Matt and Lisa's Adventures

28 December 2022

We arrived very early into Dubai and weren’t able to check in to our hotel. The hotel reception was chaotic and the staff weren’t very friendly and were also unbelievably inefficient – all of this (combined with a lack of sleep) upset Lisa considerably. We had to kill a couple of hours waiting in the lobby for our tour to pick us up. Lisa managed to snag us a couple of drinks from the breakfast buffet (without paying for it) which was great compared to the very expensive cafe options. 

We were picked up by our guide Pablo and after a couple of stops we headed to our first attraction at the Palms Dubai. We went to The Point where we could get a great view of the Atlantis hotel. The Palm is very impressive and so much money has been spent creating the largest manmade island in the world. 

From there we headed to an upscale market with a great view of the world’s only seven-star hotel. Apparently, everything in the hotel is gold plated – which just sounds a little stupid to me. 

Next stop was the Blue Mosque named that as it is based on the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. We had to wear robes to cover our legs and arms. Lisa also wore a shawl to cover her head. The mosque was very impressive. It felt so quiet and peaceful. The mosque was huge and had four even taller minarets. It had very detailed inscriptions around the roof and walls and felt like a European cathedral but without the opulence. 

Driving around the city was fascinating in itself. Modern Dubai has grown like crazy – we saw some photos of what it was like just forty years ago and the difference to today is astounding. The city seems to have picked up on every foreign brand possible and the food range is very wide – although this has had the effect of making it unclear as to what the original cuisine of the area was. Pablo gave us a bit of the history of the area. The people here used to be very poor and most of Dubai was just desert. Oil obviously changed everything. There are nine emirates and in the 1960s they got together under the leadership of Sheik Zahid and seven of them formed the modern country of UAE. Zahid was the first president until he died in 2004. They say “president” but it has to be someone from the royal family so it’s not really a true election. We saw a couple of cars from the royal family – they can be spotted as their number plate is just a single (or double) digit. 

We then headed to the old Dubai souks (markets). Pablo gave us some advice on what to buy and how to buy. We tried some mint stone which is good for curing sinus issues – it was definitely strong smelling! There were so many hawkers trying to sell you things – they could be ignored and weren’t overly pushy, but it was still hard work. Lisa tried to haggle with a guy for a magnet, but he wasn’t having any of it. In the end we couldn’t find the magnet anywhere else, so we had to go back and pay full price! We then boarded boats to cross the Dubai creek before boarding the minibus again for our final stop. This was a restaurant in the original part of Dubai. The area felt very old and was part of the original 55 houses of Dubai. We looked at some photos showing the history of Dubai which again emphasised how far the country had come in such a short time. We finished with a traditional coffee (sweetened with dates) – I quite liked it, but it was a bit exotic for Lisa. 

We then headed to Dubai mall (the largest mall in the world). Pablo hooked us up with one of his drivers, who was very aggressive on the horn and with his driving. There are so many cars in Dubai and everything is spread out. I hate to think about the carbon footprint of this city, but it does fit with the importance of oil to the region. 

After a quick McDonald’s lunch we explored the mall. Lisa had received a trip to the top of the Burj Khalifa for her birthday for her parents. She headed off to do that and I continued to explore the mall on my own. It was huge but not really that interesting – it feels like 80% of the shops are the same as what we saw in Melbourne and most of them are fashion (and I had already refreshed my look earlier in the year). The mall also included an aquarium and an ice skating rink. My lack of sleep was catching up on me and it made for a hard afternoon. Lisa loved the view from the top. We then caught the metro back to our hotel. We were both shattered and so dinner was from the metro mart and very low level. After much needed showers we collapsed into bed. 

Overall Dubai was a fascinating place and I’d come back to explore further. It was vey multi-cultural, but also illustrated the extreme inequality in the society.