Best advice to visit Dubai - go during the colder months. Normally we could spend many hours on a tour. In Dubai because of the heat everybody pleaded that if we were to do a tour, be sure to get a very short one. So we just took a 3 hours city tour which took us to the main landmarks. In our first few stops, such as the one by the beach looking at the Burj Arab Hotel, the heat was quite unbearable. It was only 9 am and the temperature was already 38 Deg. C. We found it amazing that there are lots of people on the beach, sunbathing and cooking their skin. We guess it is called adaptation. Or desperation.
But looking around, presumably only during this period of the year, the people here are trapped in their air-conditioned houses, air-con cars and air-con malls. Even the workers seem to be hiding in air-con bus stops waiting for their air-con buses. We thought living in Europe we were always trapped in our house because of the cold weather that we envy those in warmer climate where they spent more time outside. But now we realize that we definitely spend more time outside in Europe. Heat seems to be a big restriction compared to the cold weather. Kids still play football and cycle even during the worst of the winter.
The only people who we saw outside were the construction workers - the ants. They are working in extreme conditions and paid quite a paltry salary. A few numbers were mentioned but I won't quote it as it is quite a sensitive subject here. Most of them came from the Indian sub-continent. There must be millions of them. In fact when me and Faris performed the Jumaat prayer at the old part of Dubai, we always thought that the mesjids would not be crowded as there are mesjids every few hundred metres apart. But it was full and spilling to the car park. It is reminiscent to some places in the city in KL. Some of the drivers just made a spot next to their car and performed the Jumaat there. And the mesjid that we went to was almost composed entirely of Indians, Pakistans and Bangladesh. So Dubai is a city of Expatriates. Each expatriate population has its own enclave. It is such a weird place.
Best advice to visit Dubai - go during the colder months. Normally we could spend many hours on a tour. In Dubai because of the heat everybody pleaded that if we were to do a tour, be sure to get a very short one. So we just took a 3 hours city tour which took us to the main landmarks. In our first few stops, such as the one by the beach looking at the Burj Arab Hotel, the heat was quite unbearable. It was only 9 am and the temperature was already 38 Deg. C. We found it amazing that there are lots of people on the beach, sunbathing and cooking their skin. We guess it is called adaptation. Or desperation.
But looking around, presumably only during this period of the year, the people here are trapped in their air-conditioned houses, air-con cars and air-con malls. Even the workers seem to be hiding in air-con bus stops waiting for their air-con buses. We thought living in Europe we were always trapped in our house because of the cold weather that we envy those in warmer climate where they spent more time outside. But now we realize that we definitely spend more time outside in Europe. Heat seems to be a big restriction compared to the cold weather. Kids still play football and cycle even during the worst of the winter.
The only people who we saw outside were the construction workers - the ants. They are working in extreme conditions and paid quite a paltry salary. A few numbers were mentioned but I won't quote it as it is quite a sensitive subject here. Most of them came from the Indian sub-continent. There must be millions of them. In fact when me and Faris performed the Jumaat prayer at the old part of Dubai, we always thought that the mesjids would not be crowded as there are mesjids every few hundred metres apart. But it was full and spilling to the car park. It is reminiscent to some places in the city in KL. Some of the drivers just made a spot next to their car and performed the Jumaat there. And the mesjid that we went to was almost composed entirely of Indians, Pakistans and Bangladesh. So Dubai is a city of Expatriates. Each expatriate population has its own enclave. It is such a weird place.
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