Naoufel

Dubai, UAE

Well, I am kind of running late on this. My Dubai trip happen couple weeks ago but still want you to get some insight about my experience there. I spent one week most of if was in the hotel having meetings but I had the chance to stay there couple days after the meetings and I get to discover Dubai. My first impression was, did I really left New York, I spent about 24 hours to flight there but it doesn't feel different. But the heat, the humidity, the people made it different. After a long day of meeting we decided to go out and have dinner somewhere one of the option was going to Madinat Jumeirah ( see picture above). As you might know Dubai doesn't really have a public transportation or let see it is almost inexistent. We wanted to order a cab from the hotel and the guy goes "Sir, there is no Taxis at this time" it was 8pm. We went on the road and try to catch one; it took us a while to get one. Heading to Madinat Jumeirah, it is a souk (Market). If you are familiar what a souk means, I am sure you will have the same thoughts I had at that time. We get front of it and I am totally surprise the see such a beautiful place, I was thinking, is that really a souk, you gotta be kidding me; this looks like a mall to me. It is a great place to be, restaurant by the water, people smoking shisha and enjoying the nice weather.
After the meetings, I stayed at the AIESEC house, I think this is the great things being an AIESECer is you don’t have to worry about where to stay or how much it costs; you always have a home somewhere. I was wondering what to do; and I can figure out the best things to do is to go to malls. I went to the Mall of Emirat is the one with the skiing court and Mall of Ibn Battouta is divided to different sections that represent a culture so you got Chinese, Indian, Persian, Tunisian and Andalucía. Let me tell you there are the biggest malls I ever being in, huge, crowded and a lot of shopping going on.
One of the things that made those couple days great was meeting some old Moroccan friends smoking shisha by the water and enjoying the warm weather.
I want to save this to the end but one of the things I was always dreaming of doing was to go to Burg Al Arab and we actually managed to have a dinner down there. It is a gorgeous hotel with yami food and great view from the swimming pool restaurant. The bar was on the 27th floor and you get pretty awesome view on Dubai.

posted by Naoufel @ 4:38 PM