impressions of dubai

on my way to dubai from abu dhabi, i was told that the way to identify the border between abu dhabi and dubai is when the row of trees stop. apparently, in dubai, they do not focus so much on planting trees as they do in abu dhabi... heh heh... if everything about abu dhabi is big, everything about dubai is even bigger! lots of skyscrapers. and of cos, who can miss the burj khalifa, the burj arabia (the one single hotel by the beach that is the icon of dubai - i think it is called this)... i was told abu dhabi is playing catching up to dubai. and given the recent collapse of dubai's economy, abu dhabi is certainly increasing it's momentum and it's a matter of time before abu dhabi catches up.

ok, back to dubai. as i said, everything was big. humongously big. burj khalifa is o-m-f-g tall! from faraway as we were driving towards dubai, we could already see it. and it certainly reminded me of superman's home in the antartica. tall, spiky, shiny, simmering and one helluva beautiful! of cos, we also had the opportunity to shop around in the dubai mall (which again is one helluva huge). and certainly the dubai aquairum was really majestic! the dubai fountain simply blew us off, despite the fact that it was only a 5min performance. we managed to also take a walk at the mall of the emirates (which, of cos, is also huge). and i was amazed by the fact that they actually have a huge dome for snow ski-ing within the mall itself, complete with slides, viewing tower etc. it was superbly huge!

the thing about hotels in dubai (as i noticed) was that they all have their gym and swimming pool located at the hotel roof-top. so from where i did my treadmill, i could see the burj khalifa as well as all the other skyscrapers around me. at the edge of top floor, i looked towards the horizon and could vaguely see the outline of the palm-tree reclaimed land. i do wonder why they need to reclaim so much land and build so many things when the place looked pretty quiet to me...

:-)

ps: i noted that the people in dubai were a lot more cosmopolitan. and i saw something that kinda surprised me. after having come from abu dhabi where also everyone seemed very conservative, i saw a woman (who was also similarly covered up) carrying a baby. the baby cried and the next thing i knew, she removed the piece of cloth covering her chest, took out her breast and started breastfeeding her baby openly. hmmm...