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Published: June 20th 2009
Where are we??
Yes - drive 5km that way and you hit wild-wild desert. But right here - we have sprawling metropolis rivaling the giants in Manhattan.Taking the word exhoribitant to bold new extremes, and bringing ridiculous fantasy towards reality, Dubai is a place where the word "Wow" is second only in frequency to the phrase "Its stinking hot". Home to the world's only 7 star hotel, the world's tallest building, the world's largest shopping centre and (I'm convinced) the world's most expensive Starbucks coffee, this once humble emirate of the Arab peninsula has transformed itself in 50 years to the quintessential millionaires' pleasure garden of the U.A.E.
But now ... back to reality. Because Dubai is not all fancy cars and opulent spas. Its also full of Indians. A heck of a lot of them. For beneath all that glamour and glint, there lies the driving force of said city, the sweat and blood that sees that the streets of gold remain glisteningly bright for the Lamborghini wheels of spoilt Emirati sons.
In fact, 60% of Dubai's population are of the browner persuasion - expatriate workers from the sub-continent that are imported by the plane-load, ship-load and truck-load, to run everything from banks and stores to taxis and latrines.
Less than 20% of Dubai's population are actually local. But what a happy 20%,
Bastakiya wind towers
That tower is a common sight in this part of town - they capture the wind and then circulate it through the house - kind of like air-conditioning. for they have a government who's graciousness is second only to Santa Claus, handing out free housing and monthly stipends to every local Emirati (according to our taxi driver anyway). In the past, this meant working was an option rather than a necessity for some. Today however, sky-rocketing real-estate prices and inflation has made the humble 'job' a mandatory stepping stone to enjoying the oppulent princely lifestyle that Dubai is so famous for.
Interestingly, despite the Gulf's fame for oil, only 6% of Dubai's income stems from this scarce resource. The clever local government's choice to diversify into tourism and financial services has meant that today, oil is a but a minor part of this booming economy.
The highly disproportionate ratio of Emiratis to foreigners means that one can easily be lulled into thinking that the locals are all Indians, Filipino or European. We infact did not see a single local for the first 4 hours in Dubai, except for the immigration officer at the airport. Oh yes - a note about the locals. You know the tea-towel things you see Arabs wearing on TV. Yup - they wear them here, together with white long robes. And not
Sesame rehydrates
It was stinking hot ... and we didn't even have spare deodorant. just the old people.
Anyway - enough social geography and on to travel blogging. Our time in Dubai was to be a prolonged 11 hour stop-over enroute to Greece from Beijing. First stop was Bastakiya, one of the last remaining pockets of "old Dubai". Bastakiya is famous for its wind houses - abodes with tall towers that ingeniously repurpose the wind as air-conditioning. This tiny district has clearly been retouched to ensure a truly authentic tourist experience, but nevertheless is a pretty little introduction to what life 50 years ago might have looked like. They even have the occasional local pacing the streets, donned in 'tea-towel' head-gear and white robes. Conveniently positioned on every corner are little cafe-cum-art-galleries that serve as a necessary salvation from the blistering heat. We spent some time at one such quaint retreat, where we lay on cushioned benches snacking on fruit and sipping a delicious mint icy drink (see picture).
Next up, we headed over to the Dubai Museum - primarily to bask in the refreshingly cool air-conditioning, but also to get a better understanding historically of this part of the world. The first 5 minutes of this museum is resoundingly disappointing -
World's only 7 start hotel
The Burj Al Arab - built to look like a big sailboat - the part shown here is meant the be the sail. a random shack here, a piece of pottery there, and all interspersed with some Bedouin article of clothing to add credibility. However, the basement is where the real museum starts - and for once, we actually enjoyed this museum (and not just because it was air-conditioned). Probably our most important take-away from the museum was just how quickly Dubai has transformed itself from camel-infested, head-scarf and beard toting Arab port in the 50s to a ever-vertically-growing, style-infested oppulent-tropolis.
We then headed over to the hub of Dubai - the Dubai Creek (for all you Australians - this creek is a lot bigger than what we define as a creek back home). Historically Dubai was a port city, and even today, this busy creek continues to serve the trading requirements of ships traveling between the east and the west. This river is far from picturesque and we couldn't help sniggering at the foolish tourists who were being shuttled up and down on ramshackled raft-cum-boats. We enjoyed an apparently typical Arab lunch of bread and dips together with my favourite, Fatoush, which is kind of like a thinly-sliced hunk of deep-fried dough, sprinkled with some sloberingly-good purple powder.
After lunch,
World's Tallest Building
Told you its ugly. Apparently it will be 808m when complete. we hopped into a taxi to tour the major monuments of Dubai. All taxi drivers in Dubai are expatriates, mostly lured from Kerela, India by comparatively lucrative salaries. Our friendly driver took it upon himself to become our local guide, and despite our typical distrust of taxi drivers, we decided to take this guy up on a scenic sprint around the major monuments of Dubai.
Fist up was the unfortunately disappointing world's largest mall, the creatively named "Dubai Mall". Sporting its own aquarium and olympic-sized ice skating rink, we were expecting a gargantuan shopping paradise. Alas, from the outside, it looked pretty much like any other mall, albeit possibly a bit longer. Of course, you reader, are probably going, "well duh - what were you expecting". But come on - world's biggest mall - impress me already! Not so.
Next stop was the world's tallest building, the equally creatively named "Dubai Tower" (Burj Dubai). Not wanting to sound cynical or ungrateful ... but .... yeah ... it was tall ... but darn ugly. Admittedly its not really finished. But it still just looks like a really huge Obelisk - only uglier and without the heiroglyphs.
So far,
Mint & Something drink
Can't remember the something. But this drink was fabulous - basically lots and lots of mint (like overpoweringly strong) mixed with ice and the something. So good! the Dubai's "world's bests" had been sadly underwhelming. But next up was the Burj Al Arab, the only 7 star hotel in the world. This hotel is actually shaped like a sail boat, with the bulk of the hotel built to look like a massive white sail. If you've ever seen a tourist brouchure of Dubai, then you've probably seen the Burj Al Arab. Rooms here start at the bargain price of $1000 USD. To keep out the rabble, they charge a hefty $50USD just to enter the lobby. So instead, cheap-skate tourists like ourselves just drive up to the outside, gawk at it in awe, snap a few pictures, lament at the fact that the pictures do it little justice, gawk a bit more, and then discuss amongst themselves at how uncannily 'eighties' the building looks. Something about the white just made it look a tad dated, which instantly conjured about images of dusty pastel coloured carpets to my wife. I'm sure its very oppulent inside, but seeing as we were much too poor to stay the night, we decided to remember it as 'over-priced' and unimpressive.
So now, you're probably reading this and thinking that negative, cynical
Art-cum-cafe
One of the many art-cum-cafes in Bastakiya - cutely decorated with cushioned benches that serve as a great place to sleep away to heat. beings such as ourselves don't deserve to travel. And thus, I am forced to write good things about the next stop. But you see - this one actually was impressive. Next up - the Palm Islands. In order to out-do each other, the construction moguls of Dubai are constantly thinking up more ambitious projects. And one such crazy decided to build his own island - shaped like a palm tree. And thus, the Dubai Palm Island was born, or rather, dredged, from the Persian Gulf. If you flew over, this island would look like a giant palm tree, with multi-story apartments on each front. And this is no small island - it took about 7 minutes to drive from top-to-bottom on a high-way at about 100km/h (so I'm guessing its about 12km x 7km). As an added bonus, addresses on the island are qualified by frond (i.e. palm frond). So your address would be #22, Building G, Frond C, Palm Island. How cool is that!!
Our final stop for the day was the Marina shopping centre. Another famous shopping centre in Dubai, what struck us here was how non-Dubaish the whole place was. Entering, you are surrounded by white
Batakiya streets
The traditional streets of Old Dubai - complete with an actual local. Due to the rarity of Emiratis in the Emirates, getting such a shot is akin to snapping a photo of a Gorilla in Rwanda people and Filipino attendants. Situated in an essentially American/European expatriate district, the Marina shopping centre probably best captures Dubai's ability to emulate almost anything it wants - in this case, a shopping centre that looks, feels and smells like a local shopping centre in down-town Boston.
So thus ended our very brief impression of Dubai. In summary - the most amazing thing about Dubai is that 50 years ago, it was a just a simple town surrounded by harsh desert. Today - its anything it wants to be. Alas, the dreamers out there (like us) must be careful to set your expectations correctly. Don't go expecting a Alice-in-Wonderland experience, where anything can happen. Dubai is essentially just your average first-world city, complete with both the comforts and discomforts you would expect. What is truly amazing though is that this non of this existed 50 years before. Dubai truly is a testament to what copious amounts of cash, creativity, and a drop of crazy can do. Now if only all that money could be used to do something useful - like tackle world poverty.
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