Dubai is a city of the United Arab Emirates, that has become one of the main Economic centres in the World, and the leader in Middle East. This has a lot to do with the oil present in the Persian Gulf area, but also to its long tradition as traders in the region, which still is their main contributor to the GDP. The city has around 2 million inhabitants, and just 10% of them are locals. The rest have come from all countries in the world, mainly India, attracted for its extremely low unemployment rate and the many opportunities it offers.
I had already visited the city in a 24-hour stopover coming from back from Asia, and I already found few things to highlight. This time, the stay took longer, although the visiting part was close to one day as well. The main difference was the weather, as the previous time, the wind direction brought fog and haze, which was less present this time.
Something I have confirmed again this time is that the city is not designed for pedestrians. Distances are too long to be walked and many areas do not even have sidewalks, and their public transportation network is quite limited: two lines of metro, and an insufficient bus network. Taxis are quite affordable, on the other hand. Climate might be playing a role here, as my two visits have been in winter, which is the only bearable time of the year to be outside, but in summer people do not want to be waiting for the bus outside…
The city is spread along the Persian Gulf coastline and consists mainly of skyscrapers, which is quite surprising taking into account they do have plenty of space as it is in the middle of the desert. These skyscrapers become the main attraction of the city, where the wealth is reflected in the size and design of the buildings.
The best example of this is the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world with 828 metres, which has become an attraction itself: not only as a viewpoint, but also with some light, sound and water spectacles that take place every evening with the building as the main character. Burj Al Arab is another famous building, due to its shape emulating a sail, and because it hosts the only 7-star hotel in the world. Sunsets are wonderful from the beach next to it.
Dubai architecture is more than skyscrapers, though. There are several unique constructions, like the Palm Jumairah, a housing development with the shape of a palm, which is home for some of the most wealthy citizens of the world. Those that are not in “The World”, another development with the shape of the World, which is not connected to mainland, and therefore even more exclusive.
Dubai does have an old part, which lies around the Creek, and where you can find several souks, being the Gold and the Spices ones the best known ones. Even the souks look nice, clean, and new. They have been restored, but keep the essence of a number of stalls mostly specialised in one type of goods. The gold one is quite unique, as it hosts plenty hundreds of stalls where jewels are sold.
From here, we took the opportunity to do a boat tour around the creek, where we could see the intense traffic of boats acting as water buses, allowing people to cross from one bank to the other, yachts of locals enjoying their time, and a huge fleet of old and small cargo ships, that mainly bring goods from Iran (just a couple of hours transit from Dubai) and some small fishing ones. Aiming to revitalise this part of the city, some buildings with a resemblance to an old eastern town have been built, and are house now of many restaurants, shops and bars, where to enjoy a nice meal.
After this second visit, I still think Dubai is not worth to visit, according to my taste. Nevertheless, numbers do not say so. During New Year’s Eve, there were 1.8 million visitors in Dubai (almost doubling their population), and during the whole year, up 18 million people visit the city. The city was full of tourists, and I still do not know what they do in a stay of, let’s say, 4 days… You’d better check it out yourself…
There are several areas in the World quite interesting to look at nowadays. One of these places is Middle East. I found this video at TED which talks about Qatar. It is one of the Emirates in the Gulf area, which are using the money from the oil they are floating into designing attractive mini countries. These countries are becoming some of the centers of the World economy nowadays.
I have only been to the area once (apart from several connecting stops in Emirates’ Dubai airport), and it was in Winter… From what I know, summer is crazy, with temperature around 40-50 degrees as a constant. To give you an example, I was amazed when one of my colleagues there, refuelled the car without stopping the motor. At least in Europe, this is considered dangerous, as it can provoke an explosion… In Middle East, this is common practice, as refuelling without air conditioning can be even dangerous during summer. Back to the video, it does not have many components to learn from in a public speaking sense, but it does provide some good interesting data to look at:
I found these data very interesting, full of contradictions, changes and good looking plans… and also opportunities for my industry.
Some jobs give you nice opportunities like travelling to places you would not go otherwise, like Oman. Oman is a small country in Middle East, ruled by a Sultan, so it is a Sultanate, and which as many other countries in the area has pretty high life standards due to the gas and oil to be found in their underground.
I did not have much time to walk around the place, but managed to get some first impression after some talks with locals, as well as a couple of short drives around a small city and the capital, Masqat.
Some more pictures in this slideshow.