After spending my first night in my hostel in Dubai, I finally had the chance to see where I was in the daylight. My dorm room had a balcony so I could have a first look outside, and was quite impressed! Welcome to the future!

By the way, as you will notice on the pictures, most of the apartment skyscrapers have balconies up to the top floor, which I’ve never seen anywhere before! Imagine having a sunbathe on your balcony on the 80th floor!

To continue in the category “Little Guillaume is discovering the world”, I was amazed by the elevator system. There were 6 elevators numbered from A to F. To use them, you have to enter your desired floor number on a little display and it shows you the name of the elevator to take. There are no buttons in the elevator. You program it yourself before entering it!

Leaving the building, I walked towards the Marina, which gave the name to the neighborhood. It is the biggest Marina in the world, and it was entirely man-made. Warning: I will use superlatives quite often because Dubai is desperately seeking for them! (Before building the Marina, Dubai already could practice by building the largest man-made harbor in the world! Haha!). Quite impressive with all the condos around and the nice yachts.

A few minutes away, you can find the fanciest beach of Dubai, the JBR beach, with a nice promenade with cafés and restaurants. That’s where you can see the pale (lots of Russian!) tourists enjoying their first sun of the year. And there is as much on show as on any other beach in the world! No burka for the Matryoshka! You cannot really feel that you are in an Arab country. It feels very western, very Miami or Venice Beach.

Of course, the area is full of construction sites. In particular, a Ferris wheel is under construction… and guess what?… yes… you got it.. It’s the biggest Ferris wheel in the world with 210 meters!

I found my favorite French bakery chain, Paul, and couldn’t resist! I was happy to buy one of the best viennoiseries ever: an almond croissant! Yummy!

After leaving the JBR beach area of the Marina, I reached an area with very high skyscrapers, between 300 and 400 meters high… and very densely built. There is only a little gap between them so that it feels weird when you are standing in-between. And the crazy thing is that these buildings are not offices but either hotels or apartment buildings (and guess what… they all belong to the highest apartment buildings in the world!).

One of them (the Marriott hotel) has a bar at its top floor (52nd). I had a drink there just to enjoy the view! And the view was stunning!

Being on top of one of these skyscrapers is one of the few chances to get an impression of the Palm Jumeirah! (it must be better from a plane or a satellite though, but it’s more expensive…!). From the ground, it is indeed impossible to appreciate this neighborhood which looks completely normal.

The Palm Jumeirah was one of these pharaonic projects where Dubai conquered the sea! The original plan was to build 3 palms in the sea. Two are finished: the Palm Jumeirah which is now almost completely constructed and the Palm Jebel Ali which is still not developed. The third palm, the palm Deira, was replaced by some normal-shaped islands built on the sea. The other project, the World, where an island neighborhood shaped like a world map was artificially built, is also still waiting for its first constructions.

What is amazing about the Palm Jumeirah is its dimension! Normal people can only drive on the main road in the middle until it goes into a tunnel and reaches the Atlantis Hotel, the landmark at the end of the palm. And this road is about 8 km long! The inner side branches of the palm are only accessible to residents (living in the most expensive villas in the UAE!). The outer branch called Crescent is built with luxury hotels.

I hope you enjoy the view through the (dirty) windows of the Marriott bar! By the way, they are dirty because it is sometimes rainy in February in Dubai, and the few small rain drops and the desert dust are not a good combination for windows!

A fancy neighbourhood like the Palm also needed a fancy public transport, so the Atlantis hotel is connected to the beginning of the Palm island by a monorail (which is of course almost not used since the people living there use their Ferrari / Lamborghini and the rich tourists of the Atlantis or other hotels only use taxi…).

I had the chance to get a car ride at night to the Atlantis hotel with Thomsan, one of my Couchsurfer hosts. It’s quite impressive when you see the hotel at the horizon, and the road suddenly gets into a tunnel under the sea, until you drive next to the hotel! We had a walk along the Promenade of the Crescent at night, enjoying the illuminations. The Atlantis hotel is obviously super kitsch, and looks already a bit old. But without wanting it, after seing its picture on travel magazines for years, it’s hard not to like it!

A quick side note: apparently, the Arabian Gulf is not so fond of Dubai’s extension projects. The breaking of waves eroded the external island strongly, so that they had to add dozens of meters of rocks to prevent it from disappearing… That’s why the beaches of the hotels are on the inner side of the crescent… the outer side is just artificial rocks! Nature always wins!

Back to the walking tour… After enjoying my expensive fresh orange juice with view, I continued my walk around the Marina taking hundreds of new pictures.

Objectively, the architecture of the skyscrapers is not very courageous… quite boring even I would say. Even if some of them were designed by world famous architects, it seems like they sold to Dubai some old designs that nobody else wanted…! Many buildings are also very strongly inspired by existing buildings, not to say that they are copies…!

A good example is that twisted skyscraper which looks so similar to the Turning Torso in Malmo / Sweden (from the amazing architect Calatrava!).

After my walk through the Marina, I reached a metro station and went to the Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa area… But this is another story… 😉

Before writing about my sightseeing in Dubai, I would like to start talking about what surprised me most in the city, and in the country in general: the amount of non-Arabic people! And I am not talking about the many tourists but about the foreigners living and working there! During my first hours walking through the Marina in Dubai, I don’t reckon I have seen any Emirati! Only Western tourists enjoying the JBR (Jumeirah beach residence) beach or Asian people working in the stores and cafés. The same happened when I walked through the Malls… until the evening hours when suddenly some Emirati and other Arabic people appeared to do their shopping!

After reading some articles about the UAE, the reason for that became clear: about 70/80% of the country’s population is foreigner, with two main communities: the Indian and the Filipino. It’s useless to say that the entire country’s economy completely relies on these people, in particular since they often do the “simplest” jobs. A good example are construction workers. Dubai is still booming and there are construction sites almost anywhere, including some further megalomaniac constructions earning ground on the sea! When you look at the workers, there is not a single Arabic guy!

The same for taxi drivers or waiters at restaurants! I even bumped into a job offer hanging at an Arabic restaurant looking for a Filipino waitress only! Haha!

During discussions with locals, I learned that Filipinos have a great reputation in the service business, being hard-working, reliable and friendly.

Apartment offers discriminate people based on their origin as well!

But this is only fair that foreigners try to support each other because they are really not supported by the UAE government! Unless they buy some apartment or house in the UAE (which you can imagine is unaffordable for most!), foreigners working there are only allowed to stay based on their work permit! They remain foreigners and are not emigrants! This means concretely that they are not allowed to stay in the country if they lose their job, with a tolerance of a few months! This precarity makes it hard for people to build up families there, so that many live alone in the Emirates and send some money back home to their beloved ones. Typical examples are again the construction workers who are living in some worker cities provided by the UAE government, or some Filipino maids living with their “host” families, often reduced to modern slavery. To obtain the work permit, in addition to a job offer, a medical examination needs to be passed successfully, meaning that people with chronicle diseases would be refused.

So why are so many people willing to work there? I think the reason might be for the “simple” jobs that it’s better to be construction worker in Dubai than unemployed in e.g. Kochi/India. For academical people, the motivation seems to be more the career opportunities and the good salaries.

And how did I learn so much about expat life in the UAE? Thanks to my wonderful Couchsurfing hosts of course! I sent many requests to both Arabic people and foreigners, but only got positive responses of foreigners! And what a nice mix of foreigners!

Rabih wasn’t able to host me, but was happy to meet me one evening. On my second night at the hostel, he drove to my place and picked me up by car! It was great to drive on the Dubai highway at night! We went to some shawarma place and he insisted on inviting me, which really made me feel bad but it was impossible to refuse! That is I guess the famous middle-east hospitality! Rabih is Lebanese and Druze (I don’t care at all about people’s religion… unless it’s so unusual!) and has a marketing job in Dubai. After dinner, he took me on a ride through the Burj Al Arab area before driving me back to the hostel! What a nice encounter!

I spent the next evening and night at my first Couchsurfer’s host place. Mark is Filipino from Manilla and also has an office job. By chance, he was living a few walking minutes away from my hostel so the location change was more than easy! He ordered some Chinese (!) food and we chatted for a while with some drinks (including alcohol that you can get in Dubai in some special “insider” places!). It was great to learn more about life in Dubai from his perspective!

The day after, my new host Thomsan picked me up by car in the morning and drew me to his place, in a nice and friendly neighborhood called Discovery Gardens. It was only a 10 minute drive out of the Marina. It felt like a normal place, with smaller buildings and space between them. Thomsan works in the financial branch and is Indian from Goa, although, as he told me, he has a Portuguese passport! I knew Goa was a Portuguese colony but wasn’t aware they would still have a special status! To make me even more confused, he is of catholic faith! I wasn’t aware that there were Catholic Indians and had to go to Dubai to learn that! Thomsan was greatly hospitable and I spent 2 nice days with him. We discussed a lot, cooked for each other (he made some roast chicken and some Indian dhal and I made some crepes for breakfast!) and did a few tours. We drove to the beach next to Burj Al Arab and had a little walk and a tea there. The next evening, we drove to the Palm Jumeirah to the Atlantis Hotel and walked on the Promenade! Thomsan only had a one-person bed and slept on the floor to let me have his bed, pretending that he likes it! I am still not sure if it’s true, but am quite amazed by the generosity of these people welcoming strangers for free and offering them a home away from home!

This article is an homage to all these foreigners who are the soul of the UAE!