Dubai, UAE

Days: 53-56
Miles Traveled: 27,646
Countries Visited: 11

For those of you following this blog regularly, sorry for the delay since my last post. It's harder to keep up than it looks! Now you're going to get a bunch of posts all at once...lucky you!


From Phuket I flew back to Bangkok with a short layover before heading into Dubai. I've been to Dubai before (November 2006 with a bunch of commercial real estate guys) for 7 days and then I spent an extra 4 days checking out more of the touristy spots. In 2006, Dubai's economy was booming! Buildings were under construction everywhere (literally everywhere!), the airport and streets were bustling with people and there was a sense of excitement in the air. In the last 4 years, a lot has changed: the economy has tanked, the government is riddled with debt - so much so that Dubai had to be bailed out by it's "big-brother" emirate - Abu Dhabi, and the tourism to this region had come to a screeching halt.


Knowing all this, I expected to find a completely different Dubai than four years ago. I did find it, but was also very surprised. The hundreds of buildings that were under construction the last time I was here are now all completed - including the world's tallest building (The Burj Khalifa, formerly known as the Burj Dubai). However, there are still hundreds of buildings under construction. You may say that "he's exaggerating" but I'm not! For the first 2 nights, I stayed at the Shangri-La across the street from the Burj Khalifa and from my room I counted 24 buildings over 20 stories tall that were currently under construction. I didn't bother counting the buildings under 20 stories. Cranes litter the horizon in every direction...and this is just the area known as Deira. There are two other districts in Dubai that had just as many, if not more, buildings under construction. You could tell some of the buildings had halted construction mid-stream, but most were still actively being worked on. I understand it's difficult (and costly) to stop a project mid-stream, but there were plenty of recently completed buildings that are "see-through" (meaning they are still vacant) so how they could possibly continue to fund construction is beyond me. Hotels, office buildings, apartments, shopping malls, every where you look there is still heavy construction going on.


Anyway, when I was here last time the Burj Khalifa was about 80 stories tall, now it's finished at 206 stories (only 160 are habitable). It's really quite amazing to see. When I was in Taipei a couple of months ago, I went to the top of Taipei 101 (the tallest building prior to the Burj) and was amazed at the views from the 91st floor observation deck but they were nothing compared to the views from the 124th floor observation deck at the Khalifa.





(my hotel is the second tall brown building from the left - it's 57 stories tall which is taller than every building in Denver!)
By the way, the shopping mall attached to the Burj Khalifa is 12.1 million square feet! By comparison the Mall of America was 2.5 million SF and then it was expanded to 8 million SF. Dubai Mall is still 50% larger! I walked around it for about an hour and probably still only covered half of it. Here are a few pictures:









Note the indoor ice skating rink - every minute or so a picture of Sheik Mohammed (the ruler of Dubai) would pop-up on the giant screen. Don't you think it would be a little weird if Obama's face randomly popped up on a giant screen in a mall in the US!





I only stayed at the Shangri-La for two nights because I wanted to check out the Atlantis Palm - the resort that sits at the "top" of the Palm Island just off the coast of Dubai. I've stayed at the Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas so I thought it would be interesting to see how much alike they are. The story is that a large investment group out of Dubai wanted to bring the Atlantis brand to Dubai so they approached the original developer/owner of the Atlantis in the Bahamas. He said "no" and wanted to keep the Atlantis in the Bahamas a "unique property". The Dubai investment group then paid $700 million to gain control of the Bahamas property in order to build an Atlantis in Dubai. I guess if you really want something bad enough - there's always a way!

The Atlantis was running at $400/night so I didn't want to pay to stay there all 4 nights. As I'm sure you have all heard or seen on TV, the Palm Island is a man-made island in the shape of a giant palm tree. It was the first of 3 Palm shaped islands in Dubai (the other two are still under construction) and then there's also "The World" which are small man-made islands that when viewed from the sky form the shape of all the continents. Here's an aerial of the Palm - the purple pin is the Atlantis:




One of the days I took a helicopter tour of Dubai - pretty cool, but not nearly as exhilarating as the one in Queenstown! Here are a few pictures from the ride:





(this is the Burj Al Arab - I stayed here 3 nights in 2006, very posh!)






I also went on a desert safari - well, tearing around the dunes in a Toyota Land Cruiser is what they call a desert safari:



And of course, all visits to Dubai have to include indoor snow skiing at "Ski Dubai" - the snow is actually pretty good...considering it was a 114° on the digital sign right outside the place.



I considered golfing but it was 110°+ everyday. I'm all for warm weather, but that's unbearable!

Dubai has changed dramatically since my last visit, but really it's just the same overbuilt (and still building) playground in the middle of the desert!

Next stop - Cairo, Egypt.

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Location:Dubai,United Arab Emirates