I'll Be There Dreckly: Do You Buy?

Dubai, United Arab Emirates (map)

In this blog: some flights, Couchsurfing, the tallest building in the world, and melting in the sun.

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Dubai Marina skyline

With my fantastic couchsurfing host Shweta Madan
(note my nearly recovered but dodgy left eye!)

I'll start with the end - I didn't like Dubai. It's too hot, it's very wasteful, it's fake, and in my humble opinion it really shouldn't exist. That was my impression before visiting and even though I tried to go in with an open mind, the reality just reaffirmed it. It might therefore seem odd to you that I bothered going there at all, but since I had to pass through the airport on my journey homewards it seemed daft not to stop and have a look. Yet despite not likening the place itself, I actually quite enjoyed the experience of going there, largely thanks to a very kind host.

I set off from Jakarta in Indonesia, the end point of a fantastic two months in the country where I said goodbye to Rene, my Canadian travel buddy over the past three months. There was a little confusion and stress during check in when then staff asked if I had a visa for Dubai (which I knew I didn't need) and for my departure slip (in my luggage heading along the conveyor, which I just caught in time) but it all ended up fine. As the plane took off I looked down over the paddy fields below and actually felt a little sad to be leaving. For the next couple of hours we flew up the coast of Sumatra, the most northern island of Indonesia which was mostly covered in jungle and looked very wild and rugged. We landed for a two hour stopover at Kuala Lumpur since I was flying with Malaysia Airways, and the airport was very modern and impressive and even had a small jungle in the centre where people can take a relaxing stroll between flights. No danger of leeches though I guess.

A couple of hours into the next flight we flew over the central part of India, but unfortunately it was too cloudy to see anything. I spent a lot of the flight catching up on writing whilst almost everyone else slept, and time passed surprisingly quickly; in fact because we passed through three time zones I'm really not sure how many hours we were in the air! 'Are you fasting sir?' asked the hostess, since it was still the Muslim festival of Ramadan, and funnily enough I wasn't so they served up a surprisingly good couple of meals. As we hit land over the United Arab Emirates the skies were clear and a vast golden desert lay below, intersected only by a huge motorway and the odd remote house. Getting off the plane the heat hit me like a cricket ball to the head; even at 6pm it was roasting hot, and a sign of things to come. Annoyingly I had issues withdrawing money from the ATM's for a while, had difficulties changing the huge bills into smaller notes, got my currency conversion confused so everything seemed twice as expensive, then encountered a fair bit of confusion with using the bus. A bad start, but it soon got better.

I knew beforehand there was pretty much no budget accommodation in Dubai so had already organised a stay with a local (of sorts) through the Couchsurfing organisation - something I've meant to do for a while, but haven't since my last experience in Delhi seven months ago. My host was Shweta Medan, a very friendly 31 year old Indian girl from Mumbai who's lived and worked in Dubai since 2007 as a marketing research consultant for PepsiCo. She's well travelled herself - an opportunity Dubai pay has given her that Indian pay wouldn't, and has a lot of experience with Couchsurfing, unbeknownst to her parents back home where life is more conservative for women. Like many Indians she speaks multiple languages, in her case Hindi, Marati, and English fluently as well as fairly good Spanish. A lady of many talents.

I found my way to her nice flat where I was greeted with a welcoming smile, and after an hour of chatting she offered to take me straight out for a drive to see some nearby sights. First of all though I needed to find a pharmacy - after being ill the week before somehow I'd now picked up an eye infection and my left eye was red, swollen and pussy; not a good look when you've just arrived new in town. Thankfully the gel they gave me to put in my eye sack cleared it up in a day or so. Shweta's flat was well located in the city and it didn't take long to get to the coast where now dark, we had a look at the Burj Al Arab from outside - the world's only seven star hotel which is shaped like a sail, followd by a stroll through the only-slightly less swanky Jumeriah Beach Hotel, the building shaped like a wave. Nearby we looked around the Madinat; a complex of shops, restaurants and bars built in a traditional Arabic style which whilst very smart was also very fake, and even at 11pm the aircon was a great relief from the heat. I'd barely slept on the train the night before and along with the three time zones I'd travelled through, I was pretty dead and soon passed out on the sofa bed I'd been given.

Desert congestion?

Burj Al Arab, the 7* most luxurious hotel in the world

So a bit on Dubai itself. It's not a country, but instead both a city and an emirate - basically a state, within the United Arab Emirates. Thanks to an influx of oil money and the fear of what might happen when both of those run out, the city was developed in the 2000's from a small Arab desert city to a world class business and entertainment hub. It's carbon footprint must be similar to a large shoe factory thanks to being in a roasting hot location that needs a lot of energy to be cooled, and cause of it's lack of natural resources meaning everything needs to be imported. Only about one in ten residents are Arab, the rest being mostly made up of Indians and Filipinos to do the cheap dirty work, and Europeans, mostly English and French to earn huge bucks in the nicer jobs, and all tax free. In fact, I was staggered to read that 100,000 British residents live in Dubai.

The next day was a Friday, the equivalent of Sunday in the Muslim world and therefore a day off work for Dubaites (if that's what you call 'em). I headed out to explore at around 10am and was drenched in sweat in about 0.2 seconds. Shweta lived by the rather huge Mall of the Emirates, part of which houses one of Dubai's most bizarre attractions - an indoor ski slope. In the desert! The fact that such a building exists summed up everything that is wrong with Dubai to me. Inside, I walked passed alpine-named restaurants and signs offering encounters with penguins, before having a look through the window at people in ski jackets and wooly hats carving through the snow, quite a contrast to the 45° or so heat outside! Even though I hate malls, it was a lot more pleasant wasting time there than being outside whilst waiting for the Metro system to open, which when it did was ultra modern and very efficient. I headed eastwards, and it was exciting to see the skyline of the main downtown area for the first time before I got off at the high rise business district to go for a walk and explore. I was pretty much the only person outside in the sun bar the odd Indian or Filipino, and everyone must have thought I was completely mad, as Shweta kindly pointed out that evening, but I wanted to properly experience the real Dubai, and the real Dubai is a red-hot frying pan.

I walked between the skyscrapers and sandy building sites of the business district and soon came close to something I'd taken great interest in over the years; the stunning sight of the world's tallest building - the Burj Kalifa. Having seen it in so many photos it was strange to see it in the flesh, it's tapering structure almost an optical illusion as in some ways it looked infinitely tall, and others like a tiny toy. It's bottom floors are taken up by the ultra-luxurious Armani hotel, and walking past the entrance the doorman ushered me inside saying 'it's too hot to be out there'. I wandered around inside for a few minutes in mild astonishment at it's opulence before facing the heat again. I couldn't stick it for long and after looking at a nearby Aston Martin dealership, found my way into the coolness of the Dubai Mall; the biggest mall in the world which houses an amazing aquarium with the largest acrylic panel in the world - Dubai sure does have a lot of '-ests'. After being amazed by this impressive tank full of sharks and stingrays, a huge indoor waterfall, and a very large actual dinosaur skeleton discovered in the USA in 2006, I decided I'd seen enough fakeness for the day and headed home, passing a pasty shop on the way. An actual pasty shop! It was sadly closed for Ramadam though. An half mile long ride on a travelator through an air-con passageway took me back to the metro. There's no need to walk when you're in 'heaven'.

That evening Shweta suggested we go to an Egyptian restaurant near her flat, the first such place I've been in. I had a traditional dish which surprisingly loosely resembled spaghetti bolognais and was very tasty. We met with some of her friends afterwards - two Indians and a South African, and drove right across town to the traditional fish market - not exactly what I expected to be doing on a Friday night in Dubai! This was a place well off the normal tourist map and just getting going for the night. It was quite exciting to look around for half an hour or so whilst the guys shopped for some seafood, and you could buy almost everything including fresh caviar and dead sharks! We all went for a drink in the nearby original old part of a Dubai afterwards, but unfortunately even these original buildings looked fake, since the authorities had over-restored them removing their very soul and authenticity. The sun had sucked every ounce of energy out of me that day and I soon fell asleep at the table, Shweta then driving me home like an exhausted five-year-old after his friend's party.

Downtown skyline

The Burj Kalifa, the tallest building in the world at 830m

Shweta had the Saturday off work so, so after a lazy morning yarning away on everything and anything, she offered to drive me to a couple of sights I'd talked about that were difficult to reach by public transport. Cruising along on the 12-lane motorway in her Renault, we split off and headed onto the Palm Juremia - a set of artificial islands shaped like a palm tree when seen from above which truly have to be seen to be believed. I'd looked at satellite images of it before in wonder, but to see it in reality was something else, it was way bigger and grander than I could imagine and a tremendous feat of engineering. Blocks of apartments lined the main road whilst gated communities of luxury houses filled the side roads, and at the far end we visited the luxurious Atlantis hotel. Inside we saw a water-park, a vending machine that dispensed gold, posh shops, and yet another amazing aquarium complete with an underwater recreation of the least city of Atlantis. We drove around the outside of the island, passing a Rolls Royce cruising along and yet more amazing looking hotels, to see a good view of the Manhattan-esq skyline of the Marina Bay area. This was truly another world. Whilst taking a photo, a family asked me to take their picture for them and I asked where they were from. 'Syria' they replied, and for the first time the conflict there had a face which I could associate with. They seemed happy, which I guess anyone on holiday from such troubles would.

Shweta dropped me at the metro station and handed me her expensive SLR camera to use for the day since my battery was dead. Amazing kindness and trust I thought. I headed right to the other end of town on the Metro to the original part of the city around Dubai creek and stepped out into the blazing sun. It was lunchtime and I was hungry, but it was Ramadan. In Indonesia, eating during daylight hours during the festival is frowned upon and hidden away, but in Dubai things are stricter and accordion to the signs I saw - 'during the holy month of Ramadan the consumption of food and drink during daylight hours is prohibited by LAW'. Now as much as I try and respect local customs this was a step too far for me, even if it was a law that is apparently enforced. With sandwich in hand, like a heroin junkie I hid behind a bus on a quiet street and scoffed my face then necked some water. This, after eating a take-away curry whilst hiding in some shrubs the day before! It was truly a truly ridiculous scene as you can imagine, but thankfully my illegal actions both went unnoticed and didn't offend anyone. Ramadan is not a good time to visit Dubai as a non-Muslim.

I wandered along the waterside for a while, then took an old ferry across the creek to the souks (markets) of the old part of Dubai. For the first time I saw a city that wasn't shiny and perfect; where poor Indians unloaded cargo from boats, where the odd bit of paint peeled off a wall, and where pushy salesmen tried to sell you spices in the winding lanes of the spice souk. The gold souk nearby was filled with nothing but jewellery shops, but once-drained again by the sun their only appeal to me was their air conditioning. Arriving back at Shweta's flat, she introduced me to a couple of her friends who had popped around - an extremely camp but quite funny Argentinian gay guy - an air hostess (as he called himself) and his Indian boyfriend. The four of us took a taxi to Marina Bay nearby (in a Lexus no less) and met up with some other friends of Shweta's from Poland, Holland and India for a couple of beers. They were all living the high life in the city working for huge corporations such as Nestle, and chatting to them was a real insight behind both the facade of Dubai as well as what it's like to work inside the soulless corporate world. They were all really nice people but what I learnt reaffirmed my understanding that both Dubai and corporate life was big, fake, money-driven and somewhat lacking in care or compassion. Still, it was a fun night and interesting to hear their tales.

So that was it, Dubai in two days. Some would argue that my short time there is not enough to reveal much about the place, but to me the facts are too obvious to miss. It's the middle-eastern Las Vegas without the vice. It's the hottest place I've ever been, and it's not a suitable place to build a huge new city. Interesting to see, but I wouldn't want to live there. It was time to leave, and on her way to start a new week at work on this Sunday morning, Shweta dropped me at a metro station so I could head to the airport, where I said goodbye and thank you. Her kindness and generosity was heartwarming and a reminder for me to do the same, and she was so interesting and fun to hang out with. Dubai is hell with air-conditioning, but a hell I enjoyed seeing.