Dubai Something

Dubai Something - DAY 22 - Feb 26

Or perhaps the whole place will just disappear.  (“Do Buy Something”).  It’s a silly pun and I wont have been the first but the point is that we are in a giant (and supremely expensive) shop.  Not a proper shop although there must be somewhere to buy toilet paper but a vast display of luxury items with a staff of millions (85% of the population) to serve. 

For us it has been a beach and poolside holiday but you can buy marble villas, high-end cars, gold bricks, desert adventures, designer what-evers on virtually any street corner. Except this week the lower ground floor Food Court of the impossibly vast world's biggest Dubai Mall (Motto: “Shopping is only The Beginning”) is currently closed to “upgrade your experience”

It is appropriate to despair at such excessive and unsustainable displays of opulence and uncaring material extravagance all built with imported labour struggling in a desert.  But gosh what an incredibly impressive monument to pure exuberant, deregulated, unmerited wealth accumulation and its display and disposal and....despite reading like the first acts of a tragedy it is hard not to clap.  What I see is the very pinnacle of religious consumerism – not unsophisticated but proud and refined and finely nuanced to seduce and soothe and reward its constituents.  Even the public transport system is a thing of lavish beauty.

And we have been very very comfortable in our hotel on its sculpted island on its hand-made beach.  The buffet table has been one of the highlights of my gastronomic life and when we went out the (worlds highest) jet fountains at the base of the (worlds tallest)  Burj El Khalifi danced amongst the lights playing on the lagoon.

So….what can you say….is it the last days of disco?  Here in Dubai as the music gets louder and the platform shoes teeter ever higher; elsewhere glaciers shrink into the sea.  And somewhere in between the whole of humanity twitches uneasily.  We shall see but I hear the smart money is selling Dubai this year.  Anyone want an apartment overlooking the mall?

On another note it was such a pleasure to wake up in our hotel room and discover Rob and Ali next door!  They had been so far away (but number one followers of the blog and cheer leaders) then suddenly there they were – all smiles – grandparents in the flesh – our gracious hosts spirited to us over the night.  Of course we knew they were coming but there is a world of difference between plans and the actual fact.  Taran was thrilled, we all are and having the family together on the beach and in the pool and of course at the buffet is just about perfect.  We wont believe this in a few days when the holiday is over and we are struggling amongst the rice paddies trying to be useful in 40C heat!