Dubai the city of the future

G’day all,
How would I wrap Dubai up in two words? Bloody Amazing. Well I’ve just spent a few sensational days in Dubai, the super city of the future. What more can I say than mind blowing, super-modern, space aged, fast, perfect, and perhaps even fake. My first impressions of Dubai were a little different to this as I was caught in traffic jams, surrounded by poor Indian and Pakistani slaved and underpaid laborers, and stuck in a backpacker hostel that nobody had heard of miles out of the city centre. After introducing myself to the first westerners I saw at the hostel I found myself within an hour drinking pints at an Irish Pub for the 4th straight night. The next day me and my new mates Andre and Simon headed to “Wild Wadi Waterpark” right next to the famous sail shaped 7 star hotel the Burj al-Arab. It cost an arm and a leg to get in but once you walk through the gates and see this massive artificial wave with a huge pipeline screaming out ‘surf me’ you can understand why. Growing up in the surf, I couldn’t wait to give it a go and I got so excited that I didn’t jump on the wave properly and got sucked backwards off the back of the wave (as in the video) and it was highly embarrassing. What made it even more embarrassing was the fact the Jamaican surf instructor heard my Aussie accent and built me up as a professional surfer. After my embarrassing moment there we then tried out the many slides we had to choose from. Thinking we were going to be climbing steps all day I was amazed to find out we were jet propelled in uphill slides in rubber tubes and didn’t have to do a thing to get to the top of the hill. One of the slides goes down in complete darkness and another one shoots you down the hill at 80km an hour from a terrifying height which makes you feel very close to getting airborne and hitting the car park with a splat. We had an awesome day at the water park and got there first thing in the morning and were the last to leave when the park closed. We got very sun burnt too but had a ball. On my final day in Dubai I decided I better actually do some site seeing so I did a jump on jump off double-decker bus tour which was really the only way to see Dubai. This is when I really gained my respect for what has become of Dubai and what it will become in 10 years time. Dubai was nothing but a sand desert 60 years ago before it became a tiny fishing and boat making village until 30 years ago when they discovered oil and now it’s the fastest growing city in the world. The old part of the town is nothing but a dingy, old, dirty, traffic jammed, cluttered mess but the new part of town feels like you’re in the 2100. The architecture seems alien-like, the malls look like a set from a movie, the cars are worth more than houses, all the bus stops have air-con, the beaches are perfect, and everything seems to have a different theme. They are building the fastest, tallest, and grandest, of everything in the hope to make this the number 1 tourist destination in the world in years to come. Only 20% of the people in Dubai are actual Arabians and they don’t seem to do any of the dirty work except for driving down to the ATM to pull out wads of cash to go shopping for their 4 wives in their brand new Ferraris. As you drive down the roads all you see are sweaty, hot, predominately Indian foreigners building these skyscrapers everywhere you look. Meanwhile the government gives local Arabian couples a huge beach front mansion for free as a wedding gift with a nice wide driveway for their collection of Lamborghinis. The city is starting to look like Manhattan and it’s only just begun. Only a few of the building have actually been complete whilst if you look around you will see a horizon of cranes and construction sights as far as the eye can see. Even more impressive than the buildings I found were the malls. Each mall has a different theme and these things would give Paris Hilton cardiac arrest they offer so much choice and quality. One mall in particular really impressed me as I’ve never seen something so perfect in my life it was pure stunning. All the buildings were made of sandstone and were styled like something from Santa Fe. They were surrounded by canals with crystal green water and bridges with gondolas like Venice but right in the near distance was the Burj al-Arab poking out over the clear blue sky. On the waters edge were a sting of cafes and restaurants and all the customers looked like movie stars. As you can probably tell I was pretty impressed. One other thing I’ve noticed about Dubai is there is no homeless people and no unemployment and if anything there is a lack of people to be employed. Anyway that’s a wrap up of my time in Dubai. Next update is from Doha in Qatar. Enjoy the pics and videos and leave us a comment.

Woodsy

The Trip begins... Stage One- The Middle East

G’day all,
Well the big 7 month trip has begun and my first stop is the United Arab Emirates. I left Galway on Wednesday and spent Wednesday night in London with my cousin Dave before Flying to Dubai Thursday morning. I decided to give this couchsurfing.com thing a go and I had an Aussie guy called Rob meeting me once I arrived in Dubai and I have been staying on his couch for the past few nights. He met me at this massive mall in Dubai where we sat down and had dinner together overlooking skiers sliding down an indoor ski slope in one of the many hi-tech super shopping malls they have in Dubai. Rob actually lives in the city of Abu Dhabi about 2 hours away from Dubai. I was pretty excited to finally be in the Gulf and driving through Dubai at night on the way to Abu Dhabi was a sight to see in itself with the crazy sea of futuristic skyscrapers surrounding these huge 10 lane highways weaving throughout the city. After arriving in Abu Dhabi we decided to go for a couple of cheeky beers at one of the big five star hotels in town. Abu Dhabi itself is a large skyscraper filled city which also has just been built over the past 30 years and just seems like a smaller version of Dubai. It was a weird feeling being warm again and wearing a t-shirt after being in Ireland for the past 9 months freezing but that joy wore off on Friday when we visited the desert. Rob is an Aussie lad working here as an engineer and I was lucky enough to get him at a time where he has 2 days off work and a company car with free petrol. We decided to head to Liwa on Friday, which is the largest sand dune oasis in the world where some dunes are 300m in height. The drive was long, straight, sandy and very hot as we headed almost to the Saudi Arabian border. We couldn’t believe it when we got there as it just looked like something out of a movie with beautiful white untouched sand dunes reaching out to a bright blue sky. After driving around the dunes for a while and passing some camel farms we arrived at the end of the road and without much luck tried sliding down the dunes in a cardboard box. Next thing some bloke in a 4WD comes cruising up to us and offers us a drive through the dunes which was great fun. At times it almost felt like we were going to roll over and at the end of our ride we went down this massive hill which was a good adrenalin rush. The man then offered us to rent his sand board which we jumped at the opportunity although it wasn’t as fun as it seemed. After 20 minutes we gave his board back to him as we were so hot and tired we couldn’t walk up the dunes anymore. I slept the whole way back to Abu Dhabi before sleeping some more then having some more cheeky beers with Rob and another couch surfing buddy from Sweden called Kristofa. We ended up going into this weird Arabic club afterwards where we all felt so out of place as a room full or Arabs stared us up and down as they smoked their pipes. As we tried to sit down a man ran over and told us it’s reserved so we sat in the back room and sucked back one more cheeky beer before heading home. Yesterday Rob took me to one of the most amazing thing’s I’ve ever seen before, the ‘Grand Mosque’. It’s a brand new mosque which is just being completed now and I honestly found it more impressive than the Taj Mahal. It blows your mind just the size and the design of the thing but even better is when you get inside. As you walk inside there sitting in front of you is the largest carpet and the largest chandelier in the world. The carpet took 600 women 1 year to make by hand and the chandelier stands 6 meters long. It was definitely a must see and will be a big tourist attraction in years to come. The other major attraction in Abu Dhabi is the Palace which was closed to tourists yesterday. I found out today reading the paper that they had a huge auction in the Palace yesterday where a car number plate with the number 1 on it was sold for nearly 20 million Aussie bucks. They seem to have more money than sense over here and as you look around I don’t think you could see anything more materialistic apart from perhaps Hollywood or Beverley Hills. The shopping malls here are amazing and are so spotlessly clean and are seen as old if they are over 5 years in age. It’s a weird combination of the world here and it’s quite odd seeing a queue of Muslims with all the gear on lining up to order their Mc Arabia meals at McDonalds. There are also some nice beaches on the cities edge where it was a surprise to see men wearing speedos and women wearing bikinis after being told not to wear shorts around as people look at you like your naked. Apart from that and all the modern buildings there is not much else to see and do in Abu Dhabi but it’s a nice experience all the same. So far couch surfing was a huge success for me and Rob was brilliant in showing me around and having me stay with him for the past 3 nights and we got on great. Next stop….DUBAI!!!

Keep it real,

Woodsy