The Dubai of today needs no introduction, as it's turned into an amusement park of a city over past decade. We stayed in the old part of Dubai, which is still heavily market based and very cheap, which was a nice surprise. This old city used to be surrounded by white sand, which has now been replaced by skyscrapers.
The city is fairly spread out, which makes it next to impossible to see anything on foot. We opted for "Big Bus", which is the same company that does the open top bus tours in London. Hop on hop off service all over the city every half hour. Not too shabby.
This is the view of downtown (new) Dubai from the old part of town. Apparently they have smog in here.
Dubai's economy was built on oil, but it now accounts for less that 6% of their GDP. They have however managed to continue their financial success in tourism and trade. If you're of Arabian decent, you're taken good care of. Not a word of lie, this beachfront mansion is their low income housing, given to families who earn less than $10,000 a year. There was blocks of these sitting on the beach.
And for the rich and famous, the world's only 7 star hotel.
Even their shopping malls are ridiculous.
And no middle eastern city is complete without...a ski hill.?
You can go shopping in the mall, eat lunch, and ski, all in the same building.
The tour guide on our bus told us that over half the worlds tall cranes are in Dubai due to the extremely rapid expansion going on right now. I still find that hard to believe, but there certainly were an excessive amount.
And here is the world's tallest building. Apparently it's been designed so that additional floors can be added if another country tries to top it.
And the view driving through the downtown.
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