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So, Dubai! Flight good. Airport huge and impressive. Friendly welcome from all including taxi driver. Nice hotel; Jumeira Rotana in the city centre near the business district.
Got bus tour ticket and walked to the first stop only to find everywhere is 10 times further than it looks on the map! This place is huge; really 6 or 7 cities in one giant conurbation. The sights you see on tv are miles apart in many cases. The beach resort including Burj al Arab is about 6/7 miles from my hotel and the bus tour took all day! Hot and tiring; a beer back at the hotel very welcome.
Impressions? Friendly, cosmopolitan, some highly impressive architecture and a strange eclectic mix of styles, cultures, old and new. It spreads out in all directions, American style and very much built for the age of the car. The old bits of course a complete contrast, small, narros streets, alleys that can be intimidating but fascinating at the same time. Even the sea doesn't hem this place in, it expands exuberantly into the Arabian Sea in a clear expression of man's defiance and arrogance towards nature. The outlying islands are amazing. You can buy a World Island from just $10m and if you really want to impress, $100m is the price tag for the more exotic! In the words of one of the princes, "a man must be bold if he wants to write on water"! It really does make you wonder how this can ever be sustainable.
Visited the Gold Souk in the afternoon, fantastic jewellery but nothing is priced so you have to know what you are doing if you're going to buy. You have to haggle! Men everywhere trying to sell you genuine fake watches, anything you want mister! This can be quite overwhelming but compelling too. Did a dhow ride on the Dubai Creek. This is a very wide waterway not unlike an Islamic version of the Grand canal in Venice. The sights and sounds on the creek come from every age and every culture imaginable.
Regrettably or possibly of some relief to you, I haven't been able to get photos loaded up yet. Too tired now to fight this damned machine so will try another time!
That's all for now folks.
Chris
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