Continuing our United Arab Emirates road trip onwards from Umm al-Quwain, we came to the diminutive little emirate of Ajman. At only 260 square km, Ajman is indeed little, but with a quarter of a million people, it didn’t seem as tiny as I had anticipated.

Furthermore, it seems the closer to Dubai, the better the state of affairs of the emirate. Hardly surprising. Ajman seemed much more affluent than I had expected. That could, of course, say more about my expectations.

In Ajman, city centre means City Centre

“You want to go to city centre?” our passport-less driver asked. Absolutely! Only, it turned out city centre meant City Centre, yet another shopping mall.

Well, I wasn’t pleased, but my daughters were. Also it was lunch time, so I relented. And I can recommend the Satay Chicken at Salathai in the food court. Even got as much satay sauce as I wanted (there never seems to be enough). The girls enjoyed their fried rice and spring rolls, too. As malls go, City Centre wasn’t all that bad.

After that “forced” shopping mall visit, we had a look around Ajman town. Again, we gave the local museum a miss. Our few hours in Ajman was spent partly in City Centre and partly in the city centre.

This may well be my shortest post ever. Ajman is probably the one emirate I feel I know the least and I’m struggling to find much to say about it. Or perhaps it simply isn’t that much to say about Ajman? In a comment to an earlier post, fellow Middle East traveller Sabina said there’s nothing to do in Ajman other than hang out at the 5-star Kempinski hotel or at the beach, but it’s nicely quiet and uncrowded.

So, anyone remember the names of the 7 emirates again? Could be useful for that next pub quiz, you know. Here they are: Dubai, Ras Al-Khaimah, Umm Al-Quwain, Ajman, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and Fujairah.