Day 17: Dubai
It's 25 June in Dubai, Saturday night I think. I'm about to lose a big chunk of Sunday coming back to Australia.
I have 24 hours in Dubai to break the trip home. When the plane arrives at 6.45am, it is already 35C, and within a few hours, it is 45C, and it feels just like that amazing day in Sydney a few months ago. I catch a taxi from my hotel to the Mall of the Emirates, a massive, air-conditioned centre which seems to contain every prestige brand from anywhere in the world. It is also the home of Ski Dubai, a 400 metre ski slope (obviously indoor) that has to be seen to be believed. The taxi driver shows me a building that will soon be the world’s tallest, at 200 stories and 750 metres. Building goes on 24 hours a day.
Every taxi driver I meet is Pakistani, and their biggest names in sport are not Michael Ballack or Ronaldo, but Shane Warne and Brett Lee. A billion people on the sub-continent and cricket is bigger than football. There, I said it.
I go to the beach where the famous Burj Al Arab Hotel is located, the one with the helicopter pad hanging off the side. It is not as fantastic ‘in the flesh’ as I expected from seeing photographs, perhaps because the city is in a 45C haze and the air seems heavy with dust and sand. Cars are covered in a thin layer of this dirt, and you get the feeling that the desert would claim back this land given half a chance.
The sea off the beach is the Arabian Gulf, and it is warmer than bath water. The heat is amazing, and it is sustained for months. The city survives on desalinated water, and every car, building, kennel and mousehole is air-conditioned. But my overwhelming impression, despite a few amazing structures, is that it is much the same as many Asian cities: traffic is chaotic, drivers are crazy, it is dusty and dirty, it has an Arab and Pakistani underclass who hang around the streets, and most of the buildings are single storey hovels. It also hits you between the eyes, coming from Germany, that there is no alcohol. Germany has it on every corner, while in Dubai, there are no bars, nothing in the shops, and people sit around drinking juice, tea and coffee. It makes me realise how alcohol plays a massive role in Western culture and socialising.
In the evening, I catch the old ‘souk’ boats to cross Dubai Creek, really a saltwater river through the city, but I can’t find anything worth buying. Even the locals mop the sweat from their brows, and gee, I could kill a beer.
I have 24 hours in Dubai to break the trip home. When the plane arrives at 6.45am, it is already 35C, and within a few hours, it is 45C, and it feels just like that amazing day in Sydney a few months ago. I catch a taxi from my hotel to the Mall of the Emirates, a massive, air-conditioned centre which seems to contain every prestige brand from anywhere in the world. It is also the home of Ski Dubai, a 400 metre ski slope (obviously indoor) that has to be seen to be believed. The taxi driver shows me a building that will soon be the world’s tallest, at 200 stories and 750 metres. Building goes on 24 hours a day.
Every taxi driver I meet is Pakistani, and their biggest names in sport are not Michael Ballack or Ronaldo, but Shane Warne and Brett Lee. A billion people on the sub-continent and cricket is bigger than football. There, I said it.
I go to the beach where the famous Burj Al Arab Hotel is located, the one with the helicopter pad hanging off the side. It is not as fantastic ‘in the flesh’ as I expected from seeing photographs, perhaps because the city is in a 45C haze and the air seems heavy with dust and sand. Cars are covered in a thin layer of this dirt, and you get the feeling that the desert would claim back this land given half a chance.
The sea off the beach is the Arabian Gulf, and it is warmer than bath water. The heat is amazing, and it is sustained for months. The city survives on desalinated water, and every car, building, kennel and mousehole is air-conditioned. But my overwhelming impression, despite a few amazing structures, is that it is much the same as many Asian cities: traffic is chaotic, drivers are crazy, it is dusty and dirty, it has an Arab and Pakistani underclass who hang around the streets, and most of the buildings are single storey hovels. It also hits you between the eyes, coming from Germany, that there is no alcohol. Germany has it on every corner, while in Dubai, there are no bars, nothing in the shops, and people sit around drinking juice, tea and coffee. It makes me realise how alcohol plays a massive role in Western culture and socialising.
In the evening, I catch the old ‘souk’ boats to cross Dubai Creek, really a saltwater river through the city, but I can’t find anything worth buying. Even the locals mop the sweat from their brows, and gee, I could kill a beer.
posted by Graham Hand | 11:49 AM
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