Dubai Hotels
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Under Construction
Entry 82 of 114 | show all | print this entry |
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· Dubai, United Arab Emirates
· GMT +4:00hrs
"build it and they will come"
- Kevin Costner, Field of Dreams
Under construction
Dubai really is quite the place. Unless you like shopping or are the sort of person who gets off on viewing large scale construction projects (both on and offshore) then there isn't much to do here, apart from sweat and spend money, and the more of that (money) the better. The whole place has been built, or is being built, to attract tourists and the tourist dollar. Yes, the city can trace it's origins to a small 1830's fishing village but today Dubai is all about development, air-conditioned duty free shopping centres, jewelery shops, palm trees lining manicured sprinkled lawns, 5 star hotels, celebrity chief restaurants and chauffeur driven Arabs. It's all bling bling, Arab style.
In its bid to attract the tourist dollar Dubai, one of the 7 states that make up the oil rich Persian Gulf country the United Arab Emirates, has gone to almost superhuman lengths. It has already
constructed 2 massive offshore
archipelagos (one in the shape of a palm tree and another in the shape of the earth) with 3 more presently under construction. Inland cranes stretch skywards, a bunch of them presently constructing a new downtown business district, part the centrepiece of which will be the 818 metre Burj Dubai, which when completed in September 2009 will be the tallest building in the world. Amid all the construction you will also find many completed buildings including the world's only 7-star hotel and any number of record-defying skyscrapers, the likes of which make the Hong Kong skyline look like a model. But it's not all bling bling; the newness of modern Dubai is sharply contrasted by the old-world fishing village feel one gets down by Dubai creek, and it is this contrast that makes a visit to Dubai a surreal experience of juxtaposition contrasts.
Dubai... but why?
We got off the bus from Muscat at 10pm two nights ago. We had no idea where in the city we were (the outskirts we assumed), we had no map, we had no information on the city other than a hotel name and we had no local currency (the UAE dirham). Somehow we made it to The Piccadilly Hotel on Naser Square (actually, it was as a result of Pat finding an ATM, acquiring some cash and us hopping into a taxi) which, at 375AED a night (€66), one of the cheapest places in town... but still a fortune to us, 2 days out of India. We didn't really have anything we wanted to do here, apart from just being here, but we have spent yesterday
and this morning visiting the city gold and spice souqs (markets) and getting our picture in front of the 7-star Burj Al Arab hotel, the closest thing Dubai has to a recognisable landmark. We also found time to book our flights to Cairo, get drunk in The Irish Village, the only Irish bar in the city, and do a bit of shopping in one of Dubai's legendary shopping centres, one we visited to escape the 36 degree plus sun (even if we did walk for hours in that sun to get there). All those 'activities' saw us spending not only two nights in the city but also a small fortune and brought to an end our 3 night stop-off on the Arabian Peninsula. Later this afternoon we have our flight to Cairo which is good... we have got to get somewhere cheap to stop this financial hemorrhaging. Egypt, we need you, we think.
Day 237 to 239 Observations (April 6th to April 8th 2008)
· A tip. Don't try so hard
Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I shouldn't have tipped so generously the Piccadilly Hotel porter who unnecessarily showed us to our room shortly after arriving. A few minutes later another porter knocked at the door of our room to know if everything was okay?
"Super , no bother. Cheers for asking," we replied.
He then noticed, shock horror, that everything was anything but 'super'. The perfectly adequate TV sitting in the corner of our room had no remote control, so he left only to return minutes later with a replacement TV complete with remote control. This 'service' may have warranted a tip had we requested the TV be replaced but as we hadn't the porter left the room tip-less and no doubt grumbling that we weren't as generous as his mate had no doubt informed him we were. Do these guys know we're backpackers?
· Rock Stars
After settling into our hotel room and seen off the last of tip-searching porters Pat made a comment that he felt like a rock star.
"Last night Muscat, the night before Mumbai, tonight Dubai and in two nights time Cairo. We're like a band on tour Dave," he informed me.
"I suppose Lad, but I doubt any stars that do find themselves in Dubai frequent the Piccadilly Hotel."
· Expedia bias
We tried to book our flights to Cairo on-line yesterday but couldn't complete the transaction because little old Ireland wasn't listed in the Credit Card billing drop-down menu of the website. Nope, it wasn't listed under 'I' (Ireland), 'R' (Republic) or even 'E' (Eire... a long shot admittedly), but places like Belize and even somewhere called Asmara where options. What's going on Expedia? Btw, we hopped next door and paid a travel agent to book the same flights we were looking at on Expedia. Booking with an agent instead of on-line. No there's a first.
· U/C
Look at a map of Dubai and you're likely to see 'U/C' printed all over it. It goes some way to highlight the scale of the construction going on over here. Another way to get an appreciation for the seemingly unbridled development is to take a taxi ride. You're never too far from a sea of cranes building the latest and greatest skyscraper , an army of earthmover's reclaiming more land from the Arabian Gulf or vast tracts of desert landscape been turned into the newest 'Pleasure Village' complete with must have condos, apartments and platinum card shopping centres. It all leaves no doubt in our minds that there is indeed a lot of money in oil (U.A.E. is the 5th largest oil producer in the world). We estimate that if they keep building off-shore islands at the rate they are building them then by 2020 they should succeed in building a land bridge across the Arabian Gulf to the shore of Iran, some 200km away. Check out the madness on Google Earth.
· Heads up
A word of warning for the guys out there. Don't take your girlfriend or wife (assuming she hasn't already cheated on you) to Dubai. It's full of expensive hotels, duty free shopping centres and jewelery shops. She might love you for it but your credit card won't.
· Jo Maxi
Taxis are cheap over here in Dubai, which is good considering you don't really want to be out in the sun for any longer than you absolutely have to, distances are vast and the chronic traffic means going from A to B will take a while. We spent 2 hours in a taxi earlier today going to and from the 7-star Burj AL Arab hotel, somewhere we naively thought we could walk to when we first opened a map of Dubai. The bad news? Getting a taxi in the first place might take time too. We had to walk for a few km's last night before we eventually hailed a taxi to take us the rest of the way to the Irish Village. Yep, we earned our night out.
Where I stayed:
The Piccadilly Hotel
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