In to the heat

Flying into Dubai the place looked exactly the same as 6 weeks ago. The brown land has been parched so much by the harsh sun it is almost white.

So we'll go with a grey colour which the whole landscape seems to compromise of. Even the buildings. It's extraordinary that mankind is prevailing in this climate. Even thriving to an amazing extent. How this is being achieved is currently a mystery. Obviously there is heaps of electricity required and there has to be fresh water. No idea where these come from. What we can see is buildings rising up out of the ground and reaching into the sky at a furious pace. There is a cloud of low lying mist laying all over the land. Obscuring clarity it has the same brown tinge as everything else. Immediate thought was this is pollution, however once you feel the heat and breathe the humidity it becomes apparent that this may be natural. We spent the day in a kind of foggy haze ourselves due to the lack of sleep and the need to keep moving. The cultural differences are apparent everywhere. First up was when exiting from the airport we were confronted with women taxi drivers. All wearing the traditional garb including head dress. Picture that. Women taxi drivers. They were not prevalent elsewhere but certainly have the airport market sown up. A 20 minute journey to our hotel and we arrived in the heat and chaos to find our room not ready (expected) and so we eventually found some change rooms upstairs to enable a refresh, change of clothes before braving the heat and the metro to get to the next destination. There's always a destination. This was a big one. The metro has a curious system of gender separation with women up the front bit and males packing out the rest. Assuming this is in order to protect the gals it's an interesting insight and sad indictment on the males in society here that these lengths need to be taken. This trip was negotiated easily thanks to the kind help of a stranger who talked us through the process on our way.

Experiencing the scale of what they have achieved here we walked through a raised air-conditioned tunnel to the Dubai Mall where we successfully found our way to (even though the signage was really poor) to the Burj Khalifa. Coffee was a necessity before entering the extensive maze of crowd control which was obviously set up to cater for the huge queues they get here. Luckily for us we went straight through all of these (as there were only a few people there) and caught the lifts up to the 124th story of the worlds tallest building. Basically this failed to impress. Sure it's high up but with the views obscured by the mist we could only see nearby landmarks, cityscapes and just make out the coastline. There was an army of photography vultures pouncing on people to take thier pictures and superimpose them on clear photos of the view.

Souvenir stalls abounding as we saw some ridiculously inane hanging swings which were obviously designed to simply ammuse those that cant get close to the windows. Basically it a tourist trap. And a really big one. Thank goodness we didn't spend the extra to go right up and also not having to suffer the normal queues and crushes.

Lunch was a yummy pizza and salad in a (very empty) combined supermarket/restaurant in the mall before we headed off on the next destination. On the way we got well distracted by the waterfall which is truly spectacular. A cab ride out to the Outlet Market to meet up with non-blogger work colleague.

It was a dry journey out there and we discovered an parallel to DFO which was much bigger, less populated and not any real cheap goods when compared to back home. So whilst an interesting experience it will not go down as a highlight. The taxi ride back was over the same roads but we did see some camels in the distance and the Burj Khalifa looms over the skyline like an evil spire described in a fantasy story.

Finally back in our room we tried to catch lost Z's for a couple of hours. Deciding to eat in the hotel restaurant was a good idea as the cost and food were OK and we didn't have to suffer the heat. Thinking we'd done the wrong thing the place was empty when started but they swarmed in later which explained why all that food was sitting idly in the buffet. Back to the room to enjoy the view of the concrete wall out the window. Apparently the hotel has good views of the city. But not for us plebby Aussies. So we watched TV whist getting ready for more catching zeds.