Our Many Moons of Honey: Dubai: America’s 51st State

a view from the subway car

We can only give you our first impression of Dubai as we spent a short amount of time there but here it goes. As our title says Dubai should be Americas 51^st desert state. It’s pretty much a concrete jungle in the middle of the desert which caters to very rich people or those who pretend to be rich. Everything in Dubai is big, and we mean BIG! It’s a city full of malls, residential and office skyscrapers, a lot of hotels AND lots and lots and lots of construction. While the architecture is very interesting (predominantly glass) the city is just a lot of buildings clumped together seemingly along the subway line. There is really no style or design to the city. Don’t get us wrong, the individual buildings are very intricate in design and impressive, however, when you clump them all together their uniqueness tends to get lost.

We spent a lot of time in the Mall of the Emirates that was located close to our place as it was the center of the community: where the subway, groceries and the majority of the restaurants were. We should mention that this same mall houses the infamous ski Dubai complex. For those of you that are not familiar with this facility it is the first and only ski hill in the world located in the middle of the desert. Not to mention damn funny. Imagine a bunny hill, now add walls and a ceiling and a big glass viewing gallery that looks into the mall and you have Ski Dubai. Oh yeah we forgot to mention that there’s a chalet at the bottom of the slope that has a t.v fireplace to add to the ambiance. Awesome. The rest of the mall is very grand with ALL of the top designers (Leboutin, Dior, Gucci, Prada, etc) and of course, three H&M stores. Let’s not forget the chandeliers and elegant staircases to take around this massive complex.

Ski Dubai

The highlight of our stay in Dubai, besides laughing our asses off with Captain P, was going to the beach. The weather was a perfect 30 degrees (of course Celsius, it’s the only measure that makes sense), not a cloud in the sky and fine sand under our feet. The whole experience was amazing.

Again, as with Morocco, one of our concerns coming to Dubai was how S should dress. We quickly realized that Dubai is mostly foreigners with a few UAE nationals sprinkled throughout and being Americas 51^st state, anything seems to go. The only way you know you’re not in the States is due to the UAE nationals walking about in their robes: men all in white with a withe head scarf and black band holding it in place and the women in a black robe and full burqa. Again, more unfairness to the women, making them wear all black in the desert heat!! We note that this dress is in contrast to Morocco where the women wore all white as we got to the beach and desert towns. While we are comparing Dubai to Morocco, we wanted to note that there was a difference in the daily call to prayer. In Dubai, the call was much more beautiful, like a soft and lyrical song … a hymn, where as in Morocco it was more like talking or yelling.

For those of you that have been following us, we talked quite a bit about the medina’s in Morocco, so we were in for a shock when we went to visit the medina in Dubai. S, being a little naïve was so excited to finally see some culture and an old medina and was she in for a surprise. Lo and behold, this medina was nothing more than a multi billion dollar complex of stores, pimped out hotels and restaurants surrounded by fancy medina walls. For what it was, they really pimped it out proper.

Before we move on to speak about our amazing flight to our next destination (it’s a secret but as a hint … we’ve moved on to Asia), we must take a few moments to tell you about our amazing host, Captain P. Yes, he really is a captain flying Boing 777’s for Emirates and ladies he is still available. He made our stay top notch, with a big welcome dinner (including kangaroo meat!!!), a pimp pad to call home with a projector TV (yes, we spent one full day watching movies and lying on the couch J ) and a trip to the beach. Captain P, thank you so much, puno te volimo and may the skies be friendly!

While we are on the topic of flying we wanted to end this post with a HUGE thumbs up to Qatar Airlines. Talk about 5 star service in economy class J . We had exit row seats on both of our flights which we didn’t have to pay more for. Now this was not your standard exit row seat where you gain a few centimeters in leg room. We kid you not we had 3 meters of leg room all to ourselves. Add a personal entertainment system with a remote control (and Tetris!), great meals AND a hot towel to refresh yourself and you have very enjoyable flights! So a little rant about hot towels and their disappearance from flights: is it that expensive to have hot hand towels on every flight in North America? You can wash the damn things and use the microwave to get them hot. COME ON PEOPLE this is not too much to ask if you are paying hundreds of dollars to fly. We can sort of see how a $4 meal would break an airlines budget (SARCASM!!!) but there is no excuse to take away our hot towels. We are not animals damn it!!! Ahhhh that felt good, almost as good as when you run a hot towel across your face during a long flight J.

Follow this link for more pictures of Dubai (password: 51st): http://s912.photobucket.com/albums/ac322/sandymilos/dubai_2010/