I n December, I was invited by Emirates Airlines for a five-day trip to Dubai to promote their daily direct flight from Seattle. For some people, a fifteen-hour air ride would flunk any pain-pleasure test for a long weekend's worth of travel. However, the prospect of escaping email and reading a book without interruption would have been enough for me to take a holiday in Fort McMurray.
This was even before realizing I'd be flying business class. On my Emirates flight, that meant a seat that had a massage setting and reclined to a horizontal sleeping position, three-course meals that included beef tenderloin for dinner and a buttery, flaky croissant for breakfast, and foam mattresses placed on our seats for extra comfort. Enviable though this might be, our view of the private cabins in first class still left room for aspiration.
Like our seats, Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, is a place where new stratospheres of luxury and envy are continually sought. It is the home, for instance, of the world's only "seven star" hotel, Burj Al-Arab; its sailboat-shaped design makes it one of the most recognizable building to its ever expanding skyline.
Once a dusty trading outpost on the Arabian Gulf, the discovery of oil in 1966 combined with aggressively pro-business policies since the 1980s has turned Dubai into an international financial hub. Reports touting the city's gaudy splendors abated in 2008, when the global financial crash imploded the city's real estate market and dampened its conspicuous consumption. Locals now point to rising rents and difficulty getting a cab as signs of a recovery to those old, high-flying days.
As we drove out from the airport, our driver, who was originally from Pakistan, pointed out a Tim Hortons franchise off the highway. The Canadian donut pushers arrived a year earlier and have expanded rapidly in the city. This, and later, the giant Christmas tree and life-size gingerbread house in our hotel lobby, would be my first signs of Dubai's globalized culture.
Only between 10 to 15 percent of Dubai's population is of Arab descent. The rest is drawn from prominent pools of expatriates from south and southeast Asia, Africa, the United Kingdom and Russia, who take advantage of the emirate's high, tax-free wages. Although restrictions against alcohol (to be consumed publicly only in hotels) and immodest dress reflect Islamic custom, everyone seemed proficient in English and the city has the glass-and-steel cultural neutrality of a modern-day airport.
It also became quickly evident that you come to Dubai not for history or culture, but for pampering and gawking. In our five-star (yawn) hotel, Jumeirah Zabeel Sa-ray, built on a man-made archipelago that spreads out on the gulf in the shape of a giant palm tree, we were treated to a Turkish-style hammam massage, in which we were exfoliated and soaped on a marble block. In the evening, we dined al fresco at one of the hotel restaurants, Voi, a French-Vietnamese restaurant where dishes included salad rolls and ginger crème brule.
The next day, we visited Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building at 160 storeys (though its observation deck is only on the 124th floor). At the base of this dagger-shaped structure is, fittingly enough, the world's largest mall, the Dubai Mall. Among outlets for Bloomingdales and H&M, visitors can also enjoy an ice-skating rink and an aquarium tank with a 51-by20-metre glass window. You can see sharks swimming on your way to Caribou Coffee or, better yet, swim with them, for about $240.
Locals suggested a visit to the spice and gold markets (or "souks") for a glimpse of the city's more modest roots. Along two covered thoroughfares, we found shops selling camel-milk chocolates, saffron, rugs, trinkets and gold. The unimaginative obnoxiousness of the many hawkers (I've heard variations of this on at least five continents: "Ni hao. Konichiwa. You're from Canada? Where are you really from?") was enough "authenticity" to make me pine for a Magnolia Bakery cupcake at the mall.
By my final day, I felt acclimated to Dubai's cultural and consumer free-for-all. In short order, I visited a mosque where we learned about Islam from a blonde British expat named Latifah; ate haggis at Alfie's, an English-themed eatery; rode an inner tube down a waterslide at Dubai's water park, Wild Wadi; bought a $250 shirt; saw an old high-school friend who'd moved to Abu Dhabi two years ago and found out I was in town through Facebook; and ate a hundred-dollar wagyu rib-eye at the Rib House, the steak joint at the Jumeirah World Emirates, a 40-storey business hotel in the city centre.
As with Las Vegas, another place of excess, one can leave this city after a short visit without seeing everything but fully content that you've seen enough.
Unlike North America's "sin city," the only vice that's easily seen in Dubai is gluttony.
