Too much gloss and glamour, too little character sums up my impression of Dubai during my short 2 -day business trip to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the end of June. Everything was flash, the cars, buildings, the houses! But I couldn't help wondering what was behind all that. I'm always keen to find out the true life and real character of a city, town or country when I vist, business or pleasure, but I couldn't help wondering whether that was all there was to the much touted Dubai. Granted, it's good for shopping. Infact you don't even have to wander far from Dubai international airport to purchase enough clothes, food and jewellry for a year, but I was just waiting for some presenter to come and pull back the curtains on the canvas of high rise concrete and space-touching buildings to reveal the Dubai we never see. However, the truth is, it seems there's no such thing as the Dubai you never see! It's all there, what you see is what you get....I admit 2 days isn't exactly the longest period to gather as much knowledge and local-feel on a city, but that was the other problem, there was no local-feel. Of course there were indigenous Emiratis, who along the Western expat community formed much of the middle-class, but the next tier down was the hundreds of South Asian and Oriental workers on construction sites and in the service industries (hotels, restaurants etc.). Didn't see a single black soul outside of Dubai Airport - which incidentally must have single most diverse airport transit section - any race, nationality etc that you could possibly think of on this earth - in the entire world was there. Seriously.
Dubai wasn't really my cup of tea, but I will take my lovely mum's advice to go back and stay in one of the beach hotels and do the desert ride, oh and there's the indoor ski slope in a shopping mall or the gold souk, or.......... (yawn...)
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