Recently I ventured out to explore part of Dubai as a tourist, to view the city anew and to try and see what it is about this place that attracts the tourists - apart from the sun that is.
Downtown Dubai centres on perhaps this century's most iconic building, Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, which is located next to one of the world's largest shopping malls, which houses not just a myriad of stores and restaurants, but a massive aquarium and an Olympic size ice rink.
From most points close by it's impossible to see the top without getting a sore neck. It's a graceful spire, gradually decreasing in diameter until you get to what is probably the world's smallest and most inaccessible rooms at the top. Unfortunately I don't know what's up there, but I’m sure the rooms right at the top are not much use to anyone. That said, the building does house the Armani Hotel, apartments, offices and At The Top - the Burj Khalifa viewing platform.
At the foot of the tower is a small lake which lies dormant during the day, but at night blasts into action with fountains, music and lights that wouldn't look out of place in Las Vegas. And this part of Dubai now rivals the Creek and Burj Al Arab as a setting for fireworks. When I think about it, much of this area of Dubai wouldn't look out of place in the Nevada desert.
Around the lake there are apartment buildings and hotels, and another, though much smaller, shopping centre, Souk Al Bahar. Not in any sense of the word a traditional souk, but a modern reproduction, housed in buildings which strive to look traditional, but which are far too clean, in much too good condition, and which look like nothing more than an artificial precinct in an artificial city.
Am I judging it too harshly? It does make for nice photos, and as I sit outside sipping an espresso, I watch busloads of tourist stream past, cameras to their eyes. What drives people to experience their holidays through camera viewfinders?
As you walk through Souk Al Bahar, you can peer into shops packed with photos and paintings of the stock images of the region: rulers' portraits, camels, horses, dhows, buildings with wind towers - in fact just about everything that most tourists won't actually see on their quick bus tours; things that most people don't see in this modern city where it is too hot for most of the year to spend time outside. These purveyors of the fake traditional are supplemented by international restaurants and cafes, the ubiquitous Starbucks, Dean and Deluca, Rivington Grill, Bice Mare. In fact, except that it is all so clean and new, it could be just about any city in the world. Then there are the tourist shops selling south Asian and Middle Eastern souvenirs - Kashmiri handcrafts, kaftans from India, painted plates from Jordan, carpets from just about everywhere you could imagine – except, of course, here.
I wander down through an area of apartments (or residences as they are called). Carefully manicured gardens, clean paths, beautiful clean facades. But where is the life, where are the people? Again it all looks too clean, too new.
What's lacking, just about everywhere I go, is anything Emirati. I find it hard to find anything to buy other than photos and postcards that says "United Arab Emirates" to me. The popular local icon, the camel, has been hijacked, westernised, made cute until it bears no resemblance to the magnificent creatures one can see out in the desert or at the camel races. The national bird, the falcon, is depicted in metal, crystal, and who knows what - in the process losing the majesty and grandeur of the supreme hunting machine which flies freely in the hot Emirate skies.
An evening out highlights the multicultural nature of this city – and the lack of anything local. I start at a restaurant and bar complex called Pyramids. Unsurprisingly, this is Egyptian themed.
Next it’s an Indian dance bar (found myself at this one in error). Young men sit drinking, watching bored women in tight clothes dance on a stage. The men buy cards, each of which is worth a small sum of money, and throw these onto the stage, where two young men rush around sweeping them up and adding a touch of the absurd to the whole scene. We finished the night at a hotel which has a display of the “World’s Longest Chopsticks” outside its doors. Inside the clientele is mixed but I am told that many Sri Lankans like to go to this particular bar. To prove the point, as it was just before the World Cup Cricket final, the band played a popular Sri Lankan song and the crowd loved it.
I tried to see Dubai in the eyes of a tourist - and found that fourteen years of familiarity with a culture which thrives on newest, biggest, best, has left me rather jaundiced. I can admire the ingenuity that has created the place - but feel saddened that for all the money that's been invested, for all the human creativity that has been channelled into this city, it remains an island of artificiality - a place where tourists can come to 'experience' Arab culture without stepping out of their international bubble, the ideal city for the tourist who wants to see the 'exotic' but who doesn't want to step outside their comfort zone.
And as a city to live in - well, it's a convenient “jumping off” point for this Antipodean to visit Europe and to experience culture and heritage that feels genuine, rather than like an "Arab city theme park".
