My Impressions of Dubai

27th October 2007
A post card of Burj Al Arab and Jumeira Hotel, Dubai.

I have been to Dubai before, 25 years ago and several times passing through. This time we arrive at midnight and descending over Dubai, we see a 'city' of lights. Myriads of sparkling stars shine in every colour. So very different from 25 years ago. I think it must change every week. Its growth is fast and furious in order to keep up with the ever growing populace and demand.

R met us in the terminal building and we walk to the car park where we load our bags into the Porsche (R & E's other car is a Porsche too - 911 sports model). We drive through this 'city' of amazing architecture. Towering buildings (or burjs) in many different shapes and designs line either side of the road. The roads are wide, clean and covered with new cars. This strikes me instantly - everywhere there are new, clean and extravagant cars, mostly in white, less cleaning required because Dubai is a desert built over. Dubai reeks of money, power, success! Gold and diamonds are cheaper than anywhere else in the world.

The shopping Malls are full of the latest designer labels from every country of fashion. Every taste and pocket book is catered for. The rich can indulge themselves and the less rich too have their opportunity to buy the most popular purchases here -gold and diamonds! The Gold and Diamond Market caters for every purse - from millionairs to the rest of Dubai's visitors. The gold is all 18ct or 22ct. in yellow or white, even mixed together with rose gold, yellow gold and white gold.

We visit the Mall of the Emirates most, because it has everything one could possibly need. It also has a huge hypermarket - food and home goods.

Personally, I love Madinat, another mall - a village almost, built in pinkish stone - a wonderland of shaded lanes and outdoor souks, where one can wander at leisure through little alcoves of tiny shops and stalls, some covered, some exposed to the desert sun. One can buy just about everything here too, and I find the outdoor souk quite comfortable to shop despite the sun. In addition one can eat in fabulous restaurants at little cost, compared to UK. The food is such that it caters for all nationalities. Dubai is certainly cosmopolitan.

I love being with R & E - I find it relaxing and totally enjoyable. I have two of my granddaughters with me, though one is leaving for the UK soon, but the little one, my angel and my jewel, lives here. I am going to miss B when she leaves on Sunday.

Life is great, the sun shines every day and the weather is perfect, I am with those I love, what more can one want? It is a bit hot in the middle of the day but fine in the morning and evening. I miss my family in UK, but I will be seeing them soon and until then, I am going to enjoy every minute of my life here.

R & E are extremely generous to us and solicitous of our well being. E is a very loving and giving human being and I think the world of her. As for my son - what does one say about a little boy with a banjo (his then pride and joy) leaving the East to fly to UK with his family at the age of seven? And later on in teen age years his treasures were flared jeans and now to this successful business man of today with his new treasure - a Porsche 911? Am I proud of him - I should say so but not for his material achievements but for his dedication to his work, to his family, his integrity and honesty. To me these are his real treasures. However, he has not changed in himself much. With all he has, he is still the down to earth, sensible and sensitive person he always was. His personality has remained quite stable. Let's hope as the years go, the pressures of work, the vicissitudes of life will still maintain his sense of balance.

On our flight here, I met a lovely woman travelling with her mother, to shop in Dubai for wedding clothes for another daughter. We get to talking and I feel an empathy with her, and she comes from Lahore (my city) but lives now in Florida. As usual we discuss age, amongst other things and as usual she cannot believe I am 81, soon to be 82. I tell her what I was led to believe, that people who live in the East have more collagen in their skin and so they don't age! She laughs and says, 'Look at my mother, she is from the East and she is ten years your junior, and she looks twenty years older than you!' A bit of exaggeration, but I know what she means. Her opinion is that my youthfulness is due to a pure heart. I like this explanation better!

To make a desert bloom and prosper is a miracle in my way of thinking. The Sheiks have put their wealth, which is in oil, to good use in building Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharja into success cities for the wealthy but also for the workers who come here to labour. They are employed to build more tower buildings that reach ever higher into the sky. Dubai's building skyline has to be the highest in the world. The 'Burj Dubai', still in its completion stages, is the highest building in the world. Apparently it is going to be apartments! The Burj Al Arab (like the sails of a ship) is the most extravagant hotel in the world. Its helipad, high at the top of the building, was used for a professional tennis tournament. I would have loved to have been up there to see it for myself, because from the ground the helipad looks tiny.

The sea is just a few minutes away from where R&E live and the magic of the desert too is within a short distance, where one can chill in its quiet peaceful solitude and watch the desert moon glow huge and close - seemingly - and the sun setting on the horizon. These two heavenly bodies look bigger in a desert area. The desert is a magical place. It is quite extraordinary. No wonder my N loved the desert so much. He never stopped telling me about its wonders and brought home many ancient tools, arrow heads, flint knives and fossils. All given away to my children's schools. I have kept one petrified stone - it was a branch of a tree that is very heavy, I use it as a paperweight for my desk. Some fossils that he brought home were fish, insects and leaves in petrified stone, showing that the Sahara was once a sea, then a forest which finally dried up to be the largest desert on earth. Apart from drilling for oil (which was N's job) his love was to excavate fossils and flint stone tools and play golf in the sand dunes during his free time.

My visits to the Emirates has shown me why he loved the desert and tried to share it with me - now I have experienced it for myself - perhaps not the vast and wonderful Sahara of his love, but a smaller desert, the Arabian desert. This helps me to see what he found so wonderful. He always told me that the desert (his desert) was cold at night, whereas Dubai gets cooler and comfortable and enables one to sit outdoors in the morning and evening. If there were no buildings, perhaps here too it would be cold at night.

A Trip to Oman - B, C, R and I set off early one morning to visit a snorkelling resort in Oman. We arrive at the check point for Oman and find we have not brought passports! Just forgot them. We drive back towards Sharja and find another spot in the Emirates which is a good second choice.

I am amazed at the change of scene as we drive on our way there and back. Suddenly, on the horizon emerge what appears to be mountains but as we come closer and eventually drive on the road that has been blasted and built through these hills, we see that they are comprised of rock. Mountains of rock that are used for building - a never ending supply! No wonder Arabia's buildings progress so much!

Another miracle in Dubai is its ski resort. Yes, with real snow and ski slopes with lifts, log cabins and where the temperature is minus 5oC! What's more it is attached to the largest shopping mall in Dubai. One can sit in an air conditioned restaurant in a sleeveless T-shirt and look through the glass at skiers wrapped up in winter clothes not five feet away.

On the minus side, the rich manipulate the poor. There is great injustice here. What can one do to equalise the difference - nothing it appears?

Well, it is said that money can buy anything. May be so, but it cannot buy justice for the poor nor can it buy love.

Helen Renaux