But before I start getting any more enthusiastic about Mauritius I'd planned to write a few words about Dubai and what it is like in 2010 compared to 2001.
When we went to Dubai last time, I lived in Brussels and had only really travelled in Europe. Now obviously we live in Beijing and I am relatively more widely travelled.
That said I still found Dubai an exciting destination. Even though we were there for less than 24 hours we saw a lot.
It is still a city under siege from cranes. And now like then there is some degree of uncertainty around the future. Then the burj al Arab had just opened and was attracting much attention. But if the anecdotes are to be believed the palm island hadn't even been conceived. It certainly wasn't the mass tourist destination that it became in the last decade although the beginning and the desire was clearly there.
We visited just over six months before September 11 2001. You'd have thought that this might have proved a challenge to the popularity of an Islamic country as a tourist destination, but it didn't seem to affect Dubai. However I have no way of knowing whatever happened to our Afghan driver, Mohammed who no doubt had to shelve his dreams of moving to London.
Now of course Dubai World (the company behind much of the highest visibility development) had to request a delay to payments leading. After much uncertainty Abu Dhabi, the oil rich neighbour with less vertiginous but seemingly more stable growth backed by natural resources, stepped in with support. Consequently the world's tallest building, constructed with the name Burj Dubai, was renamed Burj Khalifa on opening, seemingly in tribute to Abu Dhabi's ruler Sheikh Khalifa.
So with much schadenfreude from some financial analysts, it is no longer clear if Dubai will build the second and third planned artificial palm islands. The third and biggest of which is planned to be bigger than the ilê de France, on which stands Paris. Here is an interesting fact, the existing palm island required so much hardcore for its foundations that, collected together it could build a 2m x 2m wall three times round the earth! I don't know whether to be awed or terrified by this fact.
So that feeling of schadenfreude is understandable on many levels. Dubai is painfully shallow and nouveau riche. I thought Beijing was money-obsessed till I went back to Dubai. But at the same time I do have respect for their efforts to build an economy based on trade and property markets without the resource wealth of abu dhabi or the support-tinged with religious overtures given by Saudi Arabia to neighbouring emirate Sharjah.
One element of Dubai I have no problem admiring is it's openess and international atmosphere. You only need to take a walk along the working creek on the Deira side and note where goods are in transit to and from to feel a part of international trade and exchange. You'd think that rather than taking some delight in its financial stutters, western countries would be as supportive as possible of dubai's interpretation of Islam with freedom of different worship and acceptance of Egyptian legal codes rather than the sometimes scary-seeming Sharia law.
But of course, despite this openess, massive disparities exist in this 'society'. I use inverted commas because in truth there are none of the cohesive elements of a shared society in evidence. Little or no tax, no universal healthcare or education for resident migrants, hell there isn't even a postal service. As early as the queue for passport control, we experienced Emiratees treating workers from Asia with ill disguised contempt, whilst not even questioning our visas.
So in conclusion, despite building many of the world's biggest buildings and creating a man made island, Dubai for me remains a compelling and interesting place to visit, but way too disjointed a place to ever consider living there. Which is lucky really, since we've no pending offers.
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1 comment:
Hey mate, hope you have an awesome holiday.
I remember Hostelworld fondly after using them extensively for our travels - i necver went into quite as much detail on my reviews though ;-)
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