David Hopps
There it was. After hours spent looking for a sense of direction in Dubai’s luxurious shopping malls, the perfect gift suddenly loomed into view. It is not often that I have ever felt in need of a corporate stress chair but in Dubai, playground of the moneyed classes, the thought of diving in to it was the stuff of fantasy.
The corporate stress chair was a plump, flesh-coloured monster into which any fatigued and despairing executive would gladly slump. It had flat arms on which to rest the corporate mobile phone and a copious centre for the executive bottom. Remarkably, there was no queue. In Dubai, one of the fastest-growing holiday destinations around, the corporate mind was far more de-stressed than mine.
On the first night, in the lift of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel – adored by pampered executives worldwide and boasting more bars and restaurants than a decent-sized English town – a flushed fortysomething English businessman briefly switched his attention from his glamorous acquaintance to deliver the most commonly-heard speech in town. “They used to think we were suffering here,” he said. “They’d all say, ‘Dubai! Bad luck!’ Now they’re catching on to what a ball we’re having. It’s getting worrying.”
I think he saw through my clumsy nod of agreement, because he looked at me as if I was from a different world. He had immediately sussed that I had no idea that the Boardwalk at the Dubai Creek Yacht Club was currently the place to chill out in town, or that Trader Vic’s was the best venue for exotic drinks. That advice, by the way, might already be out of date. In Dubai, everybody strives to be fashionable. Places are full one week, empty the next; the new gimmick never far away.
Here, on the edge of the Arabian sea, business and recreation mingle, guilt free. The time will soon arrive in this strange, sophisticated world of business leisure when beach sun loungers come with their own fax machine, and video- conferencing facilities will be attached to every hotel exercise bike.
Dubai is a vast monument to wealth, each new building trying to outdo the rest. The destination that likes to bill itself as entirely 21st century has pretty much missed out on every other century along the way. Take a poor desert fishing community, add the sudden discovery of huge oil reserves and, within half a century or so, the result is a breeding ground for all the joys that modern technology can offer. Dubai has been called a modern slave society, but the Europeans and Asians who swell the 70,000 Arab population to 10 times that figure, and happily accept limited rights, are slaves only to money.
“Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only,” said American naturalist Henry Thoreau. Nonsense, they will tell you in Dubai. Why, it can buy you an R9 Chronograph or luggage so expensive it will not even look at another suitcase on the carousel without a prior introduction. It allows you to adorn yourself with “Claudia Schiffer’s favourite jewellery” and it can make you an expert on the window functions of the latest digital camera. All de rigueur, naturally, and never more so than during the annual shopping festival in March.
All I had bought in this commercial wonderland was six music cassettes for a total of 18, and my illegal taxi driver, Rajan, had fared little better, disappearing for a while in search of some genuine-fake Calvin Klein jeans and returning with the complaint that “they don’t fake them like they used to”. Then I thought, to hell with it, why not wallow in it all? So I did.
There are plush hotels and plush hotels. But no hotel can be as blatantly, ostentatiously and stupendously wealthy as the Burj Al Arab. Opened late last year and shaped like a giant sail, it sits 280m out to sea, across from the Jumeirah Beach Hotel. And it changes colour at night. Even for the most hardened cynic, it took the breath away. It is wealth as pornography: everything flaunted, nothing to discover.
The Burj Al Arab likes to be known as the tallest hotel in the world. There are official figures for the amount of gold leaf used in its construction. There can be no more stunning atrium in the world. The gymnasium pool is so luxurious that swimmers must pile on the pounds with every length. If you thought an Emirates flight was about as comfortable as it gets, guests at the Burj Al Arab are invited to complete their journey by Rolls-Royce, helicopter or boat. But the most frivolous trip of all is that made to the Al Mahara seafood restaurant: you reach it by a simulated three-minute submarine trip. Is there any more nonsensical job in the world than that of Hemake, the captain of an imaginary submarine?
With wealth, however, comes uncertainty. When the doorbell rings in your $1 000-a- night suite, a widescreen, interactive TV automatically projects the image of the caller on to the screen. The facility has yet to be invented where any unwelcome visitors are automatically fed to the sharks in the restaurant aquarium, but it is only a matter of time.
There are plenty of attractions in and around Dubai, other than lolling in hotel luxury, even if a group of dubious Russian businessmen reputedly had travelled no further than the Burj Al Arab pool table since the hotel opened. The bird sanctuary at Khor Dubai, a few minutes’ drive from the World Trade Centre, and housing flocks of once-hunted giant flamingos, offers a nice contrast.Water sports abound and, presumably, if the coral ever disappears, the emirate will simply tip tons of priceless gems on the seabed and let the snorkellers gaze upon them instead. There are two championship-standard golf courses, which, in an emirate blessed with a maximum of five days’ rain a year, makes one wonder about sustainable resources; shooting ranges; go-karting; ice skating; and race meetings. As for top international sporting events, Dubai has little difficulty buying them in.
But if you yearn for a sense of history, forget it. In the Wafi shopping mall one evening, where the wealthiest Arabs often congregate, Pinky Handicrafts, of Sharjah, held a display of imported Indian antique furniture. One Arab sheltered behind an ancient cabinet, murmuring into the latest flip-top mobile. It was an uncommon connection of old and new. I often wondered if I was the only person in Dubai without a mobile. They went off incessantly. To be sure of completing a conversation without the interruption of Arabian bird song, it was advisable to phone, even if the person you wished to speak to was directly in front of you.
The desert safari is the obvious place to find refuge, although even in the desert the mobiles ring. When they are silent, to join a line of Land Cruisers journeying slowly across the desert mounds is to share in a restful and strangely synchronised procession. Ibrahim, our one-handed driver – well, you never know when the next call is coming – was prevented from picking up speed by one back-seat passenger whose face changed colour along with the desert sands. Eventually came an unwitting contribution to the greening of the desert. They tend to give the credit for the straggly bushes that have reappeared in recent years to the fertilising properties of camel dung, but I reckon it’s a positive offshoot of tourism myself.
In this land of corporate relaxation, a spot of communal sushi smoking in a desert encampment, and a few hoary old yarns, still seemed as good a choice as any to decide that Dubai might be a pretty good place after all. I introduced a Finnish couple to one of the drivers. “Ah, Finland,” he said proudly, pointing to his waist strap. “Nokia!”
Places to go
Shopping
The Gold Souk: Dubai’s most famous market, with prices largely determined by weight.
Deira Towers shopping mall: The carpet souk offers 40 shops.
The Wafi Centre: Luxury goods.
The Green Art Gallery: Villa 23, Street 51, between Al Wasi Road and Beach Road.
Karama: Bargain shopping. Half-price Reeboks from the only man in town without a business card.
Places to enjoy
The Boardwalk Caf: Dubai Creek Golf and Yacht Club. Attractive outdoor location.
Ruan Thai: The Pyramids.
La Parilla Argentinian restaurant on the 25th floor of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel. For the steak eater in you.
Irish Village: Aviation Club. Live music and relaxed surroundings.
Planetarium night club: Wafi Centre.