Spray War, Abu Dhabi

Picture the scene. A highway with such a bad traffic jam that no car is moving. It’s so hot that people are sticking their heads out of windows and trying to catch a breeze. There are some teens that are actually walking around. Oh, and did I forget to mention? They are all armed with string spray, snow spray, water guns, and more things I cannot even begin to mention.

That was the scene on December 2nd, 2025, at Corniche, Abu Dhabi, UAE. And I happened to be right in the middle of the crossfire (not without being armed, of course).

So how did I even get to this point? Amazing question.

Well, we were on vacation visiting our family (we as in my parents and I), and we happened to land the day before their Independence Day, also known as Eid-al-Etihad, so my uncle decided to take my cousins and I to Corniche, which, if you didn’t know, is legendary for its “graffiti” culture during this day. I say graffiti because kids are notorious for taking snow spray (essentially really sticky foam that’s cold as hell that’s dispensed like spray paint) and string spray (the same thing as snow spray except it dispenses colorful string that’s also really cold and sticky) and absolutely destroying cars, buildings, and best of all, people with them.

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This was what it looked like while everyone was going crazy. Imma post the ones from my personal experience at the end.

Anyways, we were driving there, and we got stuck in a 2 hour traffic jam. And that’s when the chaos started.

My cousin told me that this was where the war started, and we would have to attack someone first in order to get a retaliation and a proper fight. And that was only if we were 100% sure that the other party had spray cans. How did we tell? The cars that had spray cans looked gay, and when I say this I mean they were rainbow colored from all the string and foam.

Eventually, we found our first target. We rolled down the window, prepared our cans, and… got sprayed in the face by foam. My cousin started yelling while my other cousin rolled the window back up. That was my first taste of what the rest of the day would be like.

It tooks us a while to find our next target, and this time we were prepared. We rolled down the window only a little bit and waited for their window to come down. Here’s how it played out

https://share.icloud.com/photos/06aawWSrI8bNoHP4qIIGawMkQ

No retaliation at all. It was lame, but it was also really fun. It was a random stranger who we absolutely decimated for no reason at all. It felt amazing.

Looking back, it was kinda evil, but what the hell, I was having fun and that’s all that mattered in the moment.

Anyways, that was the first fight. The next one was a bit more eventful. What happened was we saw a guy on the roof of his car with two spray cans in his hands and he was just destroying everyone. Thankfully we didn’t have an encounter with him. But what did happen was that we got into a fight with these old-ahh guys and it was very one sided—disclaimer: we got cooked. How the bloody hell are we supposed to know that old creaky grandpas have such good aim?

Also there was a lot of wind specifically when we were spraying so not a single drop even touched their bald heads.

https://share.icloud.com/photos/073NV1rMp2Dyg9WiExOhZXsjA

We were shellshocked for 5 minutes after that, and then for the next 5 minutes we complained about how unfair the fight was because of the wind and how we would have crushed the old geezers if it wasn’t for nature.

Then we stumbled upon a golden opportunity. It was a bunch of young Indian guys who looked like they were actually ready for a fight. We assumed they only had spray cans. Boy oh boy, we were so wrong.

https://share.icloud.com/photos/04em8_jKugWj_zgWyU9mK_32w

THEY HAD WATER GUNS!!! And not those supersoakers, they were full on automatic rifles. How in genuine hell are we supposed to defend against that?? And they had like 5 guys in the backseat with 2 cans per hand, while we got 2 cans in total!!

After they were finished with us, we looked…

Well, we looked like this. And the car… on my shawarma it looked like the bathtub during a bubble bath, but way more gay (rainbow… get it).

At least we got a hit on them. I think I managed to spray one of the guys in the eye, mainly because I heard a lot of screaming from that car after one spray.

That was the second battle.

Then there were a few uninteresting ones in the middle that mainly involved us spraying the crap out of little kids who sprayed us first, and it was really funny. Let me describe it actually.

So we were looking for cars to hunt and talking about life and deep topics like that (ykyk), and our window was open an inch. Suddenly, we see this white spray come through that gap, and we realize that it’s foam. So I take my spray can while my cousin looks for the car that sprayed us, and we find it. The window is 100% open. So… I told my cousin to get his can, and we waited for when that car was next to us. Then, we opened fire.

Those kids started crying and bawling and screaming, while their parents (I’m not even joking) were laughing at them because it was their fault that they started the fight. We were laughing as well because they never stood a chance.

Then I proceeded to roll up the window and we drove away.

The next 30 minutes or so were us trying to clean up our car backseat and arguing with each other on who got the most hits. This is how the conversation went.

”yo, who hit the most people?”
”I think it was me”
”you sure? I think you got like 6 hits, but I got like 15.”
”say on your Burger King today”
”on my Burger King.”
”your Burger King is gone because I’m eating it.”

We proceeded to strangle each other for the next 5 minutes. Let’s have a moment of silence for my neck.

The only thing that stopped us from killing each other was the fact that we saw another car that posed as a likely target. Why? Because there was a girl on the roof with a fire extinguisher, and before you say “you’re insane,” have a look at this.

That was who we were up against. And we didn’t think twice about battling them. That turned out to be one of the best decisions of our lives😅😭💀🙏.

What ended up happening was we both got destroyed by each other. All of our spray cans from both parties were used up when we were finished with each other, and we all looked like Olaf but more colorful and with little colorful strings all over us. The car looked like winter wonderland, and the outside had a fresh new wrap on it.

You couldn’t see our clothes, and our mouths tasted like soap. And we were laughing our sanity off.

The reason was because there were also little kids in that car, but their parents were fighting as well. And of course! The girl on the roof with the fire extinguisher. And we, just two simple boys with simple spray cans, matched them.

Also the girl fell into the car from the roof and we sprayed her in the face, we got the steering wheel of that car so they went a little out of control, and other devious shenanigans I cannot even begin to mention😈👻🤡.

That was our last street battle, probably for the better, since We were out of cans as well. Luckily we met a merchant who was selling all types of cans and we got 10 more.

By this time, we were at corniche, and the scene was even more insane. The sidewalks were slippery from spray, the buildings had some crazy graffiti on them, and all the cars had 67 on them. And the kids looked liked soldiers that had come back from deployment in Antarctica.

we parked in an underground garage and went outside, armed with our cans. That was a good idea. Not 6 minutes after we got out, I got sprayed in the neck by a 5 year old who had no idea he had just insulted a veteran sniper in Fortnite. Let’s just say when I was done with him, he would never spray another kid again (he was crying for mommy🤡).

when we got to the actual beach, there was legitimately no sand. It was all cans and foam. This was what it sounded like:

https://share.icloud.com/photos/084cPsSBI_p5ant0BiqjQCZQg

then the fireworks happened and all the spraying stopped, so that was basically it. Except… we had 6 more spray cans left. So we did what any sensible child would do: we found a little kid and emptied our cans on him, and ran for it. That was the end of my spray war.

Also did I mention? It’s illegal to use spray cans during Independence Day, and I almost got arrested for using it. You know what I did?

I sprayed the police officer trying to detain me in the face and ran for my life.