Dubai
So we’re on the flight to Singapore at the minute and not getting arrested or anything in Dubai I’d say that was a successful trip :). Dubai was fantastic and completely not what I expected. Due to a few mix ups I didn’t end up staying in my uncles and managed to book a hotel to stay in while we were boarding in Heathrow for Dubai. There doesn’t seem to be a whole pile of hostels in Dubai unfortunately (none that I could find anyway) and accommodation seems pretty expensive. So we booked into the Holiday Inn Downtown Dubai, we decided to go for something affordable that we recognised first and then maybe move to something cheaper when we got to know where was where later in the week. I must say it was handy to have a swimming pool on the roof in 38 degree heat.
So day one we went to the local mall and had a look around, by the looks of things everything seemed to be about the same price as at home so we weren’t too pushed. We decided we had enough of that pretty quick and took the “Big Bus Tour - Blue Line” out to see the sights and sounds, visiting Jumeira beach, Burg A L’Arab, Mall of the Emirates and a few more. We did have a bit of a culture shock seeing the lads going around in Thobes and the women in the Hijab but we got used to it and I think we came at the right time too as Ramadan was just over and they were celebrating IDE.
One thing that was pretty obvious all round was the fact that Dubai really caters for the tourist, with more reps than you could throw a stick at. They were all pretty good at letting you know what was what and all that. Must say the people of Dubai are unbelievably welcoming and all ways interested in where you are from and what you’re up to.
Day two we decided to spend some money and we visited the Gold Souk’s for some shopping, I haven’t lost my haggling ways of Beijing so I got on pretty well there, when I find out how much money I saved/lost I’ll let you know. We went on another more detailed bus tour that evening where we visited a pretty decent museum among other things. Dubai and Saudi Arabia has a pretty interesting History. A few Dubai facts that were new to me:
Only 5% of GDP is from Oil.
30% of the worlds cranes are in Dubai.
They haven’t actually said how many floors are going to be in the tallest building in the world.
80% of the population are ex pats.
They have the tallest flag pole in the world (WOW)
So Day three was spent in the Desert and for those who are planning to go I would definitely recommend it. Driving around the dunes was class and the barbeque was savage, you only get about 5 minutes camel riding and 5 minutes sand boarding (which seemed a bit too easy???). But to get out into the desert and see a different part of Dubai was well worth it. We did have a bit of an “incident” where the jeep behind us smashed into the back of us which I (saw it happening because I was in the back) though was brilliant but Sue thought otherwise. But that’s all part of the holiday I suppose.
Day four was spent at the beach and I must say they are the nicest beaches I’ve been on in a long time, clean, quiet and warmish water. I’m not the biggest fan of lying out at the beach but I had a good book (One Shot - Lee Child) and I was in and out of the water the whole time so I wasn’t too bored.
The rest of the time was spent packing / unpacking, beaching and eating. The food over here was excellent and very reasonable, never had a bad meal the whole time we were there and I think the most expensive meal was about 30 euro for both of us. By the way the taxis are dirt cheap too, 20 minutes in a taxi costing about 4 euro.
There were a few things that we weren’t too thrilled about. It did take a bit of getting used to all this richness and everything being the biggest and best and all of that, but once you get over that it isn’t as bad, (To be fair I didn’t see the point in saying they’ve the largest palm islands when they are the only ones with palm islands) The price of accommodation was another I suppose, the second hotel was about half the price of the Holiday Inn (Still expensive enough at €80 a night) but wasn’t in a very central area and wasn’t great compared to the holiday inn. Also a lot of our guides were from India or Pakistan and were basically sending money home, a lot of them with families at home that they’d see maybe once every two years. Most of the construction workers were also from India and were working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, 11 months a year for about $400 a month. Very tough lives around all this richness.
Apart from that I would definitely recommend this as a place to go for a holiday, if you can find affordable accommodation you are laughing and make sure to go some time after September when it cools down a small bit, the heat took a bit of getting used to.
So the sleeping tablet is kicking in here so I better close this one off, I’m on Facebook if you want to leave me a comment and apologies to the emails I haven’t replied to yet, I’ll get around to it when I can.
