Dubai
By: Kurt Shearer
Tags: Travel, Shopping, Dubai, Travel Dubai, Touring

March 23, 2016

Dubai bills itself as the jewel of the Arab world, a shining Gem in the desert setting a standard of balancing history and modern times. Just thirty years ago Camels and wasteland occupied spaces now occupied by skyscrapers, Rolls Royces and a seemingly endless cache of Gold. Dubai is certainly “all its cracked up to be” and more…and less.

Window Shopping in Dubai

Day One

Our first impression when sailing into Dubai is of a coastline that is full of Skyscrapers that appear to be wedged next to each other leaving little space for air or breathing. The other thing you notice is that right in front of all of these skyscrapers are construction sites that are…. building more Skyscrapers, during our time there I was asking people what or who were in those skyscrapers and I’m still not sure. Dubai people like to promote their country but they don’t talk about it much, if that makes sense, in other words it’s like asking Don King about one of his fighters.

We ventured to the Gold and Spice Souk (market) and found a whole new level of aggressive selling, as I mentioned before nowhere is more aggressive than Columbia but Dubai is now in second place. When walking through the Souk everyone and I mean everyone tries to sell you a “copy watch” or “copy bag” and they really, really want to sell it. If you are crazy enough to respond to any of them (which we did) you get to go in a “secret shop” which is like going to the Bat cave. We walked down an alley, then another, then around a building then on an elevator to the third floor, knock on a door, and finally get allowed inside. Once inside you are greeted by two or three more vendors and the door is bolted behind you. One of the Vendors stares at a security camera that shows the outer hallway while his coworkers try to sell you a way overpriced item that you could get cheaper at Saks Fifth Avenue. With all of that security and pressure as soon as you say you want to leave they let you out without any hassle and even walk you back to where you started. The rest of the Souk is OK and we had a good time walking around and buying small items like shoes and various types of bags. Day one was a success!

Day Two

On Day Two we ventured out a bit and saw more of Dubai and I have a to tell you it’s like a nothing you’ve ever seen before, the opulence, shops and buildings are all amazing to look at. Dubai has the tallest building in the world the largest malls, the biggest this longest that…it truly is overwhelming and interesting to see. That being said, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that it was over the top in some respects. I mean how many malls do you need if you have one giant one with an Ice Skating Rink and Ski Slope in it? Do you really need another mall or hundreds if not thousands more stores and shops?? Dubai is in no way shape or form cheap or inexpensive, some of the prices were jaw dropping for stuff I can get at home cheaper. Hey somebody’s got pay the electric bill for all of those lights so they figure it might as well be the Wanderers that come there to shop I suppose.

Dubai traffic is another story altogether, endless delays and construction bog down traffic everyday. We were on a tour bus that sat in traffic for an hour for what should have been a 15 minute ride, the bus had Wi-Fi so we managed to get some downloads and updates so it wasn’t all bad. I will never ever complain about traffic delays again since being over there and seeing what real out of control traffic is like.

One shocking statistic I heard kind of explains all the questions I had about Dubai and all their buildings and shops, Dubai’s income from Oil is only 7% of their GDP, Tourism is their main source of income. The Dubai Mall had 70 Million visitors in 2013 so it’s not hard to realize how much they can make off tourism and they appear to be making a whole lot.

I may never get the chance to visit Dubai again and I’m glad I was fortunate enough to do so at least once. I can check it off my bucket list…my Gold Bucket List.