On our journey around the globe to Southeast Asia, we decided to spend time in Dubai rather than have a brief layover in the airport. Emirates flies direct from Venice to Dubai and Dubai to Bali, so it was a great midway point to stop and we’re very glad we did!
We really only had two things in mind when we came to Dubai…see the Burj Khalifa (the tallest building in the world) and experience the Arabian Desert. We specifically booked these ahead of our departure from America knowing we would have limited time in the city. We landed just before midnight local time on Sunday Oct 2nd from Venice and our continuation flight to Bali would be at 8:35am Wednesday, which gave us two full days in the city on Monday and Tuesday. We planned to see the Burj Khalifa and explore the city the first day and go to the desert during the afternoon of the second day.
This is the third country we’ve visited on our journey and our fourth currency (counting USD in the St. Louis Airport and Canadian Dollars in Toronto airport but we don’t count as “visiting”…plus Euros.) The currency of the area is the United Arb Emirates Dirham. Roughly speaking, 100 AED is $27 at the time we were there, so when we first heard the price of our cab ride from the airport at 55 Dirham, it sounds high, but it was really more like $15.
This is our first time in the Middle East/Asia too!
We were aware that Dubai has a different culture than the US and Europe. Since we wanted to be respectful and avoid any potential issues, we researched online for advice on cultural sensitivities and appropriate behavior. Mainly we learned that commonplace manners we take for granted in the US or in Europe like public displays of affection, hand holding, spitting, cursing, public drunkenness, etc. should be avoided. These ideas were further reiterated when we met and talked with an older English couple in Venice that have a son living in Abu Dhabi. That said, when we were in Dubai we noticed mild affection among other tourist that seemed to go unnoticed or uncontested and no real issues, so it’s hard to say from our limited experience what is appropriate. Better to be conservative though.
We’ve included some information about the UAE and Dubai at the bottom of this post for those interested, limited info plus some things we noticed around town. Let’s get into our experience!
Burj Khalifa
We booked our “At The Top” (ATT) tickets for an 11am visit to the Burj Khalifa. Admittedly, as with the rest of the city or country, we knew very little about the Burj Khalifa other than it is the tallest building in the world and Tom Cruise did some stunts on the side of it for the 4th Mission Impossible installment (this is relevant later). The tower was originally supposed to be named “Burj Dubai”, but the name was changed to honor the president of the UAE for lending money to complete the tower. It is 828 meters high (2,717 feet, over ½ mile) with 163 floors and 57 elevators; one being the fastest in the world. The ATT tour offers two options: Floors 124/125 or 148. The tickets for floor 148 are significantly more expensive than the lower floors, almost $100 per person, so we went with the lower floors. It was foggy/hazy/smoggy out, which limited our view, but we snapped a number of photos from the top and bought a couple of souvenirs. It was your usual visit to the top of a tall building, it just happened to be in a desert and very modern and developing city.
Photos of the Burj Khalifa and from the ‘At The Top’ 124th floor:
Nighttime photos:
Dubai Mall
The Dubai Mall is connected to the Burj Khalifa and you actually enter and pass through the mall to go to the ATT tour. Since it was connected and very well known, we explored the mall after our visit to the Burj Khalifa. The mall is filled with numerous stores, tons of well-known brands, restaurants, and vast atriums. Additionally, there is an area of the mall meant to look like a souk (market), an aquarium, a waterfall, and an ice rink. We thought the indoor ski range was there as well, but it is located in a different structure further toward the Burj Al Arab. We walked around the mall and found a place to eat before walking by the aquarium and waterfall sections and snapped some photos. Our walk back to our hotel was difficult as the mall is so massive that getting out of it can be difficult and then finding our way around the streets to the right place to cross over to our hotel was also difficult. We actually ended up crossing through a construction site to get to our hotel, which the workers just waved us through (a lot of construction going on).
Photos of the Mall and Shops, Aquarium, and Waterfall:
Gold and Spice Souks
There are many souks in Dubai the ones we visited were the gold and spice souks. These souks, or markets, are a popular destination for tourists. They require a cab, drive, or train ride from the downtown area to the original part of the city. We took the train system, which is pretty simple to understand. We did notice that Mike was 6-12 inches taller than nearly everyone standing in our train car. Anyway, we arrived near the souks around dusk, so in a city that means dark. They are open until 10pm, so it wasn’t an issue, but the salesman and shop owners are very aggressive about selling you things, so much so that even if we wanted to buy something our immediate response was “no thank you.” They come right out into the main walkway to start their sales pitch and attempt to corral you into their stores to complete the sale. Understandably they don’t want people just visiting, so they try to sell you stuff, but it made the walk through the souks not as enjoyable as we thought (although we read this might happen). And since we couldn’t hold hands, or wouldn’t, we remained close to each other but felt very uncomfortable. After cruising through the gold and spice souks, we hopped back on the train and went back to the mall area to watch the Dubai Fountain show. We didn’t really get a chance to take that many detailed photos as stopping would result in a harder sales pitch, but we snapped a couple pics below:
Dubai Fountain Show
Listed as a ’must do’ when you visit and arguably more impressive than the Bellagio Fountain show in Vegas. The shows start at 6pm and run for 4-5 minutes every half hour. The music and choreography are varied with each show. We caught the 8:30pm show on October 3rd and recorded it.
If interested, see the video below:
Otherwise we have included a couple pictures of the fountain and light show with the Burj Khalifa in the background:
After the 8:30 show, we looked for a place to grab a bite to eat with a patio to watch the next show. As it turns out, there are a lot of options, but most seem to be fancier places where we should be a little more dressed up, so we settled for the one we found that sounded the best…Shake Shack! The food was delicious! The smokeshack had “hickory smoked veal strips” instead of bacon, but it was not noticeable in any way.
Desert Safari Experience
Our last ‘to do’ was to take an excursion into the desert to see it and experience some fun activities: dune bashing, sandboarding, camel riding, falcon holding, plus a BBQ dinner and dance show. Our tour was booked with Oceanair and our tour guide Sajith was a very nice guy. He picked us up promptly at 3pm and then we picked up two other couples in Dubai, one was in town from London and the other from New Zealand. We headed out into the desert and were treated to two rare occurrences in the desert…rain AND a sandstorm! A sandstorm was a key scene in the Mission Impossible movie previously mentioned, so we were curious how often they happen (not often) and wondered if we would get to see one. The answer was yes! See below:
The safari experience was thrown off schedule a little bit due to the rain and sandstorm, but we still got to do the full agenda. First, we went sand dune bashing, which can only be described as intense. The guide threw on some traditional Arabic music….we went bashing to the sweet sounds of JLo, Justin Timberlake, and Flo Rida! LOL We drove aggressively up and down the dunes while sliding off, down, around, and popping over them almost felt out of control, but that’s why we came, right? We were in convoy formation, so there were 15-20 cars in line following each other, sometimes rather closely for 15 minutes then we stopped for pictures and sandboarding (Mike failed pretty miserably there). Then a little more dune bashing and everyone holding their stomachs…
Afterwards we arrived at camp where the falcon holding, camel rides, dinner, and dance show were located. The food was great, the atmosphere was great, and the expanse of the desert was unreal. We are very glad we went! It was a great experience and Sajith was great!
Photos from the experience:
(We will post a video later, but requires some editing…and we are on vacation…)
We’re happy we went to Dubai and didn’t just pass through. There’s likely a lot more the city we could’ve explored given more time (e.g. the Atlantis, The Palm, Burj Al Arab, Waterparks) and expect even more will be available in the coming years. We could see ourselves coming back for a visit in the future! For now, we’re off to Bali!
Thanks for reading.
Cheers and love,
Mike and Erica
(For those interested….see below)
About the UAE and Dubai
Dubai is one of seven separate emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the most populated city in the region. The UAE was officially formed in December of 1971 as the British ended their protection of the seven separate emirate regions and they decided to band together. The capital and largest member is Abu Dhabi with Dubai being the second largest. The official language of the UAE is Arabic and the writing is in Arabic, but the second language used is English. Almost everything we saw was written in both languages (street signs, restaurant names, menus, etc.) and it seemed like most people spoke both. A large portion of the population is made up of expatriates at roughly 85% with the majority from Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines, etc.) with the largest western culture made up of of people from the UK. FYI…stoning and flogging are legal punishments here too.
Photos of English and Arabic writing, plus a sampling of the great restaurants…
Even though the city and area have a very long history, the story of Dubai now is a modern and global city. The modern and recent development of Dubai is noticeable as you walk around and take in the architecture and design, plus the custom made islands out in the Persian Gulf, most notably the Palm. The “World” set of islands is still being constructed as is a lot of the city! That’s one thing we noticed right away is the amount of construction, mainly being completed by EMAAR. Our Desert Safari guide mentioned that Dubai is hosting the World Expo in 2020, which is why so much is happening now. Given the impressive skyscrapers and developments already in the city, it’ll be a worthwhile visit in 5-10 years to see what it becomes after more construction is completed, not to mention the seemingly unending amount of space with the desert. Dubai also has a wide range of things for tourist to do, current and forthcoming, Burj Khalifa visit, Burj Al Arab, Atlantis at the Palm, Dubai Mall (and many others), indoor ski slope, beaches, desert safaris, waterparks, restaurants, souks (markets) and soon to be theme parks. The temperature can reach upwards of 125 degrees F and as low as mid 50s. We were surprised at the humidity considering the desert, but the city is located on the Gulf. We were also surprised at how spread out everything in the city is! The Burj Khalifa and Burj Al Arab are over 8 miles away.
As for visiting the country, if you’re from America you are granted a 30-day visa upon arrival and do not need any prior visa arrangements before arriving.
Wanderlust with M+E 