Thoughts on Dubai

It's difficult to write about our time in Dubai. The oddness of it all consumes my recollections. As Alena said, "Dubai feels like the setting of a future zombie apocalypse". The juxtaposition of unbridled opulence, with the city's various dead-spots is some what overwhelming. So instead of trying to write pretty prose concerning my Dubai experience I will just write down the things that jumped out to me and seemed most important.

THE CITY

The city of Dubai was way more spread out than I expected. I did not research the city at all prior to our visit so my conception of the city was based on what I saw in movies and news articles I'd randomly read over the last few years. I expected it to be more like Las Vegas, with all the large buildings lined up and fairly close to each other. But no, the buildings seemed randomly placed and spaced. It was nearly impossible to walk places as there were few sidewalks and there was so much construction that whole roads and blocks were closed off or very hard to navigate.

Construction was literally occurring on every block ( if you can call them blocks, the city center is not really a grid like cities in the US). It was truly disappointing with how this much construction affects ones experience of Dubai. The noise, the dirt, the disruption of travel and the plain ugliness of it all in comparison to the grandness of the already finished buildings.

Obviously all of these buildings were in this state at one point, but it would be nice to hit pause on the growth and enjoy the what is already here for a bit. But I know that's not quite how it works. Just wished Dubai would have planned its expansion a little better so that at least some part of the city could be enjoyed in peace!

TRANSPORTATION

The construction also seemed to cause much confusion for the taxi drivers, as many of them seemed a little unsure and even a bit lost as they tried to escape the city center where our hotel was. The good thing about taxis is they are metered and pretty affordable. For a city where most things are very expensive, getting around was pretty cheap.

On the morning we went to the marina area we took the train. It was cool experience riding the early morning train with everyone as they headed to work. Dubai has a very diverse working class as literally everyone is a foreigner. We only ever met one person who was actually from Dubai our three days there, and we asked everyone!

The train in Dubai was awesome. It was very clean, fairly cheap, fast and ran on time. The only hiccup we had was our first boarding. A train arrived right as we got to the platform so we hurried inside. The doors shut and I looked around and the car was filled with women. Not a man I sight. Which I thought was very odd. I started looking at all the signs inside the train car and noticed one that read "100 Dirham fine for men in this car!"

My eyes got big as I realized we had entered a women's only car. No wonder everyone had been staring oddly at us. We were between stations so I had to hurriedly make my way through all the women to the normal car. It was pretty embarrassing but comical as well.

BUILDINGS

While the general landscape between the building in Dubai was unimpressive and down right ugly in places, the building themselves were amazing. Such a variety of designs and architecture just right next to each other. My favorite was this spiraling building that was just being finished in the marina area.

We also saw a sweet building that looked like Swiss cheese and another that was designed as a block with a hole straight through the middle!

We spent a morning going to the Burj Khalifa (the tallest building in the world).It is pretty touristy but was so with it. We were lucky to have a clear morning as we were told that most days are very hazy, a mix of dust from the qdesert and pollution.

The views were amazing and you can really see how spread out the city is. The coolest part might have been the elevator ride. You get in this space age looking elevator, the lights go off and intense music begins. You zip up 125 floors in less than 60 seconds!!! But it's so smooth if you didn't know what was happening you might not even realize you have moved, except for maybe your ears popping.

They did a great job filling the areas with cool interactive media that explains the building of the Burj Khalifa and all the fun facts the go along with a project of that scale. Including amazing depictions of the area surrounding the building prior to its construction.

Pretty awesome to be that high up.

(Obligatory top of the world selfie!)

The whole time I was there I kept asking myself why there are so many skyscrapers here? How can it be economically feasible to have so many huge buildings all in one place? And yet they keep building. There are probably 100 large buildings in construction right now in Dubai. It's just insane given this whole area was desert 20 years ago!

I am interested to follow what becomes of Dubai and all of the insane building that has been done here over the next 20+ years.

MONEY

I call Dubai a city, because for practical purposes it is, but technically is is an Emirate. One Emirate of a group that makes up the state of the United Arab Emirates ("UAE"). As a member of the UAE, the currency of Dubai is the Dirham.

It is pegged to the US dollar at around 3.8:1 I believe. When a currency is pegged to another currency it basically means that the exchange rate does not change. While many currencies are openly traded and their exchanges rates can fluctuate daily, the Dirham is not so. One US dollar equaled 3.8ish Dirhams in February and it will still be 3.8 in April.

For our visit to Dubai, having a fixed exchange rate was very convenient as we always knew what it was each day and we never had to worry about getting screwed over with an unfair or outdated exchange rate.

We pulled our money out of ATMs when we needed cash and felt comfortable using credit cards as well.

As I mentioned before, I think the Dirham is a beautifully designed currency with the bills printed in vibrant colors with pictures of beautiful architecture and native animal species. It seemed as though every bill had an image of a falcon on it.

One thing that was notably missing were pictures of people. Most currencies put images of the nations founders or important figures on their monies. But the UAE bills had not a face. I found it refreshing to not see the leaders of a country put their own mugs on the money.

And yes everything is pretty expensive in Dubai. We tried hard to be frugal when prudent but we knew when budgeting out our trip daily expenses in Dubai would be higher than most places we will go.

FOOD

One thing I will remember from Dubai was the delicious food. We only ate two meals outside our hotel, partly cause our hotel had amazing food and partly because it was difficult to get to places as mentioned above.

Our first day out we ate an amazing meal at a Palestinian restaurant a block away from our hotel called Mama'esh. The food was like a pita pizza with delicious spiced meat. Highly recommend going here if in that part of Dubai as the food was great, very affordable and had a cool view over looking a canal and the Swiss cheese building.

Out second meal out was in the Dubai mall at a Lebanese restaurant. We are on a fairly tight budget so we were looking for something affordable and delicious. Wafi Gourmet was perfect. We had a sampler of Lebanese "dips" with pita puffs (at least that's what they looked like!) and a minced lamb pie. Oh it was tasty!

I am a huge fan of ordering apps and small plates at restaurants as opposed to main dishes. They are usually cheaper and they can be a better representation if the flavors of that cuisine as main dishes are usually carried by a large protein item.

The rest of our meals were eaten at our hotel (JW Marriott Marquis) as they are known for they amazing food (as well as the world's tallest hotel).

Our first night we had amazing fried blackened shrimp (died with squid ink!) and some decent truffle mac n cheese at Bridgewater Tavern. The place was more of a sports bar than a tavern, but the food was great. We thanked the bartender for the amazing food and he must have passed it along as the chef was kind enough to come out and meet us and even gave us a free dessert (brownie with white chocolate sauce)! The only bad part about the Tavern was they allowed smoking inside the restaurant. It wasn't too bad, but just odd. It was the only place we went to where people smoked indoors.

the next morning we ate breakfast bagels and a trio of croissants from the French bakery in the hotel called La Farine. It was all very tasty and fresh.

Finally we had our best meal at Tong Thai. The circumstances surrounding his meal was not ideal as we were not feeling too well, starving and utterly exhausted. The hunger and lack of patience led us to eat of the hotel even though we knew it would be a bit pricey. Some Thai curry sounded good so we headed to the Tong. What we found was a gorgeous restaurant that overlooked the city and the Burj Khalifa. We were two of only a handful of diners in a restaurant that could accommodate well over a hundred people.

We were given a prime table right by the wall of glass that had a fantastic view of the city lit up.

Our service there was so great and friendly with food that was even better. Alena for the Tom Ka soup and I had the braised beef curry. It was the best Thai food I had ever eaten.

Despite our intense fatigue, we were able to enjoy our experience. I think that impromptu dinner will remain a highlight of our trip.

In summary, our trip to Dubai was pleasant. Nothing bad happened to us but the place definitely wasn't my favorite. The food was awesome and the the construction was a blight. There was just much growth all around and with that all the externalities that come along; both positive (diversity, great transit, delicious food) and negative (huge environmental effects come most to mind). I was perplexed by both the beauty and the audacious excess of the place.

I came to Dubai with little knowledge of what to expect from our time there. I left with some fond memories and more questions of what to expect from Dubai going forward.