One day in Dubai
August 18, 2005
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
We had a one day stopover in Dubai on the way from Turkey to India. Before we got here, we admittedly knew almost nothing about it. Dubai is a city in the desert on the coast of the Arabian Gulf, and if you haven't heard of it yet, you probably will soon. There are several huge construction projects going on right now throughout Dubai including the world's tallest building (Dubai Tower), an underwater hotel (Atlantis), the world's largest shopping mall (including an indoor ski slope), and "The Palm" which they are calling the 8th wonder of the world - it is a group of man-made islands in the shape of a palm tree that is so big it can supposedly be seen from the moon (should be done in 2007). Currently, the city's most famous landmark is the Burj Al Arab hotel. It is a beautiful building built on a man-made island in the Arabian Gulf. This is the only 7 star hotel in the world. When a guest arrives in Dubai, he havs the choice of being picked up in either a helicopter or a Bentley. Also, each room has its own butler assigned exclusively to it. It costs 200 dirham ($60) just to go in and look around, and I heard that a room costs around $2-3k. Pretty nice.
We were lucky enough to know someone living in Dubai, Emily's friend from Virginia Tech, Omar, who graciously took the day off work and gave us the grand tour. He went out of his way to pick us up from the airport, show us around, and even gave us a place to stay. He really wanted us to get a more realistic view of the Arabic world, other than the traditional (perhaps ignorant) American view that the media portrays. Ever since 9-11 many people have stereotyped all Arabs as terrorists (or at least potential terrorists). As Omar showed us, the vast majority of Arabs are nice, normal people whose reputation has been tainted by a few "bad eggs".
Dubai is a surprisingly modern, commercial, and international city. Omar described it as a mix of New York, L.A., and Las Vegas. It is the business capital of the Middle East and is extremely wealthy. Nobody is riding around on camels in the streets, rather, most people have very nice (and very expensive) cars. It also seems to be a shopping mecca. There were a lot of huge malls with all the same stores you would see in the U.S., and they are in the process of building at least 3 more gigantic malls (including one that will have parking for 10,000 cars).
It was interesting to see people walking around in the traditional Arab robes - men in white and women covered with black. What I found particularly interesting was seeing people dressed in the robes using cellphones or laptops (or carrying designer purses). Something about the clash between the traditional dress and the modern technology seemed out of place to me. However, the majority of people were in regular clothes. The foreigners actually outnumber the locals in Dubai, so there was no need for us to change the way we dressed at all.
Did I mention Dubai is in the desert? It was somewhere around 120 degrees Farenheit the day we were there. After just a couple of minutes outside, you were already looking for the next air-conditioned building to go in.
Last but not least, Omar showed us some traditional Arabic food....and it was amazing. For breakfast we went to a Lebanese bakery and tried manakish (cheese, meat, and thyme). For lunch, we had a feast of hommous, various appetizers, and mixed grill of lamb, beef, and chicken kebobs. Delicious.
Thanks Omar for giving us a brief glimpse of Dubai and the Arabic world.
Posted by tim at 03:46 AM | Comments (0)