I am lucky in the past few years to have travelled so much. To wit:
2012: Sweden, Wales, Iraq
2013: Morocco, Scotland
2014: Switzerland, Dubai.
And in between, I have genuinely travelled the length and breadth of the country; going back to Norwich a few times, going all the way to Manchester and Southampton, and plenty of visits to Leicester and London, all the while exploring and extending my knowledge of Peterborough every so often as well.
It is said that travel broadens one, and I feel this to be true. The experience of a different culture, a different way of life, a different clime, and even something as minor as handling a different currency all add something. It makes you understand that yours isn’t the only way to live; that there are literally billions of people in the world who live in a different way to you. Of course, you and I already know that on an intellectual level, but travelling makes you viscerally _feel_ that instead.
After which, the question comes, as it always does, in a pair.
”Could you live here?”
“Would you want to pack up everything in England and live here?”
(Answer in the second part of this blog)
In any case, I feel like I have travelled enough, so hopefully this is the last of my excursions for a very long time. Having said that, well, who knows?
ON DUBAI
Thanks to wikipedia, I read a lot more inane trivia that I used to normally. This has its benefits sometimes, as I read up exhaustively on Dubai, on the history of the UAE, etc, before we arrived*. Which was good, I kinda knew what to expect regarding landmarks I wanted to visit, and the public transportation system that we would use to travel around Dubai.
My travel companion and myself lost both the day travelling outward, and the day returning, giving us 6 clear days with which to enjoy Dubai, and we did. We genuinely did our level best to squeeze the life out of every single day that we had, and if you happen to follow me on instagram, then I apologise for the pics that must have flooded your timeline. Our foci were three; touristy attractions, Shia masjids, and Old Dubai, and Alhamdulillah we managed to knock out all three pretty comfortably.
That will do for description; now for reflection. Your own experiences, be they past or present, or even future experiences may well be different; this is nothing more than what I saw, with only 6 days of experience.
Dubai is a land of excess, and whilst I was there I got dragged into that side a little bit. Alhamdulillah that my companion was well grounded and stopped me from going overboard; but it’s hard not to get caught up in the swing of things. As they say; “When in Rome…”
Dubai is a land of immigrants. I read somewhere that the native Emiratis make up 16% of the population, which leaves 84% of Dubai as foreign. This in itself is not a good or bad thing; it just is. There are obviously other Arabs who are not Emirati or even Khaleeji, and of course a sizeable Iranian minority. After which, there will be the Western foreigners who I would assume provide skills and expertise at different levels to sate Dubai’s incredible thirst for growth. After which, you will have an incredible number of Pilipino workers, who almost always have flawless American accents, and work in the service industries in the new side of Dubai. Finally, you will have the Desi (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi) immigrants, who more often than not do menial and manual jobs, and own small businesses in the old side of Dubai. I never had to speak Arabic in Dubai (Thank God!!!), I got by in English, and even more, my companion got me good deals and local info through speaking Urdu/Hindi.
Dubai is a land of extremes; and consequently it is also a land of contradiction. Examples;
- If I want a (locally manufactured) 500ml bottle of water, I could pay 16/- for it at the hotel I was staying, or pay 1/- for it at the little shop about 3-5 mins walk away from the hotel. A 16-fold increase in price for bottled water, of all things, is just plain bizarre. I don’t think you could get that in England.
- Again, the same again for my favourite discovery of Dubai; Karak Chai- in the malls this is available for 16/-, off the streets and small shops, it is available for 1 or 2/-.
- The external temperatures regularly hit 32-35ºC but indoors everything is air-conditioned (even some bus stands are air conditioned(!)) and cool, and indeed in the Mall of the Emirates there is a ski slope. In the desert. Think about that.
- The dancing fountains in front of the Burj Khalifa are an interesting spectacle, comprising choreographed light, water, and music, but outside some bus stations have no lighting at night, and some bus stands have the air conditioning off to “protect the environment”.
- The Burj Khalifa is the worlds tallest building, and the Burj al-Arab is the world’s first Seven Star Hotel**, yet for all the opulence and display of wealth, the majority of the population do not lead lives of easy comfort.
- The city is in a desert, but all the cars that we saw were spotless. All the Arabs wearing dishdashas had those on that were impeccably clean and spotless in public.
And so on. The old adage that you see externally what you are internally holds somewhat true here, as what you are like as a person will mean you notice and pick up on different things. Exactly what this tells me about myself, well, I don’t know yet.
To answer the question I posed myself above, well the answer is yes. Unfortunately, visiting a place on holiday does indeed have the ability to romanticise a place, and based on what I saw, I would indeed be very happy to live here. However, crucially, I do not feel this with the same strength that I felt for Sweden or Switzerland, so I guess Dubai, for all it’s charms, has yet to win me over as fully as the other two did.
With Duas for you and yours
I
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* Sometimes it does not benefit; I know now more about the mythologies and backstories of Middle Earth, Marvel/DC and StarWars than can _ever_ be useful in real life.
** There is apparently no such thing.
