Dubai is not one of my favourite places, but it’s a place that fascinates me. The most blingtastic city in the world, it outdoes anything you can think of. The excesses of Las Vegas or old Hollywood are as budget ventures besides the seemingly untold wealth on which Dubai runs.
This is so very obvious on its streets and in its architecture, whether you are walking through the gold souk or one of the outrageously expensive Malls, from the Bugatti in a roped-off area to the £105 it can cost you to reach the Top of the Burj to gaze out on the desert below.
How many of the thousands who ascend the famous ‘fastest lifts in the world’ (having paid approximately the monthly salary of a local immigrant worker to do so) think that what they are looking out on is what was actually here before the ‘miracle’ of modern Dubai – desert. Is someone having a laugh?
Horse-racing, motor-racing, tennis and athletics featuring the world’s top sportsmen regularly amuse local and visiting wealthy patrons, operas featuring singers from the MET and the ROH are constant events, and mega-stars rock up to perform at concerts for astronomical sums of money, mean that Dubai is no longer an isolated desert kingdom but a major player in the entertainment field.
Do you want to go skiing in the middle of a 45-degree summer? Dubai can accommodate that. Do you want to go Wadi-bashing in the desert in a 4WD at night? Ditto? Or how about sleeping under the stars (glamping, of course), eating in a restaurant with exotic fish swimming by, sailing along canals as though in Venice, or ballooning with a falcon? All of these Dubai can offer.
But if you can turn away from the glitz and glamour for a moment, there are quieter pleasures to be had. Swimming in the beautiful Arabian Sea (admittedly not so nice now that they have built The Palm and The World in the said sea), surfing, crisscrossing the Creek on Abras or wandering the textile souk, fingering the silks and satins and bartering with the shopkeepers in the old part of town, then having a coffee by the waterfront while watching the porters carry heavy loads to the boats moored in the Creek, ready for the journey across the sea to India.
Judge for yourself. You’ll love it or hate it, or like me be fascinated by it while being depressed by the knowledge that all this is built on the shoulders of immigrant workers from India & Pakistan, poorly paid and poorly housed. The argument that they might otherwise be starving in their home countries is used a lot in Dubai to justify the continued expansion of the city. That’s not a valid argument in this day and age, is it?
Things are improving – somewhat. Only 20 years ago there used to be camel races where little boys of 4, 5 and 6 were jockeys, velcroed to the saddles of great lolloping camels. A great scandal rocked the kingdom when one of the camel owners left a boy to die in the desert (he’d become too old at eight to be light enough to ride the camel). Laws now state that no one under the age of 14 can be employed as a camel-racer but rumours abound that there is still illegal racing in parts of the UAE.
And finally, an irresistible selection of ceramic lavatories. Spoilt for choice, aren’t you?
MARI'S TRAVELS WITH HER CAMERA 
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