Dubai C/D S/D

xp to ShariVari

Ah thanks man! This is extremely helpful and heartening. Especially your closer, the multiculturality of it. I just hope it's not bcz most of them are exploited Asian workers :-/

As boring as it may sound, we're probably not looking to do a lot of "activities". Gf's from the Middle East originally and her yearning for sun and warmth during the winter is all too real. It impacts her quite severely. So Dubai seems a good bet.

We won't be doing any sky diving (have mercy) or rallying or shooting guns. But that opera sounds great! And looks great too, as everything there. Dubai in photos feels like a utopian version of Blade Runner. Damn.

It's good to know it's easy to get around w/ public transport and taxis, and we'll def go up the Burj Khalifa. Would love to see the Jumeirah mosque as well.

Have you been there often?

Cape Verde was on my mind and I will def check that out too! It's between those too, but of the two I knew way less about Dubai which is why I started the thread

yes, sorry for derailing your thread by telling you I wouldn't go there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Uhm no, I value your input? Not sure if you're serious or sarcastic...

I know it's far from perfect. It's why I asked if one can go there with a half descent conscience in my first post. But not a lot of options when aiming for a clear conscience tbh...

*decent

Four times maybe?

It is very easy to get around - and not particularly difficult to get to other Emirates, should you wish to.

The politics of immigrant labour are always complex. Almost everyone in Dubai (literally something like 95%) is an immigrant (or officially classified as an immigrant despite being second / third generation there) which means there are people from all over the place (but primarily Asia and other Arab countries) at every social strata. Construction workers, cleaners, retail clerks, etc, will typically all be Filipino, Pakistani, Ethiopian, India, etc, but so will their bosses and, in most cases, their bosses’ bosses. There are big problems with the way the system works - mainly with lack of automatic access to things like healthcare, strong employment rights and security of immigration status but the alternative for most people would be doing similar sorts of jobs for a lot less money back home.

It’s definitely good that there is pressure to improve things but talking to, for example, a guy from Lahore who drives a taxi in Dubai to pay for his younger brother to study engineering in Australia, the main takeaway is probably just tip well and treat everyone with respect.

dud

No sarcasm! I just thought it was a naff thing to do to come into a thread and say don't go.

I'm crazy in love with the beach and ocean though. xposts

i have done a good bit of copywriting for hotels based in dubai as a sideline to my job/life/integrity. each time they give me a brief which sounds like hell and i turn the temperature up even further until it seems beyond the initial hell and into some new and unfathomable nadir of greed, vulgarity and tragic imitation of established luxury.

i am sure it can't be that bad. but i've heard bad things.

It was noted that my brother who has lived out there for 6 years completely overreacted + acted like a complete dick to a homeless person approaching his wife outside a pub, when he came back to the UK last year. I said to mum: he has truly become a citizen of Dubai these days.

@ShariVari: yeah, wiki sez there's only 20% of VAE people left in Dubai. Which should not come as a surprise. And the great paradox is that Islamic laws are softened for this Dubai Emirate alone because it is so modern, such a multi-culti hub.

@Jed, thanks mate, gotcha.

@LocalGarda: I hear you (I really do), but that kind of comes with the territory of writing copy for hotels (in the first place) and in countries that aim for a sheen of first world countries? Fuck it, writing copy for hotels is a bad gig regardless of where the hotel is based tbh. I sympathize (trust me, I know :/ ..).

@ Calzino: are Dubaians bad to the homeless? Is that a knwon thing or a trope? Not sure what you're getting at tbh

it's prob fine like, you'll get some sun.

i'm trying to plan a post-xmas trip myself at the moment, not sure i want to do long hall tho. thinking south of spain even if it's more warm/bright than hot, or maybe a hotel i found seemingly in the middle of nowhere in alentejo, portugal. quite a tricky thing to get sun without a lengthy flight and dubai nearer than many other spots.

I'd struggle, from what I've heard about Cape Verde (my dad and brother spent an *incredible* several months there trying to establish a fishing operation for this guy), to credit a moral argument for there over anywhere else

iirc canaries are reliable sunny that timeabouts

I've never been there. But I will try and email or skype my brother again later for something more positive. Just a family story about my Dubai based brother!

'Codfather' sad lol.

Not sure if LG is sarcastic or not (I am dumb), but Portugal and Dubai are quite different in winter, temperature wise?

I would be amazed if 20 per cent of Dubai residents were Emirati. That figure might be for the UAE as a whole - AD, RAK, etc are much more Emirati. You would have to be fairly unlucky to run into any Islamic laws in Dubai itself. Restaurants close during Ramadan but that is about it. There are outliers, though, and tourists, etc have got into trouble in the past - sometimes through no fault of their own. It’s usually uneventful.

On Calzino’s point - it’s definitely not unheard of for white expats to be more rude to service workers / poor people in Dubai than they might be at home. There is a culture of privilege that some people can slip in to.

Don't get in touch with your family bcz of me Calz, don't want that resting on my shoulders ;)

Dubliners are pretty fuckin rude to poor ppl and service staff at home fyi

Fuckin dubs eh

ShariVari, you're probably right: 20% for the UAE as a whole. I've no trouble with Islamic laws w/r/t drink or drugs or what have you. I'd just hate for my pennies to sink into pockets of people exploiting other people. That's my only concern. Yet that probably happens where I live right now, too. And on Cape Verde.

Dubs :D

In deference to our man lg I should stipulate that it's southsiders I've noticed it in

Has anyone been to the Louvre in Abu Dhabi yet? Definitely exciting that AD now has precisely one thing to do that isn’t golf.

The Louvre is good. The building is beautiful, at least outside, and the collection is decent. It’s obviously tiny in comparison to most established European super-museums but it gives pieces the chance to breathe. A fair amount is stuff, weighted towards artefacts rather than paintings, that might be overlooked in busier collections. It’s worth seeing if you happen to be in the area. I’m keen to see how the rest of the cultural hub develops. God knows when the Guggenheim is going to open.