dubai II

there's lots to do in dubai. you can take a cruise on dubai creek in a traditional dhow, go 4wd-ing in the desert or what is known as wadi-bashing (wadi's are ancient dried up creek beds), watch hawking demonstrations, take dawn balloon rides over the city, take helicopter rides at any time, barter for gold, shop in any number of high-end boutiques, swim, snorkel or dive, snow board or ski at the fake indoor snow centre, enjoy a traditional bedouin dinner under the stars in the desert, get henna tattoos, go camel riding, purchase some of the most expensive real estate in the world, literally- there is a development of man-made islands just off the coast all divided up into the continents and countries of the world for your delectation. i believe the beckhams purchased recently.
there's the water slide park, deep sea fishing, sand boarding to do, or enjoy belly dancing, plus museums, art galleries and mosques to visit and even the humble bus tour to take.

so you see our two days was hardly enough to fit all this in. we were exhausted doing half of it, a quarter of it, a smidge of it... alright we did none of it.
we did none primarily because of percy. which is not to say i resent her or blame her, nothing of the sort. we didn't expect we'd be doing much. the break was really to recuperate from the flight, do some washing and gird our loins for the next bit of flying.

percy is exclusively breast milk fed. and 99% of the time that means on the breast fed. we have brought our expressor and bottles with us but couldn't really use them in dubai. so percy needed me to whip out the boob every time she needed a feed. given the extreme temperatures outside and the extreme air-conditioning inside percy was dehydrating very quickly, she needed feeding every one and half hours. now i don't know about you but i get the distinct impression that breast feeding in public in the islamic monarchy of united arab emirates is possibly a capital offence. i didn't even want to ask. i figure even if they let me off lightly because i'm a stupid foreigner they might still cut my tit off first and ask questions later. meaning every feed we had to skadaddle back to the privacy of our hotel room. with the consequence that all those interesting things we could have indulged in we didn't. they generally took longer than 1.5 hours. plus 4wd-ing with a baby is a stupid idea, balloons specify minimum ages, swimming in that sun is an even stupider idea, etc etc.

never mind, we might get back one day when percy is old enough to look after herself; you know when she's 2 or 3, and give it another go.

we did take a couple of short walks from our hotel early in the morning and one taxi tour of the city. it's an interesting place. i wonder if it will last as the touted cosmopolitan, financial and residential centre of the middle east. i don't know if is taking it's place amongst other great cities as the place to do business. it's certainly unrecognisable from the humble pearl diving village it once was. oil money has ensured some impressive architecture in the new high rise office and apartment buildings that line the roads. oh, speaking of the roads! someone has obviously decided that the car is the only method of transport that people would choose to use and consequently built enormous roads to cater for this traffic. the road outside our hotel was ten lanes wide, five in either direction on the main carriageway, then there are service lanes to provide access to the buildings, these vary between two and three lanes wide on either side as well. so a sixteen lane road lay below our room- no wonder the hermetic seal on the windows did little to dampen the constant traffic hum.

personally i dispair; being a town planner and a bit of a socialist 16 lane roads are anathema to me of good civic design, of inclusive societies, of easy access and public spaces that are welcoming, easy to read and easy to navigate. observation showed that dubai is not particularly interested in public spaces tho. the super designer buildings stopped right with their outer cladding, be that glass or chrome or steel or tile or whatever. the surrounding space was clearly not interesting and of no benefit. which i suppose might be true if your driver delivers you immediately to the front door of whatever monolith you are visiting and the time you spend outside is the grand total of two steps from air conditioned car to air conditioned shop or office.
in the main, where the building stopped, the desert started. there is no attempt made to create gardens or courtyards or any space in the public domain that is obviously inviting and public. which i find rude if nothing else. where does one rest, contemplate, eat, gather, watch, talk, read...?
however, in the opposing argument- who the hell wants to sit outside in 45 degrees? and how do you maintain a garden in like temperatures and windy, dry conditions? still, i believe thoughtful design could create inviting public spaces between the high rises. i cynically think that because you can't rent out the public domain or in some other way attribute money-making to it there's no point in spending money on it in the first place.
gazing out of a high rise window in dubai is a dusty, dry, depressing experience. maybe it will change, maybe the whole experiment will have the ass fall out of it and in ten or twenty years time it will be a monument to unsustainable spending and star gazing. it will make a hell of a slum.