Dubai to Abu Dhabi to Doha

There is an interesting book about Dubai titled, Dubai: Golden Cage (the author was deported) which nick names Dubai as a “utopia of greed.” On our city tour of Doha (more on that later), we passed a shop that made neon signs with flashing palm trees, and the Nepali tour guide said, “Look: the store is called ‘Dubai Lights’. It’s a great place to get something flashy and tacky.” We didn’t know about this stereotype of Dubai until we got to Abu Dhabi. Evidently, Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, aims for the more upscale tourist trade (is there a down-scale tourist trade in the Gulf?), and they seem to view Dubai as “that city of those merchants in the North”. I recently read a newspaper article that complained about the “ghost buildings” on the skyline in Dubai. These are the skyscapers that have been abandoned as hollow hulks due to the economic crash.

It would seem that Abu Dhabi feels a bit superior about all this. They still have money, and they bailed Dubai out. They have cooler tourists, and they have more palm trees, so there. Evidently it costs 10 Dirham per day to keep a palm tree alive. There are lots of palm trees, so the greenery of Abu Dahbi is a little expensive. In Abu Dhabi, we attended both formal and informal events. Some were faintly challenging and some were intriguing. It was a more walkable city, certainly, in that we could walk a little more to get places, but still it was very focused on big cars. Big Cars. Cars that can jump curbs to get out of bad traffic. We had one taxi driver who managed to get us back to our hotel really quickly because he left the traffic jammed main road and drove through parking lots to get around it. He was a person from South Asia, and he had to make a quota of 350 Dirham before he could quit; he said that traffic was so bad that he often had to work 12-15 hours for a shift to make that quota.



The challenging aspect was the "Dune Bashing" event. I have such sensitive environmental feelings that the very name made me nervous. One should never bash anything on purpose, for one thing, aside from, maybe, trashcan lids if you want a really large noise. But a dune? What did a dune ever do to me? I got into the four wheel drive Big Car with minor trepidation that was well rewarded. We zoomed out at top speed right off the highway, over the burm, and into the desert. We drove with wild acceleration up the sides of dunes, slid down them (brakes on for a proper skid), and zoomed back up and over the lip of the next dune. There was no effort to stay together or on the same track. My sister, Mary, and I have always been VERY sensitive about going "off piste" and here were 35 (at least) SUVs driving higgled piggledy over the dunes and desert grasses. We arrived at a reconstruction of an imagined "sheikhs compound" in the desert. There were tasty shwarma sandwiches, mint tea and coffee. There were pink (?) ATVs that one could ride around over the dunes and desert grasses, and these were much in demand. There were three camels dressed in tassels and wearing crocheted muzzles. They had deep, dark, long lashed eyes, and they burbled like cheery wookies. They were also wearing, under their pretty embroidered head gear, chain link halters that had rubbed much of the hair off their noses. As a member of our Team, I hopped up for the Camel Ride. As my camel rose like a mountain lurching into motion. As soon as the first one was up, the next two rose without urging to walk slowly around in the little circle of their employment, closely head to flank in a little herd. It was quite companionable. I must say, despite being anxious about the quality of their working environment, I enjoyed my camel ride. Perhaps the nadir of the experience was the bellydancer who was "not from around here". She did a good job of entertaining tourists, by shaking her tatas in their faces, but she did not cultivate the artistic merits of the art form.

In stark contrast to this touristic dream of an Arabian night, we had brunch with the Sheikha in her palace surrounded by paintings in the orientalism style and fine French antiques. In equally stark contrast, we visited a night club in Abu Dhabi full of beautiful people too cool to dance to the sternum thumping trance music. I had a strawberry martini for 10 dollars. The smoke hurt my throat.

When we left Abu Dhabi, several of us had to buy another suitcase so that we could carry the material largesse lavished up on us during all of our visits.