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| Downtown Dubai |
I'll have to admit that Dubai wasn't really top of my list of places to visit, mainly because of the heat and the artificiality of it all. However, as I was flying from Nepal and heading back to Europe, the only other alternatives were Saudi Arabia and Kuwiat, so the UAE it was. And I'm quite glad I got to witness the place as it's pretty spectacular. It's also incredibly clean, everyone speaks good English, and it's quite cheap. Apart from the £10 ice cream I accidentally bought.
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| This is what a £10 ice cream looks like |
Dubai was around 40C while I was there, but like Las Vegas, the heat isn't really a problem (unless you get "trapped" outside), as all the main touristy areas have air-conditioned walkways. For example, you don't even have to step outside once on the mile walk between the metro and Dubai Mall.
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| It got so hot my watch just gave up trying to read the temperature |
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Even their metro stations look snazzy
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The UAE and Dubai, its biggest city, try very hard to have the biggest and best everything. The world's tallest building, the 828m high Burj Khalifa, sits next door to the world's largest shopping centre, the Dubai Mall.
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| The self-styled "Angel of the Burj Khalifa" |
Not wanting to be outdone, Saudi Arabia is currently the kilometre high Jeddah Tower. To which the UAE responded by starting to consruct the Dubai Creek Tower, with a planned height a preposterous 1,345m.
The Burj Khalifa is still impressive, and every day, they put on an equally impressive fountain show at its base.
There is no shortage tour of things to do in Dubai. I quite liked the sound of the visiting the "world's largest natural flower garden" and the butterfly park next door. I bought an all-day travel ticket, hopped on the metro (in the woman and children only carriage, for which I apologised about thirty thousand times) and then alighted at the Mall of Emirates, another impressive shopping centre where Ski Dubai and a gazillion other attractions are located.
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Parts of Dubai are surprisingly cold
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That was as far as I got, however, as the bus driver snorted derisorily at my all-day travel ticket, and then told me I couldn't pay by card, thus scuppering any chance I had to get to the gardens/butterflies. I wasn't too disappointed. The gardens sounded like they might be a bit hot and outdoorsy, and if there's one thing Dubai is famous for, it's not butterflies. So I decided to visit another of their impossibly huge engineering achievements, the Palm Jumeirah.
A metro ride, a tram trip and a monorail journey later, I was in yet another massive shopping mall and riding the lift up to its 52nd floor viewing platform. It was well worth the trip. The Palm Jumeirah is a massive circular structure designed to increase the amount of beaches found in Dubai, and when it opened, hosted the world's largest firework display. Over 10,000 people are thought to live in one of its many fronds, and from viewing tower, it looked like a real-life computer game like Cities: Skyline. Hopefully the video below gives you an idea of its scale.
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 | View from Palm Jumeirah to the 7 star hotel Burj Al Arab
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On my final day in Dubai, I decided I needed a little bit of religion in my life, so booked a tour of the largest mosque in the UAE, which is about 100km down the road in Abu Dhabi. Over the last 11½ months, I've seen my fair share of churches, mandirs, stupas, and mosques, but this was by far the biggest and most impressive.
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The biggest mosque dome in the world. Because of course it is.
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To access the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, you rather predictably have to walk through a shopping centre and past pictures of the Queen, Prince King Charles, and the Pope, who all visited the mosque in the last few years.
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Sadly having a dip in the pool is not allowed
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The mosque itself can host up to 50,000 worshippers and has several world records including ...
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| The world's largest marble courtyard mosaic. All 17,000m² of it. |
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| The world's largest carpet and heaviest chandelier |
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There are 1,096 of these pillars and a helluva lot of floor to keep clean
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It's a pretty incredible place, and our guide Zee did an excellent job of explaining its history (didn't take long - it was only built in 2007).
And that was Dubai, a lot nicer than I expected, although if I was heading back, I'd probably wait until the winter where the temperature reaches a more manageable 20C (Zee was telling me that everyone walks about in massive winter coats when it gets that "cold", which would be quite the attraction in itself).
Anyway, it was up the next day to step back on European soil for the first time in nearly a year... next stop, Romania.
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