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Published: October 14th 2013
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The new 'old' town of Dubai(I wrote this a while ago, only just getting around to posting it now)
I stopped off in Dubai on the way back to the UK to visit my good friend Chris (Bennie) and his wife Sarah (Bennie).
As an Arab country with a massive expat and Western influence I wasnt sure what to expect from Dubai as it is such a crazy mix of cultures - this is very apparent from the get go.
The first noticeable and funny thing about Dubai is that it is the Derek Zoolander of cities since you cant turn left anywhere on the roads!
I stayed with the Bennie's in the 'old' town - I use the inverted commas as it was built in the last 20 years so is only called the old town as the design of the buildings was loosely based on the design of older buildings in Dubai (I think, one thing for sure is it is pretty modern!)
I arrived pretty early into Dubai so Bennie and I grabbed a big breakfast at a nearby cafe. At
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View from Atlantis water park looking back across Dubai this point, having lived in China so long, I was suffering from 'reverse culture shock' in that things that are pretty normal in the western world (speaking English, western food, quiet streets, lack of horns etc etc) seemed new and different to me!
One thing for sure is that I expected Dubai to be a kind of transition in going back to the Western world but in fact it became apparent that the expat community is so prolific here it is much more a Western city with Arab influence than vice versa.
Dubai in June is also ridiculously hot (around 45 degrees most days). So that made it an easy decision to spend the first day at the Atlantis Water Park on one of the new (and the only complete and fully operational) man-made islands just off the mainland.
However, Bennie told me that there were a significant number of people who believe that this man-made island is sinking, the road constantly ripping up all over the island being the first clue that this may in fact be happening...
Atlantis is a large hotel and aquarium complex with the water park attached outside. It was a
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Bennie and I amazed at the world famous ancient wall! lot of fun, the best part being that most of the rides you go down in an inflatable hoop and that you can also go round almost all the rides without even getting out your hoop due to a clever system of conveyor belts!
After a hard days water-parking we deserved a drink, so we set off for an Irish bar beside the airport where we had some food and drink.
Obviously drinking in an Arab country sounds strange but Dubai, in its attempts to mediate the Arab and Western world, allows drinking in bars as long as those bars are attached to a hotel.
After the Irish bar we set off for a British bar for some more drinks and few games of pool, to chat and catch up on old times. It seems uncultured to go abroad and drink in British/Irish pubs but in an Arab country these are pretty much your only options!
We got chatting to some other English expats in the British bar and played (read: destroyed) them at pool too. We also enjoyed some good lively bar music courtesy of a 2 man band, although calling them 2 man is
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View from the creek in the actual old part of Dubai a bit far fetched as one of them (who was amazing) played guitar(s)/keyboard/vocals/harmonica while the other played the bongos!
We finished off the evening at an Aussie bar in Old Town, stopping off to see a late night fountain show (more on this later) on the way. Irish-British-Aussie pubs - a great insight into the world of Dubai!
The next day Sarah wasnt working (it was Friday which is the start of the Dubai Fri-Sat weekend) so she joined us as we went across to the Old Creek part of Dubai. This is the historic centre of Dubai, where it began as a small town, beside a large creek.
We braved the sweltering heat to walk alongside the creek, passing a lot of traditional, historic buildings. Unfortunately there were no information plaques around - that is until we got to what is undoubtedly the highlight of Dubai: the ancient Dubai wall. Think of the great wall then imagine something 1000000000000 times smaller (or better) then you have the Dubai wall which is deemed important enough to be (almost literally) the only thing down by the creek worthy of an information plaque!
After I had gotten over
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Skiing in Dubai, naturally... this amazing feat of human engineering, we found a little restaurant on a worryingly unstable deck on the creek. Here I got to sample some Arab breads, pastries and hummus-like dips for lunches, washed down by this refreshing (but strong) lemon-sugar-mint-water drink called Limonana (?). I like Arab food which is based on meats (skewers especially), breads and dips.
We then took one of the old school taxi-raft boats across the creek to wander around the other side, where there was also an area famous for jewelry so I could order an Arabic necklace for Em.
In the evening we met Rich and Jane, friends of the Bennies, to go to a 'brunch'. It seemed pretty strange to be going to brunch in the evening but apparently these evolved out of actual boozy-brunches that the hotels used to run but have now extended to have in the evenings. They are basically all you can eat buffets with drink included in the price.
Needless to say all-you-can-eat/drink evenings are always a lot of fun and this one was no different, with some excellent conversation of the recent Royal Wedding and attitudes towards Kate coming to mind...
The
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Sunset behind the Burj Khalifa following day Bennie and I did another common activity most people would associated with Dubai: skiing!
Dubai has a pretty large and decent ski hill (although shockingly not the largest in the world, they slipped up!) inside a shopping mall. Interestingly, there were lots of Indian car washers in the mall multi-story car park who wash your car in the heat of the car park (easily over 50 degrees) while you shop - such a ridiculous and unhealthy job. Apparently this is because Dubai likes to basically use Indians as slave labour. In fact, there is a strong discriminatory social hierarchy whereby your salary and position are almost wholly decided by your race/age - sadly for Indians they are at the bottom of this hierarchy.
So anyway I donned my skis and Bennie his snowboards and we hit the slopes. It was interesting seeing middle eatern skiing/boarding as this is not a normal sight. Even more interesting was seeing all the people who came to the slopes just to ride the chair lift to the top just to see some snow - I could understand doing this at a mountain to enjoy the view but it seems very
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View from up the Burj Khalifa looking down over the 'fountain' (lagoon) strange to do this in an indoor ski slope!
We stopped at the chalet cafe they had built in the middle of the slope and had a hot drink (it was -4 in there). Another crazy thing was that we sat under heat lamps. Yes, on a fake slope where the temperature is kept artificially cool and it's over 45 degrees outside, they had heat lamps. Even worse was that the fans to cool the place point directly at the balcony where people sit getting heated by the lamp! I dont think anything more accurately sums up the brashness of Dubai!
Yes, Dubai is a very brash place - summed up by it's centre piece - the worlds tallest building the Burj Khalifa. We booked our trip up for the early evening - unfortunately the top floors had not yet been finished on the interior so we couldn't go that high (the viewing deck as it stood was therefore only the 2nd highest in the world, I have been up the highest though - it is in Shanghai). There is a nice view of the concrete and desert from up there and we even got Sarah to wave
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Looking outwards at night time from the Burj Khalifa to us from Bennie's flat!
Outside the Burj Khalifa is a massive fountain. In fact it is so big that it is more like a lagoon than fountain! This is because they wanted to have the world's largest fountain show outside the worlds tallest building - like I said: very brash! I saw the show a few times, including from up the Burj Khalifa, it is quite impressive, usually accompanied by some music - for example one of the shows saw the fountain dancing to Michael Jackson's thriller.
We also saw the worlds largest aquarium in a shopping centre. It seems Dubai loves having a lot of the worlds biggest things - in this sense it is like a big boys playground!
My final night in Dubai I had some good Lebanese food by the fountain show, accompanied by a lot of people smoking sheisha!
It was only a short trip but very interesting (and hot!), great to see my friends who were great hosts and I was definitely surprised by the easiness of living in Dubai as a Westerner.
(More photos at the bottom!)
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