Gaudy, kitsch, tacky all very appropriate descriptions of the excesses of the people who conceived of this city in the desert. Strangely it is also compelling and one finds oneself drawn into the repeated mentions of the Guinness Book of records and how Dubai features so frequently in it. For instance the highest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa also features the highest observation deck, the highest accommodation and the highest library in the world.
Here is the first “7 star hotel” in the world, the Burj al Arab.
The world’s biggest shopping mall, the Dubai Mall the worlds biggest indoor ski fields at the Mall of the Emirates and so it goes on and my eyes glaze over.
There are multiple massive aquariums wrapped around restaurants and hotels and even a shopping centre with an Egyptian antiquities theme with a pyramid, massive Ramses statutes and a delicate little Philae temple.
Apart from the obvious tourist dollar incentive there seems to be an underlying theme from those in power here that they are, in common with the people who built the monuments of Egypt, all about constructing a city that is grandiose and will stand the test of time. They are building a monument to modern civilisation and to themselves in particular, all atop the searing heat and the desolate desert sands.
Remarkably they have established green vegetation on the arid sands and built massive world class sporting facilities so that they have the world’s richest horse race, lucrative tennis tournament and a state of the art F1 circuit in neighbouring Abu Dhabi. Massive skyscrapers dominate the landscape where formerly desert sands supported nomads and Bedouin tents. All of this has basically happened in the last 12 years, less than half a generation and all of it has been built on the obscene wealth generated by a single resource, oil. Black gold which has transformed this tiny peoples living a nomad lifestyle to one where almost obscene displays of wealth are de rigeur.