
Anyway, back to Christmas gifts. I think I’ve already mentioned that I got everyone a little something.
For Kind Brian and Warren, I picked out “I’ll drink water until beer o’clock” water bottles. For Vic and Tania, I got them a bottle of 0% sparkling wine. And for Sue, I got her a small plastic lunchbox. Honestly… I regretted it almost immediately after giving it to her.
The only reason I bought it in the first place was because she’d made such a fuss over mine, saying how clever she thought it was. When I saw one, I picked it up for her. She said she loved it and she even gave it a name… “her tiffin bag”… and hasn’t stopped calling it that since.
Sue can be… a lot.
Calling it a tiffin bag has been a lot.
What the hell is a tiffin bag?
I don’t know… but after hearing the term used over a million times, I had to look it up on Wikipedia. She’s got it half wrong because it’s actually a tiffin BOX…
“In India, the Anglo-Indian word “tiffin” is used to refer to a light lunch, a between-meal snack, tea/tea time, and in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), to a packed lunch, the container that lunch is packed in (tiffin-box or tiffin-carrier), and the man who delivers a packed lunch to someone.”
Ok.
I use my lunchbox to stash a few items from each hotel breakfast buffet for lunch. It’s my small way of saving money… something I’m horrible at… but it helps me justify spending money on other things. It doesn’t usually work anyway…
Since receiving the “tiffin bag,” Sue has taken it upon herself to announce to everyone that she now has to “steal” food from the buffet or risk getting in “trouble” with me.
Enough already… seriously.
I usually call her out when she starts spewing nonsense like this because it’s not only demonstrably untrue, but the way she says it… with exaggerated eye rolls and exasperated sighs and shrugs… grates on my nerves. It makes me want to throw her… and her dumb tiffin bag… right off the bus.
It’s depleting.
My sanity is depleting.
As for Graham, I got him a nail clippers set because I’d overheard that he cuts his toenails and fingernails… with a knife.
Yes, a knife.
On Christmas day, a few times, I asked him if he liked his gift… and he’d tell me he hadn’t opened it yet. What??? Open the bloody gift.
Why?
Because… “anticipation is the spice of life,” he said. Maybe so, but gratitude is the soul of it.
I was tempted to buy everyone a dish-drying cloth for Christmas… for when we need to dry the dishes while camping… but Martin informed me it’s strictly not allowed by Madventures.
Ok… we’re not allowed to dry the dishes with a dish-drying cloth. Oddball, but ok…
When we’re camping, we have to “flap” the dishes dry. I can’t make this stuff up. After everyone’s had their cutlery, dishes and grimy fingers in the same water… followed by the pots and pans… nothing is exactly spotless. So… instead of using a clean towel or letting the elements do the natural drying work, we’re stuck flapping them in the wind. I’ve thought about incorporating it into a nightly exercise routine, but working out with a plastic plate and a flimsy fork is near impossible. Plus… I look very silly.
It’s as ineffective as it sounds. The dishes usually go away “not dry,” but still grimy. On cold nights, the whole flapping process is miserable. We stand there swinging plates, swaying cups and shaking bowls in freezing temperatures… and it only ends up numbing our fingers.
After we left the camel market, we pulled off the road somewhere along the way… and Rosanna and Martin prepared breakfast for everyone. Naturally, Mickey had to jump in and help… because… you know… she’s a chef… more competent than all of us… and practically a guide.
Right?
Breakfast was smoked salmon and herb cream cheese on toasted crackers with scrambled eggs. I can’t even remember if there was porridge, but Karen is still alive and kicking, so she must have found something edible.
During the day, we stopped at a peculiar museum-style town called Ushaiger to explore Saudi’s oldest town. A proclaimed architectural treasure, I can see how it would be quite a charming place, full of history and intrigue. Unfortunately for us, it was eerily lifeless. All the doors lining the narrow mud hallways were locked… and the whole village felt deserted.
Another tour bus was there… a big proper tour bus. Seeing other tourists was abnormal… considering we’d been alone this entire time. It was like spotting a mirage in the middle of nowhere.
There was absolutely nothing to do… which was quickly becoming a recurring theme of the trip.
Closed.
Locked up.
Empty.
For a brief moment, I wondered if it might be closed and quiet due to it being Christmas Day… but then remembered… I was in a Muslim country. What a ridiculous notion. There was no Christmas here. Not even a trace of tinsel. I had searched, too. There was no wrapping paper, no tree decorations, no stocking stuffers, no eggnog, no cranberry sauce… but more importantly… there was no Christmas music.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
Occasionally, I’d stumble across something vaguely festive, like an oversized gingerbread man cookie.. but the price was be astronomical.
Ushaiger was a maze of mud alleys winding inside a fortress-like structure. Some of the houses were advertised as museums, showcasing life “then and now,” but only two of them were actually open. After wandering aimlessly for a while, I gave in and paid the 10 Saudi Riyal… and went inside. I was all alone. No one else cared enough to bother.
I quickly regretted my decision.
Inside was more like a taxidermy zoo than a museum. Stuffed dead animals in cages lined the rooms. The whole thing was freaky… and I wanted out the moment I walked in.
Upstairs, there was a veranda with tables set like it was a restaurant. It seemed to me that they were anxiously awaiting tourists, had there been any tourists. It was completely empty. From there, I could see some of the other rooftops too… with similar restaurant setups… all equally deserted.
Totally weird.
Everything was weird.
I was living a real life episode blend of The Twilight Zone and Groundhog Day.
If I thought Christmas Eve had been strange with its empty museums and the date factory, I was wrong.
Christmas day was whack.
Kind Brian… who has started calling me “Fifty-One” (as in Canada becoming the fifty-first state)… was just as unimpressed. After banging our heads against the mud wall, we made a facetious pact.
“Let’s meet here every year.”
Really, what could be worse?
The pure torment of it all… or perhaps the sun beating down on us as we realized we still had two more hours to “explore” before Marianna’s wheels were rolling.
I’ve found a kindred spirit in Kind Brian. He hates this tour as much as I do… if not more… probably more… and often remarks on not knowing how much longer he can endure it. I’ve begged him not to bail before I do. We bond over each agonizing incident and our shared frustrations… turning our mutual vexation into an ongoing joke.
It’s become a recurring “get me out of here.”
Eventually, I retreated to the truck, ate my weight in Christmas chocolate… and waited.
We found a decent spot outside Ushaiger to set up camp for Christmas night. It was a mix of desert and bush, a perfect place for a campfire and conveniently close to some crumbling old buildings… that made excellent private toilet locations.
While Mickey started working on dinner, I took charge of my appetizer contribution. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a simple and cheap charcuterie spread… minus the meat. I had purchased spicy labneh balls (similar to mozzarella), toasted crackers (like Melba toast), cucumbers, olives and some crispy cheesy puffs.
I’d barely finished putting the cheese puffs in a bowl when the Geisha sprang from his seat and darted toward the table, grubby hands ready to grab a handful.
Beat it, Calvinist.
Scat!
I was so close to declaring that my Christmas buffet was reserved for people who were celebrating the birthday of our dear Baby Jesus… and didn’t burp loudly in public. But unfortunately, I let another fabulous opportunity slip by.
Instead, I said, “Would it be okay if I finished setting up my charcuterie before you start eating?”
Clown.
His response?
“What kind of vegetarian makes a charcuterie platter?”
Get me OUT of here. Seriously, I will pay for someone… anyone…to fly here… immediately… walk into this camp… and drag me out of this nightmare.
Preferably now.
Dinner was no better. Mickey whipped up some sort of creamy pea casserole, which was more like a cream sauce with peas and chicken in it. Of course, she completely forgot about the vegetarians and made the entire meal with chicken.
Thanks, Chef.
There were unusual tasting stuffing balls courtesy of Stormin’, some grilled eggplant and a big bowl of mashed potatoes… so all in all, the meal was ok.
To make up for forgetting to make a vegetarian version of her cream pea sauce, Mickey piled Warren and myself up with way too much eggplant. Don’t get me wrong… I love eggplant.. but seven or eight large slices is a bit excessive.
So, I fed some stray cats.
Here’s hoping they enjoy eggplant on Christmas.
Mickey and Karen had crafted some paper Christmas hats for everyone. The Geisha put one on… which I found peculiar considering he (and I quote) “doesn’t celebrate birthdays, Christmas - or any holiday, for that matter.”
It must have been incredibly awkward for him to participate in such indulgence!!! While the Geisha was putting his silly hat on, he exclaimed, “Oh! Are hats a thing for Christmas?”
I almost kicked him.
How does someone (an American, at that) live this long without encountering Christmas celebrations, shopping or traditions? Simple answer… he doesn’t. What an astoundingly stupid thing to say.
Martin dressed up as Saudi Santa… and clothed in Karen’s very own red velour Wiggle housecoat… came out of Marianna with a festive “Ho Ho Ho” to deliver the presents.
Not everyone participated in Secret Santa, of course… least of all our devout, Trump-supporting Calvinist. There was only a few of us…
As Saudi Santa, Martin invited everyone to sit on his lap to receive their gifts. I opted out. I’m so fat & thick right now and the thought of crushing his leg was mortifying. Especially during the Christmas cheer.
My Secret Santa gift? A red toque from Kuwait and a can of tonic water.
The toque made sense… obviously someone knew how cold it was in the evening and wanted to help me sleep better by staying warmer.
The tonic water? No clue. It’s now sitting in the fridge, waiting for someone else to claim it. I’ve never liked it. Seems a strange flavour beverage to buy someone…
Meanwhile… through the festivities, Mickey and Rosanna were in hysterics over Saudi Santa’s antics. Rosanna’s laughter felt warm and genuine, but Mickey’s?
Contrived.
It’s exhausting.
Karen, however, was in full holiday mode, cracking jokes and spreading cheer with jokes she’d written and attached to pieces of chocolate… that I’d purchased.
Oh… and Graham?
He still hasn’t opened his Secret Santa gift.
Comments