The Landlady: Shop ahoy!
I’m sitting on an A380 Dreamliner on my way back from 5 days in Dubai. After more than 20 years of visiting Dubai, it continues to fascinate me in a love-hate kind of way. In spite of their huge property crash in 2008, the construction craze continues and I for one would hate to have my house up for sale as I can’t imagine who’d buy it. I can absolutely see why many people dislike it – it’s expensive, sexist, unbearably hot in summer and not visually to everyone’s taste. My oh my, that sounds just like several of my ex-boyfriends….
But joke as I might, ever the optimist, I can see the good sides of all the above. Its costliness guarantees that you don’t get a load of cheap package holiday types going there. For example, two rounds of drinks for three in my friend M’s local pub cost over £60. And one of us wasn’t even drinking alcohol. This eliminates a certain type of ‘Brit Abroad’. It’s sexist. Well, even this can have its upside and every female friend I’ve ever visited Dubai with is a fan of the ‘women only’ carriage on the overcrowded metro. No rubbing up against your local perv on this train. Unbearably hot in summer it may be, but it’s the perfect place to visit when it’s freezing cold in the UK winter. If only I didn’t have to leave the heating on for my lodgers. Dubai is undeniably ugly, but not when you’re viewing it from the poolside of a 97-storey ‘abomination’ with a Margarita in your hand.
We went horse riding in the desert
Besides, I like to go there to visit my friends who’ve lived there for over ten years, so get to see another side of Dubai entirely. We went horse riding in the desert, which is an activity I wouldn’t dream of doing in the UK, yet often do in Dubai. Moreover, my friend M has bought a rather flashy speedboat and took us out amongst the mangroves (did you even know Dubai had mangroves?) for the day. Mind you, when I heard some of his previous horror stories about his sailing expeditions, I was almost put off. Near drowning, catching fire and being rescued by the coastguard (for neither the drowning nor the fire, but another incident) didn’t instil the greatest confidence, but we went anyway. Luckily, it was plain sailing, apart from a brief stranding on a sandbar when the tide went out.
