Off and Running to Dubai

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Off and Running to Dubai
It’s not a hop, skip, and a jump. But in less than nine hours, you can fly from Paris to Dubai, one of the seven states that comprise the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As an American who’s never been to Las Vegas, why would I take a flying visit to this far-away place? My best explanation is because it’s there and is a part of the world I’ve never explored. And the airline was offering a deeply discounted promotional fare, which never hurts.   Dubai does not live on oil. It has become one of the world’s main financial centers, Wall Street with palm trees. You’ll encounter people from everywhere doing business and out to make fortunes. The smell of money is pervasive. There’s nothing subtle about Dubai love of money—bling and conspicuous consumption are everywhere.   Before you’ve exited the airport, you can buy a lottery ticket and take your chances on winning a super-deluxe Bentley anyone or other sit-up-and-take-notice car.   If you luck out and have the winning ticket, unless you live in the UAE, your prize has a few catches. Read the fine print and you’ll see you’re responsible for exporting the car, paying import taxes and, if the car requires being adapted to your country’s automobile emissions and engineering codes, you have the pleasure of paying the freight. The Dubai Airport is a shopping center in its own. It’s public knowledge that people fly in and out just to stock up on caviar, gold, electronics, liquor, cigarettes, and Montchristo cigars. And that’s just the beginning.   Talk about a country of contradictions. There’s a Mosque every few blocks. Rarely do you see anyone publicly praying as you do in other Islamic countries. (Only one mosque located in Dubai is open to non-Muslim visitors.) Even so, liquor is sold only in State-run stores. But all the hotels have bars that go on forever and charge the same for a drink as you’d pay in Paris’s 5-star hotel, Le Meurice.   Each hotel is glitzier than the next. The 1600 room and suite Atlantis in the Palm Jumeirah section of Dubai opened last September. It’s the new hotel that’s has people talking this week. There will be another hotel sooner than later where you can live like a king plus play with the dolphins.   The hotels try to outdo one another in their dining rooms. People love buffets and most are lavish to beat the band. On Fridays, people sit at tables eating as if there is no tomorrow. Some people drink alcohol while others don’t. It’s up to you and your personal beliefs. Six Flags and Tatweer, a unit of Dubai Holdings, is breaking ground next year on a five-million square foot theme park. The wonders of being in a desert is there’s no lack of space and except for where you’re restrained by water, development can go on forever. The largest shopping center in the world opened its doors on November 4th and even though the anchor stores, Bloomingdales, Galleries Lafayette’s and Marks & Spenser, haven’t opened, traffic was backed up for hours the first weekend. This is not just any shopping center: it has an ice-skating rink, a giant multiplex cinema and so many restaurants that it could take you an hour to decide which cuisine you want to eat. It took nearly two hours to get a cab when I wanted out. In spite of wanting “my” cab and being stuck in a line that went on forever, I formed a kind of solidarity with my neighbors and a lot of people exchanged stories about why they were in this city of glitz and development.   You may also experience a kind of couture shock: people wear everything from shorts and tee shirts, men’s dishdashahs, and women (always in groups) wear Abayah robes. Women wear scarves to cover their heads, and there’s a new trend among some younger women that’s upsetting the older generation—they are insisting on wearing veils that entirely cover their faces. Their mothers feel this is a step backwards from the freedom they fought to obtain.   Some history: Oil was first discovered in the United Arab Emirates in the 1950s. Before that time, the country’s economy was based on fishing and harvesting pearls. In 1962, Abu Dhabi became the first of the emirates to begin exporting the oil and since then, the country’s economy has been transformed. But transformed, as I noted, from an oil economy—oil accounts for only seven percent of Gross Domestic Product—to a money center.   If you don’t mind breaking into a sweat, this area is great for people who want to live the life of a tourist. There’s plenty to do and many ways of keeping busy. Do keep in mind that Dubai is located at the equator, so if heat isn’t your thing, it might not be your dream vacation. But as I am a Washington, DC native, the two areas share the similarity of being scorching hot in the mid-day sun and so cold inside buildings that you have the feeling that it’s going to snow. More than once, I requested that a taxi driver turn down the air-conditioning.   Dubai is in the process of building…
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