DUBAI 2008

DUBAI

Dubai was a place that I really wanted to see. The expectation was dwarfed by the experience. The plane landed at ~1 AM. The airport is being redone so the planes are parked several miles (or so it seems) from the terminal. Our bag was lost. The person who met us gave us a folder and told us that the driver would get us to the hotel. The hotel, the Burj Al Arab, is almost beyond words (more later). With all of the delays, we got to bed at 3 AM. The tour service wanted us to be available at 9:30. I met the guide and explained we would be an hour late.

The guide's introduction to this city in the desert (a city recently created out of literally nothing) was done at Mach speed. Granted there is really not much to see in Dubai as it was constructed from mud huts and tents in a stretch of flat desert about thirty years ago (the far-sighted ruling family realized that their oil would not last forever and that they'd better start diversifying). Everything, and I mean everything, has just been built or is currently under construction. One person told us that 30% of the world's tall building construction cranes are in Dubai. I believe it. The place reminds me of Las Vegas on steroids.

The hotel and the suites are over-the-top. Our room at check-in was on the second floor. They moved us to a similar suite on the 15th floor the next morning. I'm not sure this accommodation should even be called a suite. A "comfortably sized home" would be more like it. Our (for lack of a better word) suite is on two floors, large living room and office on the first floor and bedroom on the second (complete with a mirrors on the ceiling). The interior decoration colors are wild, but understandable if a lot of their clientele are from basically sand-colored places. For example, there's gold on picture frames and the multiple TVs, plus red and sapphire/navy colored sofas and chairs, with accents of floral and geometric fabrics that have blasts of yellow, purple, etc.

Our breathtaking (read fast, rather than fantastic) tour of the City was a travesty. There is little that has not been built yesterday but the old souks (markets) are still in existence as are the loading docks. We ran into a local Dubai native who went to school in Florida and Carol, who has been known to talk to statues, (Carol's edit: Huh? I want places, dates, and subject matter of said conversation(s)!!) struck up a conversation with him. He was charming and fun. I believe the conversation started over the similarity of the South American custom of drinking coconut milk out of a raw coconut.

Among the old souks we went to was one dedicated to jewelry. Row upon row, shop after shop, of jewelry, gold put into every imaginable form and shape, plus precious and semi-precious stones. Carol was a kid in a candy store (but Carol, for purposes of the Dubai souk, was on a "diet").

The most authentic feeling experience we had was a "taxi" ride across the city harbor. It was lined with trading ships that reminded us of Chinese junks. These ships still ply their trade all along the coastline of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf. The dockside was alive with activity of people loading and unloading all sorts of goods - including cars, mattresses, boxed refrigerators, and many things that were under tarps.

DUBAI (continued)

The second day began with the tour service as "good" as the first. The same guide arrived but had no idea where we were supposed to go. We went to Ski Dubai, housed in what looks like an airplane hanger upended on one side. Artificial snow is manufactured and there is probably a 1000 foot-long slope for the truly winter-desperate. Although Ski Dubai was part of the itinerary, the guide had no voucher to get us in. (Additional guide problems included, and this was really remarkable, no bottled water for us to drink even though it was in the mid to upper 80's each day. Gallons of water had been provided to us in Morocco and Tunisia, where it was substantially cooler. The car today also reeked of cigarette smoke, etc. etc.)

Ski Dubai, all things considered, is a joke. Snow in the flat, mountainless desert is an oxymoron; the idea far exceeds the reality. We walked around outside the place, which was in one of the many malls in Dubai, and left it at that. We made a detour to a new diamond and gold mart, just because it was nearby, but all of the shops were offering much the same thing. Then we returned to the Hotel for lunch.

Burj Al Arab, the famous "dhow sail" hotel, is a dream. Since we'll be traveling out of Dubai City for several days before returning briefly to catch our Frankfurt/D.C. flight, we decided not to give Emirates Air a second opportunity to lose our large checked bag. We arranged to have it sent to the hotel we'll be staying in (for a few hours) just before our flight back to the States. Once we do a final sort that big bag will be picked up there for direct shipment to California. So, on the return trip we'll just have carry on. Neither the guide nor his agency could figure out how to transfer our bag from the Burj to our next hotel, but the extraordinary folks at the Burj came to the rescue.

The tour of Dubai City ended with a motor sail on the Gulf. Of course our guide forgot to tell us in advance that we needed our passports in case we were boarded by their coast guard/military police (we had just driven for a half hour through horrendous traffic and were almost at the marina when he brought that up; it just typified the "service" of this local agency which, no contest, is the worst guide company we have ever encountered. And these are the folks selected by our main travel agency in the US!). Being without passports on the Gulf is a jailable offense. Luckily, Carol had them anyway. The sailing trip was fun and the owner-guide was full of stories about his sailing and living around the world. Although he is an extremely experienced sailor, and a wonderful story teller, he may have a few sails missing "upstairs." He actually admitted he got food poisoning in Eritrea by drinking beer cooled with ice. Hello! A five year knows not to eat ice in Eritrea! But we got to sail around the "Palm," one of the first residential islands created in Dubai and still under construction.

There is construction absolutely everywhere in Dubai City and the outskirts, and swarms of real estate deal makers. In my judgment, the real estate market has got to bust. Most of the apartments and villas have been bought on speculation. Whole multi-story apartment buildings have only a few tenants actually living in them. This is a fair characterization of the real estate market here: Dubai = "Do buy" = Ponzi scheme. In a Tuesday English language newspaper, about 25 pages were devoted to news/small ads. But there were four separate real estate sections, totaling about 125 pages all together, with single spaced listings for "villas and apartments" for sale or lease. As our driver to the Al Maha resort told us, "lots of building but no jobs." These apartments, especially those looking out on the water, start at a half million dollars US. It's just remarkable. Everyone is still trying to make a quick in-out buck.

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