Travel Diary - Middle East 2009

I recently made my way to the sandy shores of the Middle East on our first major trip as a family together. The flight there was going to be 15 hours long so I was quite anxious to see how the little one fared as he had never travelled for this long a journey in a plane before with me. Thankfully, it went relatively alright based on the fact that the customer service was good and he managed to get in some sleep, although we couldn’t get much sleep.

The journey into the Middle East began when we landed in Abu Dhabi, the capital of UAE. I was quite shell shocked when we exited the plane and entered the main lounge. It was full of Indians, I mean literally. It looked like a place where people had been crammed somehow, felt more like a fish market than the tourist destination it had been promised to be. I had experienced Dubai airport before and was expecting something similar, but this was not even close to it. Anyway, we made our way to the immigration and saw that in every single counter there sat an Arab male wearing their traditional dress. It felt kind of weird to see that as coming from Australia it was a little alien to me, seeing people like that.

After collecting our luggage, we made our way out to be greeted by our family member who took us for the ride to Dubai, which is just over an hour’s drive. It was interesting to see the 4-5 lane highways fully lit from end to end. Immediately one could see that there was construction in and around the highway, and this was a sign of things to come as about 25% of all construction cranes of the world are in the UAE.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi used to be fishing

 villages in the past. There was absolutely nothing in these areas but deserts. It is primarily because of oil that these two places have exploded to the thriving cities they are now.  

The Sheikhs of Dubai and Abu Dhabi are very progressive and want the emirates to modernize. Sheikh Mohammad is the ruler of Dubai and Sheikh Zayed is the ruler of Abu Dhabi. One can see the different roads both cities have taken in advancing forward. One example is the greenery, where Abu Dhabi has lots of trees and grass besides the roads, Dubai doesn’t have any. Where Dubai has

 loads of sky scrapers, Abu Dhabi has only a few. Dubai in general is more com

mercial than Abu Dhabi; it has more people and is more business oriented.

We more or less visited all the main attractions in Dubai. Malls are a main attraction there and we visited the newly constructed Dubai Mall, the Mall of the Emirates, Ibn e Batuta Mall to name a few. The Dubai Mall is the largest mall in the world and is built right next to the Burj Dubai and I think holds about 1200 shops, any shop you can think of is basically in there and more to open in the future. It has malls within the malls as well with entire areas dedicated to different things, such as designer wear, jewellery etc.

It also features an indoor aquarium, which has the largest viewing screen in the world and has a massive ice skating rink.

What makes the Mall of the Emirates different from other malls is that it has an indoor ski slope! Ski Dubai is a massive skiing slope for people to enjoy skiing in the middle of the desert.

We also visited some amazing Indian/Pakistani food places. Not hundred percent sure about the names but we had places with amazing chaats, kebab rolls, chicken karahi, faluda etc. it was just a taste of Pakistan/India without being in those places.

The global village was on display during the time we visited. This started with a 3 month display of stalls from all over the world and is like a huge carnival. Based on its popularity, it is now permanently on display for 6 months of the year and plans to move it to a bigger and more permanent location to be displayed for

 the whole year.

The Palm and Atlantis is another site to see as one of the newest attractions there. All built on man made islands, it is just amazing how they’ve pulled this off. You basically have to cross a bridge and go through a tunnel to get there. Its got its own water theme park and of course an aquarium inside. This includes the main attraction the whale shark, which is an endangered species. The way they’ve built the inside is just a fantastic sight to see.

Abu Dhabi has been developing a bit differently to Dubai. Since Dubai has the first mover advantage in terms of inviting people from all over the world to come visit the place, Abu Dhabi had to position itself a bit differently. The Sheikh there is very much into art and culture, as a result a lot of new development is taking

 place in this direction, and examples include the Louvre and the Guggenheim to be opening in Abu Dhabi in the near future. There is more greenery in Abu Dhabi as well although I can’t say much about the traffic – people drive like nuts!

We paid a visit to the Sheikh Zayed mosque, which is being built and is almost finished. It is going to be the 3^rd largest mosque in the world smaller only to the two main mosques in Saudi Arabia. Its quite a unique and grand mosque and is pure white. The domes were very different to what I’ve seen and were an amazing sight to see.

Lots of good ideas, along with good management and implementation of these ideas have made these two cities the way they are now. From the looks of it, they still have the plans to progress even further ahead.

After visiting UAE, Qatar seemed quite small and felt a little less modern. Although in comparison, Qatar is developing like crazy as well. It was just because of the overwhelming pace at which Dubai and Abu Dhabi are developing that made it look the way it did. Qatar has been the fastest growing country in the whole of Middle East in the last year or so.

Main attraction here is the Pearl, which are man made islands like the Palm in Dubai. It is built in a crescent shape and will contain a whole city within; no one would have to leave the Pearl to do anything. Housing, shopping malls, restaurants etc. you name it, everything is going to be in there. Its probably about 20-30% complete, so still a way to go.

The wife of the ruler of Qatar is known for her ideas to develop this place into an educational and cultural hub of the Middle East. Emphasis on education has been so that a lot of internationally renowned universities have opened shop in Doha. Some examples are like, the Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown and Texas A&M. A huge Education city has been built purposely to contain all of these massive universities, along with schools, kindergartens etc.

Museum of Islamic Art has just opened its doors in Qatar which houses some of the best preserved pieces of Art in the Islamic world. It looks like there has been a lot of money spent on the actual architecture of the building.

One interesting thing we noticed in Qatar was that in every main attraction like the Pearl or the museum, there are small golf cart sized buggies that take people from the car park to the main parts of the attraction…is it because of the heat in the summers or people there are just too lazy, I really don’t know. The fact that the ride is only about 20 seconds is quite interesting.

Massive new developments are taking place where an entire mini city is being built on the coast called Lusail City. It will contain everything from resorts, accommodation and commercial stuff and will eventually be the main attractions in Doha. The Pearl is just one small part of this massive development.

It is sure to say that Doha will be a sight to see in a few year’s time when all of these new attractions and developments start seeing the light of day.

It was very interesting and eye opening to see Qatar and the UAE for the first time. Both of these places felt really young and on the go. Construction and development was the key word in everywhere we went. It was a better flight back considering the little one slept most of the time, which helped us in getting some sleep.

All in all, it was a fantastic trip and a memory never to be forgotten.