Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Monday, June 30, 2008
After an almost never-ending flight from Frankfurt to Cape Town with a 8-hour stop in Dubai, I finally arrived at 4:30 pm (local time) at Cape Town. During my stop at Dubai, I tried to get a nocturne city sightseeing tour. To my greatest surprise, the chauffeur was very nice, welcomed me warmly and immediately offered me to step in to get the sghtseeing started. That was the most unexpected and most unconventional city visit I had ever done. Not to mention that it was just marvellous, Dubai is a very modern and glamorous city you would hardly see that it is just constructed on sand. It is a complete artificial city that grows up mostly thanks to petrodollars and the numerous foreign investments that follow attractive by that lucrative spot. I liked it pretty well, although as in many southern countries you got this sharp demarcation line between the very rich people that you can see in
Jameirah or near the worldly well-known
Burj Dubai, and more modest people not to say poor that mainly come from Pakistan, China, Indonesia and so on to earn money and go back
. The three chauffeurs I spoke with were not 100% people from the UAE but came from various countries, mainly Pakistan. It is very interesting to see chat a huge melting-pot this city looks like. It is multicultural, although the western culture and normes prevail especially concerning business, finance and technics. Further, it is socially very deeply religious. I asked the chauffeu if he did his 5 prayers a day, and I got the obvious positive answer. Although I only saw it at night for just 7 hours, I was very impressed by that city. I would have liked to know more about it and discover more but my next flight for the Cape was waiting for me early in the morning, so quickly jumped off the bus, thanked many many times the chauffeur for this extraordinary tour and rejoined the other passengers lying on the ground waiting for their next flight. Most of them, alike me, had to wait for hours during the night to get their next flight without having booked a room at an hotel or whatever. What chocked me again was that in such a rich and prosperous place as Dubai's airport, you find many travellers coming from poor countries just lying here and there, walking around the flashy free-tax stores and luxurious hotel lodges. Again, something was not quite alright in that picture but anyway, that is just the way it is and it is gonna be I guess. The day after, I was finally leaving my Emirates seat and taking a cab for my Back Packer hotel at New Church street. I spent 2 nights there, and watched the Spanish win their European cup that they well deserved. The staff was friendly and the hotel very nice with all its animals names and decorations for the rooms. I got in touch with mostly young people travelling around, be they Dutch, Canadian or Swiss, I managed to brush up on my English with them and impressed everybdy because I went sleeping so early. As I said, I have not alost slept for 2 days with all my Dubaish fancies and so on. Moreover, I wanted to be fresh to meet my boss the 1 July, so I guess my anti-party attitude was well justified. I saw a lot of the Cape during the day actually, you will see more of this in the next editions...
