Для рыбаков и более ни для кого For fishermen and no one else

We went to the hotel on the advice of my wife's sister, who had a rest there 2 years ago, carefully re-read a bunch of reviews. We are not very pretentious people, we do not require super comfort, for us the ideal vacation is apartments, but this year we had such a situation that we had to go to a hotel. However, the rest... hmm, confused even us, undemanding and calm. Impressions are very ambiguous. Well, then - why.
1. The work of the tour operator.
The sending party - News Travel as an operator and "Let's Go With Us" as an agent - there were no questions at all, everything worked like clockwork, special thanks to the girls from the Poltava office of "Let's Go With Us" on Gogol 32 - everything was wonderful. But the work of the host "Al-Khalidiya" - I can not unambiguously evaluate it. It will not be 5 but 4 - the lousy work of the hotel guide Natalia spoils everything. But more on that below.

2. Transfers. They flew by Al-Arabiya from Kharkov to Sharjah and vice versa. Flying is like flying - nothing special, keep in mind that Al Arabiya is a low-cost airline and take food with you on the flight because the prices for food on board are extortionate. In addition, keep in mind that pilgrims of the Kharkiv Muslim community often fly on this flight for the Hajj - and we managed to take vouchers just for the time of the holiday of the end of the Hajj and the offering of sacrifices - in general, the plane "there" was half-occupied by pilgrims who prayed in all convenient places . But with us in the row of chairs sat a very colorful and worthy uncle, who had flown for the Hajj for the sixth time already - so it was thanks to him that we reacted very calmly to all this. A conversation with him is a separate and very interesting topic, such good people are rare, I’ll tell anyone who is interested. We were taken from Sharjah to the hotel without delay, but the return transfer was a special song. We left early in the morning at 4-30, since the flight departed at 8-25. At 4-30 - there is no transport. Together with us, Muscovites were taken to the Dubai airport - they left on time, and we are waiting. We call Natalya twice - she stupidly drops calls. We call the office - thank God they answer us that they say the driver was a little late and he is on his way and will be in 10 minutes. 10 minutes later he's gone. We call the office again - they say that he will be in 5 minutes. Again he is gone... in general, he appeared about 15 minutes later - and we left at 5-10 instead of 4-30, in addition, this son of Shiva turned on the tunes of his native land at full power and did not respond to requests to turn off the radio. In general, we arrived and in time, but the lousy sediment remained (there was another nasty situation, about it, too - below).
3. The hotel itself. Located on a small peninsula at the northern end of the capital of the emirate Umm Al Quwain and a patch between the fishing port + towing base and a cement plant with its own bulk port. At the time of our rest, there were two bulk trucks there - "Red Sea Pearl" and "Beauty ov Pershia" under loading. The hotel itself consists of a large two-story building, similar to the letter G with squiggles. The territory is very green, a lot of gardeners look after the grass, plant flowers, cut bushes. There are a couple of nice ponds and a fountain, which was turned on for the holiday. There is a pool for adults, which is constantly cleaned. There is also a clean pool for children. The beach is very small, sand and shells, but at the entrance to the sea there are small stones and sometimes hedgehogs crawl out, so in my opinion, bathing slippers are necessary. From the plant, the beach is closed by a boom wall at the base of which are huge stones covered with corals, so if you take a mask with a snorkel, there will be something to see - fish, corals, hermit crabs, crabs. On the side of the fishing port, there is its own pier - 4 hotel boats moor to it - they take guests on a free excursion to the islands of flamingos and crab fishermen who come to catch crabs. From the same pier, tourists who come here with fishing rods fish. I'm not a fisherman myself, but I saw that people were catching dorado, and someone managed to grab a small grouper on the top-trap. There are sun loungers on the beach, but . . unfortunately 10-15 percent are broken and they are not being repaired. The water on the beach is very quiet, there are no storms, but there are strong currents at high and low tide - be careful and swim only in the area fenced with a rope - it will blow you away. Quite often, boats with fishermen and tugboats for work in the bulk port pass by the beach, so you should not swim behind the safety ropes. By the way, fairy tales about “a clean beach and a beautiful sea on the other side of the peninsula, 10 minutes away” - and there are fairy tales. Yes, it’s not long to go there - to the right from the hotel gate along the road without turning anywhere, 10-15 minutes at a brisk pace, but the path passes through such slums that the hair stands on end and the “clean beach” is a wide sandy strip, polluted with the remnants of picnics of local residents and puddles of all sorts of rubbish from the parking lot of Pakistani truckers, plus the construction site of the Radisson Umm Al Quwain Hotel. In short - you can go there, look and leave. There is nothing good there.
The rooms in the hotel - for the most part - a standard room with two huge double beds, a mini-fridge, a table and two chairs, a TV (they didn’t turn it on, I don’t know what the channels were, there was a list in the room - I didn’t even look at it. ) There is a bar in the mini-fridge. People - remember that it is PAID, do not take anything from it - our people very often pierce on this. But we were scammed on another one - upon departure they began to demand money for supposedly drunk beer from there. Although we did not touch these bottles, and drinking in the heat of +34 is utter stupidity. I had to pay God knows what for 18 dirhams, remember - IN FLAMINGO BRED WITH MINIBAR. We did not count the bottles upon arrival, relying on the honesty of the staff and cruelly pierced. So - upon arrival, immediately notify the manager so that you do not intend to use the minibar and require it to be sealed. Yes, you will not have access to a refrigerator, but you will not be separated upon departure. The bathroom is simple, there is everything you need, and the disadvantages are a poorly adjusted toilet tank, no brush and hot water instead of cold + boiling water instead of hot from all taps. In addition, healthy cockroaches from the sewerage climb in the room + it periodically stinks of hydrogen sulfide, so that the fan does not save. Air conditioning - works, but the temperature and blowing speed control does not work, so we turned it off periodically because it was difficult to sit at a temperature of +20 degrees in the room. And even more sleep. But during the day we were never in the room, but at night we had to get up a couple of times to turn it on and off. Complaints were ignored - Shiva's children abruptly ceased to understand English, and I do not speak Hindi and Urdu. The air conditioner grates - overgrown with dirt, generally dirt and shabby - were everywhere in the room. Remember, in the hotel in most rooms there are English electrical sockets, you need an adapter for our electrical appliances. I brought mine.
More about the beach. Please note that in October, the migration of jellyfish to this bay for breeding begins - we just fell into this period. Swimming becomes completely impossible - the bite of this creature is very painful and tentacles come off from it, which are not visible in the water but sting strongly. So for cooling you will only have a pool.

The hotel has paid Wi-Fi - 20 dirhams per day. The password changes every day, they don’t let you enter it, they ask you to give your device to enter it yourself. Wifi works at the reception and 10-15 meters from it.
If you live in a hotel for more than 4 days, they take you three times a week for free shopping in Dubai to the Deira City center and twice a week go boating to flamingo camps. Registration is at the reception.
4. Food. We took the HB table. Breakfast - normal, like in other hotels - everything is fresh. The choice is small - 2-3 types of cheese, 2 types of boiled sausage, olives, butter, porridge, all kinds of vegetable dishes, chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, pancakes, tea and coffee. Coffee - instant, when there were few guests - from a thermos, it became a lot - from a jar. Dinner - stronger, meat - chicken-beef-mutton in the form of different stews. Get ready for the fact that the cook and kitchen are Indians, there is a lot of curry in all dishes, but the fact that they make the dishes mild is already an achievement. Sometimes they give crabs - closer to 9 pm. By the way, dinner is held on the beach. I won’t say anything about lunch, but it costs 75 dirhams per person - this is a lot, as for me for such a hotel. Buying something at the hotel is very expensive. Cooking too. They prepared grouper and shrimp bought at the fish market for 50 dirhams and twisted their noses very much that we did not clean them at the fish market. But they cooked deliciously - do not find fault, the food was excellent. You can cook by yourself - but on independently purchased barbecues and coals, the hotel now gives barbecues only to Indian or Arab guests, the rest - nevermind. People bought barbecues and coals at the Lulu Indian supermarket (4.5 km from the hotel, by taxi - 5 dirhams), we did not take it, because there were very few days, and we were in the UAE for the first time. Water and juices can be bought in a Pakistani shop, 100 meters to the left of the hotel entrance, products - Lulu for 5 dirhams by taxi, Carrefour for 10 dirhams by taxi, fresh fish and vegetables - at the fish market, also 5 dirhams . Pay exactly these prices, they do not change, drivers will try to breed you - stand your ground. Five dirhams and no mo. 8) By the way, according to the experience of communicating with taxi drivers, Arab drivers behaved very worthy, and Pakistanis and Indians were rare nits. But more on that in the next part.
5. Staff. I only understood why the hotel was such a mess when I arrived home - after talking with my wife's sister. 2 years ago, the entire staff of the hotel consisted of Filipinos and the hotel was in order. Now - 90 percent of the Indians, who do not climb out of the house, but here... We, for example, didn’t bring towels a couple of times, we had to go and pick them up ourselves, and when we asked for a standard bath mat, the answer was “Tu mani guest at I wanted, sorry, zeriz but sach tavlz "- pah. Two days before departure, we were surprised to learn that we should have a table and two chairs in our room - they brought them to us and we remained standing with our mouths open. Moreover, these idiots started repairs with painting in front of guests. Dead jellyfish from the beach - were not removed, the garbage there - too, well, lightly raked into heaps with rakes. For any problems, they turned off English. Two Filipinos who worked as waitresses - it was two bright spots, two suns, against the backdrop of the all-conquering Indo-Pakistani invasion. A good Filipino boy was like a porter - but... it was he who demanded money from me for beer drunk by someone unknown. I think that he is not to blame for this situation, that there the children of Shiva were in a hurry, and he already looked bad because of them. About the “famous” Zakir - he is a normal person, I didn’t see what they said about him - and I bought the Internet from him and talked to him - a normal young guy, polite to him - and he is polite. He does not like familiarity, which many of our tourists sin, so I agree with him in this - rarely anyone will like it. So - contact him on hotel matters, he will help. On the eve of the holiday, two Sikh security guards drove to the hotel, who asked my wife and me questions “where are you from? do you live here? ” - this despite the fact that, in principle, there can be no foreign Europeans there - the hotel is small and the receptionists know all the guests by sight. On a purchased sightseeing tour to Dubai from the company, the guide Tahir was very pleased - for a long time I have not heard such a good and detailed story about the country, customs, people and everything, everything, everything, I advise everyone to get on his tour, it's worth it. The hotel guide Natalya - we can’t say anything - good, in the sense - she ran in, sold the excursion, oh, I’m in a hurry! - ran away. Although - she told, yes! and about “beautiful sea 5 minutes away”, “they give you barbecues here”, “everything is cheap in Sharjah”. Well, the situation described above at the exit is a big minus for her.

6. Hotel visitors. The hotel is filled mainly with tourists from Russia, mostly Muscovites and Petersburgers, very normal people, "tagill" is not found here, - older people from 30 to 70 years old, sedate and very friendly. There were few people from Ukraine, but they were all the same - not lovers of noise and din. In general, my wife and I went for a quiet place. And we organized our own adventures. On Fridays and Saturdays, many Indians and Arabs come to the hotel - all local. So, if the Arabs are very normal and well-mannered people whose mothers look after their children and there is no yelling and noise, then Indians, and especially their children, sometimes become a little uncomfortable. Indian children stole and broke a pack of cigarettes from our friend, while the Indian mother did not react at all to this. In general, we weren’t at the hotel during the day, so they didn’t bother us much - but in the morning they started their cries by 10 o’clock. In addition, they stare at our women and behave completely boorishly until they get rebuffed . . , Filipinos and Indonesians are still coming - but I can’t say anything about them at all . . well, they come and come, people themselves and people. There were a few more Englishmen - so they also behaved very normally. In addition, organized crab fishing groups come to the hotel every evening - they are taken on hotel boats to catch crabs, then the caught crabs are boiled in the hotel kitchen, given to hunters and treated to hotel guests. The problems were precisely on a local holiday, when many crab fishermen arrived and among them, the ex-USSR part was especially “distinguished”, rushing to take places for dinner - having filled almost half of the hotel tables with their things and were very offended when these things were set aside, since there was no place for the hotel guests to eat. But it was on a holiday, my advice to you - do not go to this hotel during Muslim holidays - it is packed with local visitors and this is not always convenient for those who come with a tour.
Well, in general, that's all about the hotel. The hotel is very inconsistent. It has big pluses but also big minuses. The category of vacationers who will definitely like the hotel is fishermen. Here everything is tailored for them - you can even rent a boat for the time you want - our neighbor did this, fish are caught here and you can even cook it yourself. There is a bar with alcohol, which apparently attracts locals. It may make sense for mothers and grandmothers with children to come there - but children can only swim in the pool, a small and well-groomed area, but the condition of the rooms....Maybe - for people like us, use the hotel as a base for traveling, but keep in mind that Umm-al- Kuwain for many taxi drivers from Dubai and Sharjah is the "back of the world", and Flamingo Beach - all the more so, not every taxi driver will go there - we have already checked it... Everyone else, in my opinion, has nothing to do there.