Dubai, or not To Buy

After 7 odd months in third world and developing asian countries I was pretty excited about visiting Dubai, one of the 7 emirates that makes up the United Arab Emirates on the Arabian Peninsula. It was considered the Las Vegas of the Arabic World, a vacationing spot for oil-rich sheikhs and their wives, rich Brits and Europeans itching for a little Gucci, Fendi, and Armani.

Unfortunately its all the things that make Dubai-Dubai that made me realize that being a developed city is not necessarily a good thing. I mean everywhere I turned there were shopping malls, shopping centres, malls with the world's largest in-door ski resort, 5 star hotels, hotels with shopping arcades, hotels that charged non-guests an entrance fee of 200dhs ($70)!

I took the hop-on hop-off sightseeing bus to see a bit more of Dubai and thought it was hysterical that 80%of the tour consisted of pointing out the hotels and real estate projects - where they're building the worlds largest manmade island resort, the worlds largest shopping mall, and of course the world's largest tower!
Beautiful, clean and sterile, Dubai had no personality no character. Just superficial and consumer oriented.



It wasn't all that bad, luckily my friend Kamal had gotten me in touch with his friends Prakash and Jenna who were sweet enough to entertain me for a few days - their company was great and saved me from sitting in my hotel room watching Star Movies all weekend long.