Moroccan aftertaste: A Dubai sojourn

Andrea
Oct 1, 2023
9 min read

Updated: Nov 29

A little bit of background 📝

Dubai is somewhere I have stopped over in several times, flying with Emirates on the way to and from Europe. This post is about the one time I left the airport in 2007, on my way back from Morocco.

If you've read my Morocco post, you might remember that original plan was for my travelling companion (B) to meet her friend (D) in Dubai on D's way back to Perth from Manchester. This original idea morphed into B and me travelling to Morocco and meeting D in Dubai as our stopover on the way home. I'm happy to have seen the city beyond the ginormous airport, but five days is more than enough to get the picture.

B and I left Casablanca around midday at the end of our Moroccan tour. The flight to Dubai took around seven and a half hours. We arrived at midnight local time, not long after D had flown in from Manchester. My most vivid impression of our arrival was the searing heat when we left the airport. It was 40 degrees Celcius in the middle of the night!

💭I've posted my reflections on my Dubai experience and my most vivid and lasting impressions at the end of this post.

The Sheraton Jumeirah Beach 🏨

The first part of our stay (the three of us) was spent in the luxurious Sheraton Hotel at Jumeirah Beach. The benefits of being the travel companion of a travel industry person! The hotel seemed rather sterile after the often-basic accommodations in Morocco. It was lovely to stay in such a flash place, but I think I preferred the humble authenticity of Morocco.

Anyhoo, the room was nice and the buffet meals incredible. The hotel has a gorgeous pool and its own private beach where guests can enjoy the warm waters 24/7. The water in the ocean felt like a warm bath due to the consistently high temperatures. Needless to say, venturing outside was an exercise in perseverance. We are used to hot weather living in Brisbane but this was off-the-charts heat!

In search of the Burj al Arab🔎

We dared to go outside during our time in Dubai and just about died in the proces. I live in a hot part of Australia, but the heat in Dubai threw me, even in early June. The temperatures were well into the 40s for our stay and we noticed that there was hardly anyone outside in the heat of the day. Be prepared for indescribable heat if you travel in late spring and all through summer.

One of our forays into the Dubai heat was to marvel at the Burj Al Arab, at the time one of the most luxurious hotels in the world. You can't get too close without a reservation, but there are some good accessible vantage points for photos. Our taxi driver took us as far as non-guests are allowed. The main shot and the one of us in front of the Burj is the best viewing point and where we were dropped off by the taxi. The top left hand shot was taken from a nearby hotel.

Travel tip🌏 Mere mortals cannot get up close to the Burj, at least not when I visited in 2007. There is no entry to the hotel lobby unless you have a reservation and you can't even get close to the entrance without one. The only way to see inside without a reservation is to pay for the tour up to the viewing platform. We decided against it, as sadly it wasn't worth it at that time of year. Why? The sand that blows in off the desert in summer sits in the air and makes it seem as if the city is blanketed in smog. I'd recommend skipping the viewing platform tour in summer.

Shopping Dubai-style👜

We'd taken a taxi to the Burj but then decided to walk a bit further. Not sure, as the heat was wicked. I remember walking about 20 minutes until we stumbled into the Madinat Jumeirah, a another swish hotel, relieved to have found much-needed air-conditioning. The hotel has a Las Vegas vibe going on.

Inside there are a bunch of shops set up like traditional Arabic souks. I'm not usually a shopper but I was fascinated by the Madinat. There's stuff you can buy that feels traditionally Middle Eastern without being tat, and there are shops selling the usual luxury goods. We stood at watched the below sand artist making the little bottles of coloured sands in desert designs. I bought one each for the kids with their names spelt out in sand inside.

I also bought a set of greeting cards by a local designer. The art work is a beautiful interpretation of the Middle Eastern buildings and landscapes.

We also went to the Mall of the Emirates, which I think at the time was the largest shopping mall in the world. It had only opened two years earlier. The mall has over 600 shops and 100 restaurants and cafes. It's an odd mix of luxury stores and kitsch, as evidenced by the photos below of us next to a giant stuffed toy.

I admit to giving into the kitsch, purchasing two camel stuffed toys and a little 'magic lamp' trinket. I was also with two very dedicated and seasoned shoppers, to be fair, so I spent way more money that I would have done if I'd been on my own.

I'd never seen a shopping mall so large before. It was actually quite overwhelming. The Interwebs tells me that the multi-level shopping mall currently features more than 630 retail outlets, 7900 parking spaces, over 100 restaurants and cafés, 80 luxury stores and 250 flagship stores. It has a total gross leasable area of 255 489 square metres. It's typical of the excesses that characterise Dubai. The centre cost over $200 million USD to build.

Another thing we saw outside the mall was a line up of very expensive sports cars while waiting for our taxi back to the hotel. There is so much wealth in Dubai that provides a stark contrast to the plethora of foreign workers in service jobs and manual labour roles on construction projects. I found the whole thing quite depressing, really. At the time, buying a pink camel soft toy seemed harmless enough, but looking back now, the overt capitalism in Dubai is pretty gross.

Skiing in a giant snow globe❄️

OK, so the Mall is pretty cool even if completely over the top. It has all the usual shops, restaurants and cinemas. The Mall also houses Ski Dubai, a giant indoor skiing facility. We had originally booked and paid for the full experience but when we got there, we realised you had to be able to ski (which I can't!) to use that ticket. We downgraded to a general entry and donned the provided ski gear to jump from overwhelming heat to overwhelming cold. The ticket we had meant we could have stayed all day but (i) it's too bloody cold to stay too long in there, and (ii) there aren't any toilets and my bladder can only hold out for so long. It's a weird experience because you're in the snow INSIDE a building. There's a huge glass wall at one end, so everyone in the shopping centre can see inside. It feels as if you're in a giant snow globe.

Travel tip🌏 Don't make our mistake and purchase a full ticket unless you can ski. A general ticket will allow you to wander around for as long as you like. As noted above, however, there were no toilets at the time of our visit and pass outs were not issued. My tip is to plan your visit!

Into the desert🐪

The highlight of our stopover in Dubai was the sand dune trip. It's so bizarre to be in this hugely modern city yet within a short distance, there is the Qudra Desert. Cool.

The driver who took us on the trip didn't seem to speak much English, or at least he wasn't one for saying much. We basically just followed his lead. We were picked up from our hotel, then he collected another couple from a different hotel, then drove like a bat out of hell through the city into the desert. He stopped at a service station to let the air out of the tyres in preparation for the dune trip and randomly, we stopped on the edge of the desert to meet a falcon.

Anyone who knows me, knows I have a pathological fear of birds. We didn't seem to have any choice in the matter so there I found myself with the darn bird on my arm. I think the expression on my face says it all.

Travel tip🌏 Don't let yourself be talked into the falcon experience if you are not into birds. Remember, too, that the tour guide will try to get you to pay for a photo with the falcon, so be prepared for that.

It was a very different experience to the one we had in Morocco only a few days earlier, on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Sure, there were touristy elements to it, but it felt much more authentic. It was also much calmer riding camels than screaming around in a land rover. The Dubai dunes trip was an unforgettable experience, but it paled against the Sahara sunset camel ride in Morocco. Perhaps if I'd not been to Morocco first I'd have been more wowed.

The dune trip was all kinds of crazy, and not just for the unexpected falcon encounter. The driver hardly said a word to us, just drove like a maniac around the sand dunes. I was equal parts excited and terrified at the same time. The three of us held on for dear life and laughed and screamed at various points during the wild ride. At one point, we stopped to help another group whose vehicle had gotten stuck in the sand.

Then a compound appeared out of nowhere and we just got out of the vehicle and just...I don't know...did stuff. The driver was no more communicative when we arrived at the compound than he was on the dunes, so we just hung around and went with the flow until we were instructed to get back into the land rover.

We had kebabs for dinner, had a henna tattoo done on our hands, and were treated to a belly dancing show. It was all a bit surreal. And I still have no idea how they generated power out there. The food was good and it was kind of cool getting the tattoo done. I bought a belly dancing outfit for my daughter at one of the stalls.

Dubai Old Town🕌

The first part of our Dubai sojourn had been spent on the beach at Jumeirah. After D left to return home to Perth, B and I transferred to a Radisson hotel in the Old Town of Dubai in the city centre. This part of Dubai, although not really all that old, is not as flashy as Jumeirah Beach. Here's the view from our hotel room:

We wandered around the older part of the city, visited the Dubai Museum, and went for a lovely ride along Dubai Creek on a traditional abra. I liked the river outing - partly because I love rivers but also because it gave us a different perspective on the city.

We also did a half day tour to the neighbouring emirate, Sharjah. The place was similar to Dubai - an Islamic vibe, but kind of plastic, like it was made out of lego. We were the only ones on the tour that day so a guy just drove us around in his taxi.

It was interesting to learn about life in Dubai from the taxi driver, who was originally from India. He said lots of people come to the Emirates to make money to send home to their families. It's so expensive in Dubai that they often have to live in the other emirates and spend hours on their commute.

As a travel destination, Dubai is pretty easy to get around. Taxis are the best option and they're everywhere and very cheap. We took taxis everywhere as the city is quite spread out and the heat makes it hard to walk around. We did go for a bit of a wander after the abra trip, but honestly, the heat was tough. Sitting in the back of a taxi does provide the chance to take everything in, though.

The below collage shows the architecture of the city that we experienced during our stay, with its mix of modern buildings and skyscrapers and mosques.

Dubai is a strange, surreal place. I can't imagine living there! It feels so plastic and inauthentic, like nothing is real. There's not all that much to do in the city apart from shopping and desert exploration, but even that felt manufactured.

At the time of our visit, Dubai was a giant construction site. It was somewhat disturbing to see busloads of migrant workers being shuffled to building sites to work in that awful heat. Most of the people we spoke to in service roles were migrants. The whole city smacked of exploitation and I didn't feel very comfortable there.
Dubai suffered in comparison to my Morocco experience. Being in Dubai just made me kind of sad. I loved the authenticity of Morocco and the warmth of the people. I am not someone who is wowed by luxury, so Dubai just isn't my vibe.

The heat: It hits like a furnace when you walk outside. I will never forget stepping into the ocean and the hotel pool and feeling the bath-like warmth of the water. It was 42 degrees in the middle of the night!
The snow: Stomping around in the snow in a super hot country inside what felt like a giant snow globe. Nowhere to go to the loo. Weird.
The dunes: A madcap hurtle around the Qudra Desert. Equal parts exciting and terrifying.
The luxury: So many shops! So much stuff to buy! All too much for an anti-consumerist like me.

There's so much luxury in Dubai that I found distasteful, juxtaposed with the experience of the migrant workers. The whole place is very jarring. A few days is enough, I think, if you decide to venture beyond the airport.