I had 4 full days to explore Dubai, which was optimum. You can obviously spend more time there but I wasn’t really interested in doing Dubai-style activities, even though the city is famous for that. Dubai indeed turned into a huge tourism hub within the past 20 years, being now one of the most visited cities in the world! There is an endless number of attractions for quite high entrance fees. Of course, you have the classical desert tour with jeep in the sand dunes with belly dancing evening, but I already did that in other Arab countries and tend to hate these fake folkloric tourist dancing events. Dubai also has many gardens (surprising for a desert city, I know), only open in the winter months, which are supposed to be great, but I wasn’t ready to pay 30-50 euros to see flowers in the desert! Waterparks can be fun but not alone… and I wasn’t in the mood of skydiving either. Haha! So I limited my sightseeing to what I do best… walking around… which is not as easy as it sounds in Dubai! The city has indeed been designed for cars and not for pedestrians. Whenever you need to cross a highway-style road, you need to walk 15 minutes up or down the road to find a pedestrian bridge or tunnel or crosswalk…or nothing! Dubai however did a good job at integrating a metro in the past 10 years. To be honest, there is not much to see walking around, in the sense of sightseeing, but I found some interesting places. And it was a unique chance to be able to walk around in Dubai! The weather was perfect for that… sunny or a bit cloudy with nice 25 °C and a chilly wind! I cannot imagine how walking would feel like in the summer with its 45 °C!

The city stretches from West to East on the coast of the Persian Gulf over a huge distance of over 30 km, I guess! There are roughly said – and from a tourist perspective – 5 areas worth visiting, from West to East: 1/ the newest neighborhood called Dubai Marina, with luxurious condos and the biggest marina ever built! 2/ the palm Jumeirah, this famous artificial palm tree-shaped island with its landmark hotel Atlantis. 3/ a neighborhood without skyscrapers but with the Mall of the Emirates and the hotel Burj Al Arab. 4/ Downtown with the office skyscrapers and the Burj Khalifa. 5/ Old Dubai and Deira, built around the river Dubai Creek which is the historical center.

Source: http://maps-dubai.com/dubai-satellite-map

Now that you understand a bit Dubai, it will be easier to understand my tours through the city.

During my stay in the UAE, I was able to extend my almost non-existent knowledge about this country. Travelling is definitely the best way to improve one’s general knowledge. Honestly, I didn’t know much about the UAE before, apart from the standard prejudices…! I visited the museum of Dubai and some other exhibitions about the country and now I am ready to make a short summary for you.

The UAE is a federation of 7 Emirates which are each governed by their own sheikh, with Abu Dhabi as a capital city. The entire area was controlled quite a long time by the United Kingdom (hence the fat British power plugs everywhere!), until the Brits left peacefully end of the 1960s. The sheiks of the 2 main emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum of Dubai (names copy pasted from Wikipedia! haha) initiated this federation in 1971 with 5 other Emirates you have never heard about: Sharjah, Ajman, Fujairah, Umm al Quwain and Ras al Khaimah (who first refused to join and noticed one year later it was a lame decision!). There were also discussions with Qatar and Bahrain but without success so that these both countries became independent.

Sheikh Zayed was the first president of the UAE. Nowadays, Sheikh Al Maktoum’s son is sheikh of Dubai and prime minister of the UAE and Sheikh Zayed’s son is sheikh of Abu Dhabi and president of the UAE, although he had a stroke years ago, and people even don’t know if he’s still alive…. His half-brother is currently controlling the power. Talking about half-brother, remember that polygamy is practiced in some Islamic countries, and in particular in the UAE… so there are many half brothers and sisters in some families…! By the way, did you know that Islam sets a maximum limit of 4 wives for a man? I don’t get it… If you can have 4 wives, why not 10? Maybe it’s getting too expensive… ?!

Back to the sheikhs…! There is a huge personality cult for both fathers and sons. The fathers are considered to be the fathers of the nation, and the sons are the current rulers. You can see almost anywhere their pictures… or in other emirates, also pictures of their own less-famous sheikhs. I had a hard time recognizing who is who. They are all wearing the traditional white headscarf (called Guthra). They all have black (died) beards. And pictures of different ages are used, with a preference for pictures of their young years…! I made a little selection of my sheikh pictures collection… a mix of the Sheikhs of Abu Dhabi and Dubai (father and son!), and Sharjah all over the country.

 

The official currency is the UAE dirham with following nice colorful notes:

Until the 1960s, Dubai was a little harbor city famous for its pearl fishing and trading! End of the 1960s, oil was discovered and it changed the region forever. With the oil money, the city developed at a crazy pace, created good infrastructures and free trade zones to attract companies from the entire world. Now, its economy is even not depending on oil anymore! It’s quite impressive how a city managed to develop so quickly and in particular to develop a huge touristic industry from scratch. Abu Dhabi followed a similar development but is still very dependent on oil revenues. It seems that the need to develop tourism only appeared recently and new projects to transform Abu Dhabi in a Dubai Number 2 are ongoing.

I hope it wasn’t too boring but I liked to share this and it’s a bit shorter than what you could have read on Wikipedia!

So what did I do in the Emirates? I hadn’t planned anything before arriving there and improvised all the way, but I feel like what I did was quite good. At the end of my 9 day-stay, I had the impression that I got a good overview of the country. Here is my final travel route through the UAE – the days are indicated in blue.

I spent 4 days/5 nights in Dubai, a day in the Emirate of Sharjah, 2 days in the desert oasis Al Ain in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (the biggest Emirate), and 2 days in Abu Dhabi City. And I will describe my adventures in the next blog posts!