Dubai: Hardly the Middle East

Welcome to the next season of the blog! I don’t know how to count them anymore…

Directly after getting home from Texas with the family, I went home from the airport, did my laundry, and then pretty much headed out to the airport again for my flights to Dubai!

I had booked this trip very last minute, when I woke up ten days before leaving wanting to book a trip to somewhere for the last week of winter break. When I saw that the flights to Dubai were good priced, couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I sent Ansh a text, and when he gave me the go-ahead, I booked!

Everything getting over was pretty normal, I actually made a friend, Aya, on the flight form Paris to Dubai. She was just sitting next to me, and noticed that I was from Michigan. She’s a student at Minnesota and grew up there as well. Her family is Ethiopian, a during the flight, she was telling me all about the country, the different regions and cultures, the diversity of languages, and about the often untold history of the country. It was super interesting, and now, of course, I’d like to go see it for myself. We talked for nearly the entire flight, and played about an hour worth of tic-tac-toe (or ك-و and ا-ع where instead of x’s and o’s, we were using Arabic letters…) when we got bored.

Approaching Dubai, looking out the window, the pilot claimed that we could see the Burj Khalifa. We couldn’t find it, though, as it isn’t magnificently lit up and we didn’t know where to look. Looking at this picture now, though, I'm pretty sure we're facing the opposite side as the Burj Khalifa. I’m sure on the way out I’ll be able to see it better. I was still determined to get my first glimpse of the building that night, and when I was driving home with Ansh and his mom, there was a building that looked to be the right shape. When I asked if that was the Burj Khalifa, admittedly underwhelmed by the size of it, they laughed, and turned a corner, form where I could see the real thing. And oh my is it tall. It dwarfs even the second tallest building in the area, a true icon on the skyline which, doing the math, on an infinitely clear day, could (in theory, but not in practice) be seen all the way from Abu Dhabi. This is when I got the feeling that I’m in Dubai.

We planned, got a quick house tour, and went to bed. On the house tour, I saw Ansh’s and his dad’s famous model plane collection, which is something all our friends know he has in his house. I, at this point, had kept this trip secret from most of my friends, and so when I sent a picture of me in front of the display, I expected the reactions to be of surprise and excitement. However, my friends were so genuinely unphased by the fact I had managed to secretly travel to Dubai it almost made me laugh.

So our first day out on the town: after booking all the activities for the week, Ansh and I headed out to see “The Frame”: a giant golden picture frame framing the skyline of the city. In theory, this is a quite good idea, but in practice, from the ground, it’s too tall and at a weird angle to actually see anything through it. I feel like The Frame exemplifies what I’ve seen so-far about Dubai: the fact that everything here needs to be eye-catching, noteworthy, unique. Ansh’s mom said that a while ago, when she would tell people when over in the US that she’s from Duabi, nobody knew of it. But since the city has invested in the world’s tallest building, the world’s largest indoor ski slope, the world’s only seven star hotel, Abu Dhabi’s world’s largest carpet, world’s first this, world’s only that, world’s largest the-other-thing, since celebrities have been buying vacation homes here and Bollywood and Hollywood stars have been moving here, Dubai has become present in the public conscience. Simply waiting in line for the frame, you could see just how many tourists this city has. The frame is in Ansh’s neighborhood, a place where, he claimed in the evening, I was probably the only American within a 10 block radius—that’s to say, this is not a touristy area, and it’s, for a tourist, far from the “Business Bay” center of Dubai that everyone knows of. Booking places that morning, we could see just how many people there are that are trying to do the same things. The museum of the future was booked until the middle of February, and according to Ansh’s mom, Dubai mall was so crowded on New Year’s Day that you couldn’t walk without running into someone. On seemingly every car ride, Ansh and his mom were talking about how much more this country has become overfilled with tourists, even since Ansh has left for college. Complaining about how inconvenient it makes everything, and the like.

Anyways, the frame was right by his house, and in theory, in walking distance, but we drove. Waiting in line for the elevator up, we passed by the fountains in the front, which were singing and dancing to Arab music. I, of course, was obsessed, and enjoyed the show significantly. When we got to the top of the frame, of course, the view onto Business Bay was iconic, but also, I couldn’t help but notice portraits of Emirati leaders all over. On the ground made out of flowers, and also in the building on all four corners of the observation deck. Otherwise, my first view onto Dubai was of course cool, but Business Bay covers up, say, the Palm, so I am excited to see that from the air later in the trip.

We headed from the frame to our first “historical, local” area, Al Seef. Al Seef is a souk along the Dubai Creek, which, in my opinion, is much more of river than say, the San Antonio River, in the more northeastern uptown part of the city. Business Bay is in the southeastern part, and the Sheikh Zayed road runs straight from the river all the way downtown through Business Bay, to Mall of the Emirates and the Marina, and past, towards Abu Dhabi. Uptown, and Al Seef in general, does not see many tourists. The buildings themselves are simply beautiful, and as close to historic as you can get in a city that’s generously 100 years old. Ansh’s dad was telling me that night that Al Seef was a failed project. It was busy for a few weeks, and then it shortly became only a weekend thing. Nowadays, most tourists don’t even know it’s there, and when we went on a Tuesday around lunchtime, the place was eerily quiet.

Though I’d call it a souk, it does not have even close to the vibe of, say, Marrakesh’s Medina. Of course, as anywhere else in the Middle East, there’s an idea of hustle—when all the stores sell the same things, it’s up to the best salesman, the best located store, and the most legit-looking place to get your business. And of course they’re going to expect to be bargained with—any tourist should know that, and hopefully, they do lest they be royally ripped off… I was in the market for some Arab dress, hoping that just one will get me through the rest of what I’d need for any future trips to the Middle East. But I was playing a little hard to get, testing these salesmen at their own jobs. Eventually, one caught my eye, and I was able to do some negotiating, getting the price of a head scarf and a long white gown (pretty much what I was looking for) from 650 dirhams ($175) to 200 ($55). ($3 is AED 11). Again, as I was saying, I hope no tourists are getting royally ripped off. And I’m sure I still was marginally ripped off, but I feel good that I saved AED 450 in the process.

Now, the difference between Al Seef and Marrakesh’s Medina is that though both have hustle, Al Seef is significantly less overwhelming. Though it makes for a much less overwhelimg experience in the moment, it’s less “type 2” fun—I will likely look back on Marrakesh’s souk much more fondly than Al Seef, and again, this is what Ansh’s dad was describing.

We went back to Ansh’s house for lunch, where his mom made us poori, an Indian dish made from dough put in a frier, along with rash, a kind of mango yoghurt dipping sauce, and subsee, green beans in a delicious spice mix. The issue with this lunch is that because you’re not eating much at a time, it’s really easy to eat a lot, because it was delicious. I left completely full, which wasn’t ideal for what we were about to do.

We drove out of the city to the Global Village, a world marketplace featuring local sellers from all corners of the globe. On our way over, I heard Ansh and his mom talking about more things that have become annoying about the city—increase in toll roads and parking fees, how what once was a two lane road has turned into a seven lane freeway, how schools are moving out of the city, which led Ansh to a 45-minute commute to school every morning, and how celebrities moving here is jacking up the price of real estate just to name a few. These aren’t necessarily tourist-related things, simply what happens when a city attracts the attention of the world, growing beyond control, and when people move there seeking a better life. I’ll cover this in the next post, but Dubai is so diverse that it’s doesn’t do it justice to describe it as the Middle East in any way other than geographically.

But on the flip side, Ansh’s mom was raving about Dubai. How clean and convenient it is, how very possible it is to have a good life, the development of wonderful infrastructure, and the proximity to home. She said if you paid her any sum of money, she’d never leave.

And this whole idea of Dubai attracting the attention of the world is exactly why I found it fitting that on our first day in the city, instead of going to see the Burj and the Plam, we headed straight to Global Village. Upon entering, we were greeted by dozens of pavilions, built in the architectural style of dozens of countries and selling genuine imported goods both by immigrants from those places and by locals who just need a job. I was surprised that the Global Village shops are not regulated—instead, they act more as a real-estate agency, leasing out the spaces to shops who then need to attract customers. Much like a souk, then, it's hustle or be hustled—bargaining is expected, and you can’t go anywhere without free samples and offers for services. It is that fun, thrilling, overwhelming atmosphere that I expected to get in Al Seef, and that I both have come to love, and despise, so much.

It was interesting to see what “Global” means in this context—it’s mostly middle eastern places, with just “Europe” and “Americas” pavilions combining everywhere from Texas to Peru into one small pavilion, whereas Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia all go their own pavilions selling nearly the same goods. I feel that this bias comes simply from the fact that there are more immigrants from those places, so they have the staff to keep those pavilions alive, I don’t think it really reflects the UAE’s collective world view.

Otherwise, the atmosphere of Global Village speaks for itself, it’s just a super cool place to walk around, get free samples, and enjoy a mix of cultures that can be found very few places in the world, and the UAE is certainly one of them.

For dinner, I had some Albanian pita sandwich, while Ansh and his mom had Chinese. For dessert, we headed to Yemen and tried an assortment of honey from different stalls and tried nuts and dried fruits in Iran.

(the Yemeni honey is the top-left picture) 

After returning home, we watched a show that Ansh and his dad love: the French comic Adventures of Tintin, and I talked with his dad about what we’d done and what I think so far.

I’m real excited for what’s coming up! Stay tuned for more!