Dubai and Abu Dhabi: What decades of oil money have built

UAE:  Oil Money Gone Wild

Into the early 1960’s the indigenous people of this area ( the UAE or United Arab Emarites) were mostly fishermen, pearl divers and traders living in towns and villages on the coast, and some oases in the desert. The rest of the land otherwise being miles and miles of hot sand. Ridiculous amounts of oil profits completely transformed this area. 

Huge buildings with cutting edge architectural shapes, the world’s largest mall (1200 stores), an artificial ski slope, world’s largest fountain (tourist boats motor around in it), the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building (200 m taller than the next tallest building);  over-the-top luxury hotels, artificial islands in the shape of palm trees with houses and mansions in the 10’s to 100’s of millions of dollars.  This is oil money gone wild. 

Today the Emiratis, the citizens of UAE, represent only about 20% of the population of the UAE.  The other 80% are guest workers.  The citizens work in government positions or real estate or store owners I suppose.  All other labor is provided by the usual list of poorer countries that export English-speaking citizens to earn money.  (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Philippines etc).   The place feels like a land-based cruise ship:  fantastical construction, some tourists, staffed by Filipinos.  Other than the immigration officers, we have encountered only a handful of actual Emirati citizens. 

There is no unemployment in UAE.  If you are a guest worker in the UAE and lose your job, you have 30 days to find a new job or you have to go back to your home country.  That’s one way to have full employment I suppose.

Dubai is running short of oil, so they have diversified their economy, building a huge airport, adding banking, trade, tourism, and investing abroad.  Abu Dhabi, a couple hours away, has more fossil fuel resources, so they are diversifying and growing more slowly.

We used Dubai as a jumping off point to explore Uzbekistan, Nepal and Pakistan, so we spent time exploring the UAE in mid-October and then again in mid-November.  Here’s some of what we saw:

The Palm Jumeirah

This is an artificial island in the shape of a palm tree, with expensive mansions along the palm fronds, and super expensive mansions on the tips.  An outer breakwater ring protects the palm tree, and high end hotels are located on the breakwater feature. There is a duplicate of the Atlantis Hotel Bahamas on the outer ring at the top of the palm. Because apparently one Atlantis Hotel is not enough

The Burj Khalifa

This is the tallest building in the world.  And why isn’t it called Burj Dubai?  Because Abu Dhabi stepped in to financially bail out Dubai when Dubai was doing several massive construction projects all at the same time, including this huge building.  Khalifa is the name of the ruler of Abu Dhabi. So any questions why it is called the Burj Khalifa?

The Dubai Mall

The mall has 1200 stores and takes forever to walk through. Many high end stores. Look for your favorite store in the store directory.  Lots of features in the mall besides stores.

The Dubai Fountain

The fountain is huge, here’s a couple videos showing the fountain and the Burj Khalifa, a restaurant section of the Dubai Ball, and the Dubai fountain in action.

And let’s throw in a giant picture frame shaped observation building too

The Gold Souk (Market)

There are a lot of gold and jewelry shops in this part of town, but this one street is wall to wall purveyors of gold. 18K, 22K and 24K gold. In the adjacent alleys there are more shops and more silver jewelry. I’ve never seen this much gold jewelry in one place. At close to 63kg (140 lbs) of 18K gold, this ring (see below) is the worlds heaviest 18K gold ring. Thats 63,000 grams of 18K gold, times (click here for the current spot price for 18K gold) = a big number.

Next to the Gold Souk is the Spice Souk. I have never seen a Saffron store before, let alone dozens grouped together

Abu Dhabi

Stacy and I took a day trip to Abu Dhabi. Susie missed out due to a crummy tummy. The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque was the main draw, but there were other things to see and do there. The mosque is almost all pure white. On a sunny day like the day we visited, sunglasses were a must just to be able to see the courtyard.

Here are a few photos of the Emirates Palace hotel. Over the top luxury

And a few more things we saw there

Chicken Biryani and Naan have been a staple of our diet here….

It has been only a few weeks since we left the US, but it already feels like many months! Next up, the Golden Triangle in Northern India: Delhi, Agra and Jaipur