Impressions of Dubai
Buildings and skyscrapers are sprouting in Dubai like the plants that could never thrive there. During my three day weekend trip to the city for corporate training, and despite everything I had heard and read before arriving, I was surprised by the scale of the construction. Dubai is going to be huge, and it isn’t a single city. Rather, it is at least two or three, and each is significant in its own right. The Marina, the Financial District, and the Creek are each booming and scrambling toward the sky.
Monitor’s Dubai office, and the Hilton hotel where I stayed, is in The Marina, next to the massive Jumeirah Beach Residence development, which alone incorporates 40 nearly-complete buildings. The Marina will soon include 200 high rise buildings, about 120 of which (by my naked eye estimate) are already well underway or finished.
To share a few of my first impressions of the city:
Floating, Skiing, then Partying - The fact that in a single day I managed to float in the gulf, attend an office meeting, go skiing for two hours, grab some dinner, get some shopping done, then go out to party at a ritzy night spot is just incredible. Ski Dubai, while not exactly the best ski experience in the world, was a fun and novel way to spend a couple of hours at the mall. The slope was actually pretty impressive, and a decent challenge, so I walked away happier than I expected to be.
My visit was during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, so the options to party were somewhat limited - essentially, we had to stick to hotel bars. Luckily, Dubai has a lot of high class hotels with equally impressive bars. Buddha Bar, at the Grosvenor House, was quite a scene, and fully on-par with many of the great night spots I have been to in San Francisco and London.
Dubai is not Las Vegas - I have frequently heard Dubai compared to Las Vegas, but feel the comparison is inaccurate because of the attitude of the two cities. Whereas in Las Vegas many resorts and developments are huge and ostentatious for their own sake, big projects to build the “biggest,” “tallest,” or “best” in Dubai are about garnering respect and prestige. This is a city that wants to be taken seriously, but also embraces the fact that novelty and innovation attract tourists, investment, and money. Let’s just say that I don’t expect a Hooters Casino to open here. In the near future, anyway.
Sleek, Modern, and Developed - Dubai is quite upscale, at least in the parts of the city that I saw. In fact, the degree to which there seemed to be very little in the way of “budget” accommodations, etc. was surprising compared to Bahrain, Riyadh, or Egypt. The beach was a line of hotels ranging from a Sheraton to a Hilton and on up the chain of prestigious hotel brands.
The Mall of the Emirates, another example, is also quite upscale. It’s actually nicer and larger than most that I’ve been to in the US or Europe. Not cheaper, however.
It’s in a Desert - This one shouldn’t have been any shock, but I found myself disappointed by how unattractive certain sections of the city were because they were un-landscaped, un-developed, and essentially swaths of dirt. Empty plots of land and things like highway medians simply don’t grow anything. No grass - no shrubs - nothing. Until confronted with this, I never realized how attractive undeveloped countryside is in most other countries.
Also related to its desert climate are the heat and humidity that come with the package. Every time you walk outside your sunglasses immediately fog up with condensation. It’s also impossible not to mention that the water temperature is almost disgustingly warm. While I am sure it’s great for arthritics, water that is 32 degrees C / 89 degrees F is simply not that refreshing. I am sure when I return in a month or two however, and have been living in a colder climate, I will probably change my tune.
Difficult Conditions for Foreign Labor - Dubai imports a lot of working class labor from places like India and the Philippines. From what I have seen, this is true across the region - it seems like half the coach class seats on any flight to Riyadh are full of migrant workers with little experience flying (the kind that hop out of their seats and rush for the doors while the plane is still taxy-ing).
In Dubia, the sad situation is that for all the novelty of seeing hundreds and hundreds of buildings rising into the air at the same time, the reality is that hundreds and thousands of poor foreign laborers are the ones who are toiling beneath the midday sun to get them built.
The businessman and economist in me feels that this is “okay” because these workers are employed voluntarily and are earning far better pay than they could in their home country. They’ve decided that it’s worth spending a year working in the harsh conditions to get themselves ahead in life, maybe to buy a car or put their kids through school when they return home.
The human inside me is nevertheless disturbed to look from the balcony of my luxury hotel room and see young men of my same age doing hard labor in the midday sun, only to be packed into an un-airconditioned minibus to be brought back to wherever it is they spend the rest of their day. One of the salesmen at the mall said it best: “They treat Indians like dogs here.”
Ultimately, it is the availability of this massive, cheap labor force that makes the miracle of Dubai possible. Love it or hate it, that’s how it’s happening.
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- Welcome to The Intrepid Mr. Fox
Welcome to the personal weblog of Mitchell W. Fox, a management strategy consultant in Sydney, Australia.The Intrepid Mr. Fox is about my personal life and adventures. It focuses on three main topics: The Good Life (things I enjoy in my leisure time), Travel, and my thoughts and ideas about the world around us.
[...] Impressions of Dubai Impressions of Dubai Posted on September 24th, 2007 by Mitch Fox [ Ski Dubai]Buildings and skyscrapers are sprouting in Dubai like the plants that could never thrive there. During my three day weekend trip to the city for corporate training, and despite everything I had heard and read before arriving, [...]
Mitch,
Come ski where I live and you will feel better!