2 days in Dubai

There are no direct flights from Sri Lanka to Nairobi. So, in the spirit of seeing a variety of places, we decided to have a short stop in Dubai!

Our first stop was the gold souk. Piles and piles of gold were being sold in incredible designs. We inquired about a fairly simple gold chain. It was $2,000. That blew our minds because there were entire shirt fronts of gold for sale. We couldn’t imagine what those would cost. Between the shops, sellers were offering fake designer watches, bags, shoes, you name it.

“Crazy we took a plane to get here. Feels like we took a spaceship,” said Judah. Truly, this was worlds apart from the fishing village turned hip surfer spot where we stayed in Sri Lanka.

At this point in the trip, we are fairly weary of markets. We quickly escaped the souk. Dubai has a creek running through it, with inexpensive boats to take you across. We explored the old town, which had the air of being a Disneyfied movie set.

Our next destination was the world’s largest mall, the Dubai Mall. It took over an hour to get from the train to our destination in the mall. It is truly a huge place. We dropped the kids off for 3 hours of VR games and rides (a 'Ramadan special' meant it was actually somewhat affordable). In the meantime, Aaron and Susanna had a coffee while watching sharks and fish swim by in the world’s largest indoor aquarium.

“I feel like I'm in the middle of a Baraka scene,” said Aaron, after we had been in the mall for hours.

On our second day, we took the kids to the world’s largest waterpark (notice a theme here?). Afterwards we explored the hotel's impressive aquarium. We all had a grand time.

Our hotel was located in Deira, which has mix of fancy and working class. The only things we saw priced for regular people were in this neighbourhood.

Dubai is a weird place. There’s incredible amounts of wealth. All the workers are from other countries. Taxi drivers make so little that they often live 8 or more people in a studio apartment. It gets 50+ degrees celsius in the summer. The government doesn’t ask questions about where your money comes from before you buy land. The drinking water is desalinated sea water, and resulting in piles of salt that needs to be dealt with.

Like Vegas, I’m not sure I need to go back.Baca lagi