Dubai

We visited Dubai last week and had a great time. I fell in love with the city right away. Dubai offers the best of all worlds, in one week I found everything there that one can find in India, UK or US or any other country for that matter. The city is populated by people of all race, religion and color. For us travelling from the US the climate was the best thing, the temperatures were not too hot or too cold, of course the story is different in summer. There is so much going on in Dubai in terms of construction of new buildings, roads, etc that it is just mind blowing. As such there are not too many things to do there in terms of tourism, there is not much of history to the city but if you like shopping, dining and night life the possibilities are endless.
My favourite things were the Desert Safari, Wild Wadi the water park, Quad cab rides in the desert, shopping and Meena Bazaar (where you would for a seccond think that you are in India/Pakistan). 
I did not like the following things though
- Traffic jams, the city is expanding at such a crazy rate that the traffic problems will just get worse
- Intolerance towards other religion 
- It is hard to become a citizen there, the rules are so strict that it is almost impossible tor non locals to get citizenship and there are some parts of the city that only locals can own.


The pictures did ot come out great but above is the Burg Al Arab, the only 7 star hotel in Dubai, earlier when the hotel opened guests were picked up from the airport and flown in the hotel by a helicopter. There is a helipad on top of the hotel. 

Desert Safari is interesting, we were taken in a Jeep to a location an hour away from the city, before entering the desert the tires of the jeep are deflated and then we were taken into the desert where the driver performed some daring stunts. The jeep would climb on top of a mountain and then take a plunge down in sand, it was scary at times. It was recommended that we do not eat anything 2-3 hrs before the trip as the vehicle twists and turns. This is followed by a trip to the camp where there are all sorts of activites like camel rides, henna tattoos, dressing up as arabs and the famous belly dancing. The belly dancers would perform solo at first but then pick from the audience and in the end pretty much everyone  participates.






Wild Wadi is the water park, because of the climate there it is open throughout the year and it was fun.
The quad cab rides in the sand dunes was fun too, kids as young as 5 are allowed to drive their own cab and tourists like us were scared to do dangerous stunts, the locals were going up and down the dunes like it was child's play