Dubai

Figure this out. If I flew Emirates air from Ft. Kochin via Dubai and on to Toronto the one-way fare as less than $900. But if I just flew Dubai > Toronto, it was more than $1100. I wondered it if was an error of some sort, so when I got home I looked at business class to see what happened. Business class (on the new A380) Dubai > Toronto is over $7000. But if one flies from Kochin via Dubia it is less than $5000. I don't know why that happens.
I have a Nepali friend who works at the Fairmont hotel in Dubai. I was anxious to see him as the last time I saw him was eight years ago in Kathmandu. It happened that I was going into Dubai on the weekend of the big airshow - an airshow to sell military and civilian aircraft being held at the airport. Strangely, all flights were delayed two days in advance as they closed Dubai airport two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon to hold practices. This is insane as it is a very large aiport with most flights coming in vast distances.
Emirates has built a new terminal there mainly for the A380s and it is large beyond all airports you have ever seen. When I lined up at immigration, there were 60 desks of clerks and most of them were occupied.
I think that Emirates air might become a vicitim of the financial crisis in Dubai. They have on order so many huge A380s and other large aircraft that I wonder where they will get the credit to pay for them. I read in the news that already there is talk of Abu Dhabi taking over the airline to preserve it.
My friend in Dubai said "We don't know whether you will like it here as it is all hotels, malls and office space in the desert." He was right. When you see photos of all those buildings in Dubai, you cannot tell than more than half are incomplete. They are overbuilding so rapidly that the NY Times said that in two years half of all office space in Dubai will be empty. It could be worse than that.
That tallest building in the world is scheduled to open in early January. The word around town is that 600 men have died already building it. They had trouble with it as the scaffolding collapsed a lot. There are a lot of sharp curves in the glass and metal sheathing which makes them heavier than normal and hard to handle. The hot sunlight on the materials and men plus the wind made everything harded to deal with than usual.
The City is spread out like LA and traffic is really slow. People who do not have cars take taxis, which are not cheap. The new subways are just being completed in some cases, and just being started in others. There are separate cars for men and women, altho women can also ride in mixed cars if they wish.
One of the places I wanted to see what the Raffles hotel which is built in the shape of a pyramid. I saw only a few photos in the western media when it opened and none of them did justice to the beauty of the structure and area. It is rather a Las Vegas (only better quality) styled concept of Egyptian structures, statues and symbols with a mall attached. The interior of the hotel has more design involved than almost any building I have ever seen. Just the inlaid marble floor must have taken a team of designers a year to figure out.
Probably because the airshow was on, the hotel was busy, but all high end hotels in Dubai have been nearly empty for a year or more. Most telling was the bar in the apex of the pyramid being closed. Every travel publication in the world crowed about the beauty and popularity of that wonderful bar at the tip of the hotel. But they didn't even try to re-open it for all the big shots at the airshow, so I think business was really bad. My Nepali friend had worked there when it first opened and his friends still there admitted that things had been slow, and many people had been laid off.
He had also worked at a Four Seasons Golf Course before and after it opened. Four Seasons owned the huge piece of (desert sand) land, and intended to open a large hotel there. But they 1st wanted to create the ultimate golf course, plus clubhouse and then build the hotel. They built the golf course and clubhouse in one of the most opulent ways imaginable, but then decided against the hotel. Intercontinental took it all over recently. But because Four Seasons is a Toronto company with Toronto interior designers, a lot of tables and stands in the restaurants are made of vertical sawn maple trees. Some of the tables are 16' feet long x about 3-4' wide and a slab of the tree was sliced vertically instead of the usual horizontal manner, then sanded smooth (although the bark is still on some/most edges) and varnished. The podium that guests approach to accept their reservation at the front is an entire tree trunk standing vertically and hollowed out at the rear for the attendant to stand in. The employees really love all of these things, and they are handsome in themselves, but seem wildly out of place and almost tacky in these surroundings and in a desert in the Mideast.
I asked Lalit how the club was doing in rough times and he said that a manager told him that the membership and fees were so immense that if they only had 120 members, they would be profitable. I believe it was something like $200,000 to join and $50,000 a year. He said that when he was there, management was entirely happy with the results.
One of the great surprises to me was the Dhows. I had been interested in these wooden ships that plied the gulf for years. But I had no idea they are the workhorses of the Middle east. I walked into one harbour to have a look. They were really suspicious as I was the only white guy there and had a camera and was asking too many questions. But it was fascinating. At one place, there must have been 30 forty foot and 28' containers that had come off ships and were transferring their cargo to dhows. There were dozens of five and ten ton trucks dropping hundreds of tons on freight on the docks for probably 200 ships being loaded. One of the biggest trucks was loaded only with California almonds. For some reason, California almonds were being promoted in China, Thailand and India. I asked where in the world does all of this go? They said some to Oman, Yemen, but 85% goes to Iran. I take this to mean that the blockade on Iran is penetrated by trans-shipment through Dubai, and I did read that there is some tension between Washington - controller of the planet Earth - and Dubai over it commercial relations with Iran.
The funniest item outgoing was junk cars. On one dock there was a guy haggling over the prices of burned out and damaged vehicles. I learned that he was hauling them to Turkmentistan because spare parts in places like that are hard to get and getch a huge price.
I took a night tour to the desert as I wanted to see the stars. I only saw Venus and Pluto and one guy there said he lived in Dubai three years and had never seen any stars as the pollution is so bad. The desert trip was silly, but now I know that and do not have to do it again.
I cannot imagine (non-Arab)people so vacant-minded that they would go to Dubai for a holiday. But there is a lot of hype about Dubai and I guess the shoppers love to go to the souks for gild, silver and jewels.