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Feb 19 - Mar 10, 2006

The Need to be Bigger and More Extravagant

Normal is not an Option in Dubai

Manfred Pfluegl

Keywords: UAE, United Arab Emirates, Dubai, Deira, tourist, travel trip report, travel log, travelogue.

Dubai. Everyone knows it for its opulence. Isn't that the city with the new 6-star hotel, or was it 7 stars? Yep, this is Dubai.

Architecture

It is exploding in a real-estate boom. Buildings are growing everywhere. If you leave the city for 3 months and come back you can be sure that another skyscraper is around the corner that wasn't there before and another mega shopping mall has been added to the long list of shopping opportunities.

Dubai already has the most luxurious hotel. The Burj Al Arab Hotel. It is a 7 star hotel, the only one in the world. It has indoor skiing. If you feel like it you can ski indoors while the desert outside sizzles in 40C or higher. And since there is more than one mall that has ski runs you can even chose the location. Dubai has the largest gold shopping district in the world. Dubai has the world's largest man-made island, Palm Islands. It has the world's largest artificial marina, the Dubai Marina. It has an island complex that mimics the world map. And the list goes on.

But all of this is not enough. Dubai will have the world's largest building - the Burj Dubai. Supposedly it will be finished by 2008. The planned height is a state secret. They want to make sure nobody beats them in the race for the tallest skyscraper. The ad says "Dubai will be the center of the world".

I like the naming scheme for the city districts. Since most is government owned and government planned, the dedicated districts have nice marketing names like: Internet City, Media City, Knowledge Village, or Gold City. I worked in the DMC, the Dubai Media City.

Shopping

The malls are gigantic. Everything is more superlative here. Even the simple things take the form of superlatives. The simple supermarket chain of Safeway is called "Safest Way" here. Naming and marketing is everything. Shopping is not something you do to satisfy your basic needs like groceries. Shopping is seen as an entertainment, as a way to spend you time. How are you going to spend your weekend? I am going to spend my time shopping. Since I am the opposite of a shopaholic, this is something that I will never be able to comprehend. Shopping is a main tourist attraction. You can book a shopping tour with a travel agent and for $40 they take you first to the Gold Souk and then to a shopping mall. Paying money to be taken to a mall? Independent and adventurous traveler will shake their heads, but clearly there is demand for everything.

Shopping does not have to be bad though. Even the independent and adventurous traveler can find something. In the older part of town (I purposely avoided saying "old part of town" because while older than the modern skyscrapers it is still modern, certainly not old in historic terms.) there are markets that are crowded with Indian workers and Arabs alike. The markets don't have the charm of places like Fez or Marrakesh, but they hustle and bustle and the small stalls are a welcome change to the modern air-conditioned malls. Beside the famous and worth while visiting Gold Souk there are two more small souks in the district of Deira, close to the Dubai Creek. The most amazing thing I have seen in the Gold Souk was a golden pacifier. Fully functional with a rubber or silicone part for jawing, the handle and cover were made of pure gold with a golden chain. That would be a nice present for any sheik's baby.

People

There are many rich people here. Just look at the cars. There seems to be no car that is older than 5 years. The hotels are super expensive. Even a hotel with not-so-excellent service costs $250 a night. For this you get a room where the toilet does not flush well because the water pressure is so low and you can't see the TV from your bed because it is mounted on the wall facing in another direction.

Abu Dhabi - the only other internationally known city in the UAE - was just crowned the richest city in the world by terms of Gross Product per Capita, i.e. income per inhabitant. I am sure that Dubai is not far behind. But the wealth is not evenly distributed. There are many super rich people and a few people so rich that it goes beyond one's imagination. But there are also some 1.5-2 million Indians in this country that only has a total of 5 million inhabitants. The Indians are the work force and perform all the tasks from waiters, cleaning personal and construction workers. They live in their labor camps and on weekends the buses bring them from their labor camps into the area of the cheap souks for shopping.

In this sense I felt that the UAE is a 2-caste system, and the two castes don't mix. The poor Indians form one social class shut away in their labor camps, and the Arabs form a separate class. Their religion is different, their dress code is different and their income is different.

That does not mean that people are not friendly or satisfied. The Arabs from the UAE are very open-minded in general and also very open to the western world. They copy many things from them, including life style and fashion. And the Indians must feel rich in comparison to their friends living back in India; so they have some reasons to be happy and satisfied too.

The Sheiks

UAE does not seem a democratic country to me. The wealth and power is centered in only a handful of people: the sheiks and caliphs. They control everything. They rule every aspect of life. The internet is censored (except in the Free zones where the multi-national companies have their office and expats have their apartments). If you try to put your photos on Flickr, a Internet-based photo album you will be greeted with a message stating that this page and site is not deemed to go with the cultural standards of the country.

But the rulers are also generous. If an inhabitant from Dubai marries an inhabitant from Dubai the sheik gives them a house as wedding present. Just like that. You marry, you get your house free. Of course, non-resident, i.e. the Indians, are excluded from this rule.

Happenings

There is always something on. One show chases the next: The International Jazz Show, the Dubai Tennis Open, the Austrian Ski Week at Ski Dubai, Chess Olympiad, camel races, and so much more.

Weather

It is warm in winter and hot in summer. It never rains, so I thought. But it does rain. When I was there in February I had the rare luck of 3 rainy days in a row. It is an unusual event. The newspaper reported a total of 1,400 minor traffic accidents in Dubai in the three days of rain. A few cars got stuck as the water turned the unprepared streets temporarily into shallow lakes.

The buildings are dusty from the desert sand and with the rain the sand sticks even more so onto the buildings giving them a dull brownish look. That takes away from the sparkle of the shinny and new.

Final Comments

Dubai is like Las Vegas. All is artificial, all is man-made, all is big, opulent, shiny and new. Bigger is better, in cars as well as in buildings. Dubai is a city of superlatives. They love to have something that the other cities don't have. They love to make the impossible come true, like skiing in the desert. But deep down I wonder, how will the city look like in 100 years or whenever the oil money stops pouring in? Will the city continue to sparkle? Or will the city be taken over by the desert sands again?

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