Cousin John Reports in From Duabi

It's been 28 years since I was last in Dubai. There have been a few changes. For example, it was very common to see the odd camel wandering around close to town. Now, he'd be instant road kill if he tried to cross the 12 lane highway that is the main drag through town. Back then it was a 4 lane highway in the middle of nowhere on your way to Abu Dhabi. You had to watch for camels like folks in New Hampshire watch for errant Moose. Now, the entire length is filled with high rise office buildings and hotels.

My drive to the office starts a little west of old Dubai and the Creek on the 12 lane Sheikh Zayed Road. On my left as I head west is Burg Dubai, the tallest building in the world in the largest mall in the world currently under construction. Off in the hazy distance to my right is Burg Al Arab, the sail shaped hotel on the coast that nobody but an oil sheikh can afford to spend a night in. As I continue on, I pass Dubai Internet City where there is typically a traffic jam due to construction in the area. Just past there on the left is the big aluminum colored tube that is Ski Dubai - an indoor ski slope. My journey ends at the Jebel Ali Free Zone, a duty free zone and port. I end up in a typical construction yard office.

The first thing you notice about Dubai is how clean it is. There is no trash anywhere. There is plenty of dust, but not much trash. The second thing is the traffic. Everyone has a car and while they may have had great civic planners, they somehow neglected to think about hiring a traffic engineer or putting in public transport. They are just now building an elevated public system along Sheikh Zayed Road but it's a year away. And then there's the heat. It's 110 or better everyday. There are no clouds but the sun is obscured by an LA like smog that is really dust from the desert. We are on the edge of what Saudi Arabia calls "The Empty Quarter".

80% of the population of the United Arab emirates are immigrants. All labor is done by foreigners, mostly Indian, Pakistani and Phillipino. There seems to be a caste system where Pakistanis are at the low end and do all the outside construction work. The Indians run the shops and businesses in the air conditioning and the Phillipinos do the hotel service and entertainment. Most of them, especially the laborers, are housed in squat dormatory buildings that would make Stalin gag.

There's lots of constuction work. This place must be a reinforced concrete engineers dream. They seem to operate on a "build it and they will come" philosophy and are aware that they will need more than oil to survive and hence have built a tax free business haven with first class communications and logistics. And if you have nothing better to do, dredge up the sea floor and build a series of offshore housing developments on artificial islands. For good measure, shape them tolook like palm trees or a map of the globe. If you talk to the man on the street (your taxi driver, for example) he will tell you that he can't understand how they are going to fill all the new offices and apartment buildings. It has to reach saturation sometime, and when it does, the real estate market may collapse faster than a Florida condominium in a hurricane.

On the seamier side of things, Duabi is a destination country for human trafficking. It kind of makes you wonder what the real purpose of all those private islands is since the only way to get to them is by boat or air.

Stay tuned.

John