Horse Show and Burj Khalifa with dancing fountains by the Dubai Mall, 22 March 2013

My friend, Kertu, and I went to a Horse Show to take some pictures. I've never been that into horses, but thought why not. And Kertu was there to take photos, so I thought it'd be a good idea too. 

So there were quite a few things going on at the show. Stalls and people buying horses, displays of traditional crafts, work and cooking as well as horses showing in an arena.

I met up with Kertu at the arena. We saw some of the horses being shown. They led the horses around the ring and there were people on the outside of the ring with plastic bags attached to sticks. They were beating the sticks, rustling the bags and calling out in order to get the horse to perform how they wanted. I think they were getting the horses to run around, stop and rear and stuff. I can't entirely remember what the aim was, but there were people whose job it was and they did it for every horse.

The horses look a bit different from normal as they have oil around their eyes and noses etc. Like makeup for horses.

This horse below did well and the arched neck is a feature of the Arabian horse. Kertu told me about that. She knows about horses and even has one back in Estonia.

Then we had a look at the traditional stalls. Kids could try them out. There was also free traditional food. Some kind of savoury crepe that has an egg on it and some fried dumpling things that are served with a sweet date sauce over them. The dumplings are yummy!

There was also this great panorama painting of the Sheikh there.

They were also building this shelter outside the horse show. Looks a lot like a fale, but thatched.

After the horse show we went to Dubai Mall to have a look at the huge fountain.

Here's some facts about them that I found online:

• The Dubai Fountain length 275 meters (900 ft) - more than 2 football fields, and 25% larger than the Bellagio Fountain in Las Vegas, visible from over 20 miles away up (in space) or horizontally if you have a clear line of sight.
• Dubai Fountain height of 150 meters (500 ft) apparently. Emaar press releases in 2008 and 2009 were saying "Powerful water nozzles shoot water sprays to heights of over 500 ft". Which is the same as the height of a 50-storey building, or high enough to wash the windows a fifth of the way up the Burj Dubai. And in May 2009, that was stretched to "Height – 900 feet" according to the Khaleej Times "Fountain Facts". It looks more like 100-150 ft to us (30-50 meters).
• Dubai Fountain height increased to 275 meters in a press release 02 January 2010 announcing the addition of a new song (Inshed An Aldar): "The Dubai Fountain can reach a height of 275 metres (900 ft) and is equipped with powerful nozzles capable of shooting water higher than a 50-storey building" which sounds like a very tall 50-storey building, and the water jets don't look anything like as high as 900 ft.
• 22,000 gallons of water in the air at any given moment.
• More than 6,600 lights with 1,000 different water combinations to drift into your dinner if you're on one of the Souk Al Bahar terrace restaurants when the wind is blowing your way. Music will be played to accompany your soggy steak.
• 50 colour projectors according to original information, down to 25 according to the Dubai Mall website, but we've only ever seen white.
• The Burj Dubai Lake fills the gap between the Dubai Mall, The Palace Hotel, Souk Al Bahar and The Address hotel. The Dubai Fountain plumbing doesn't run down as far as The Address though.
• WET (established 1983) are the Californian based designers of The Dubai Fountain. WET also designed The Fountains of Bellagio and the Mirage Volcano in Las Vegas, and other fountains around the world. WET use their own proprietary VirtualWET program for the Dubai Fountain. Once it's all set up, the fountain program control is mostly done by computers wearing anoraks.

They were pretty good.

There were also really nice views of the Burj Khalifa too. Lovely full moon out too.