Dubai Notes
Normally I would've taken a week writing multiple posts about my recent holiday, but felt lazy and decided to compress it all into one post.
We spent four days last week in Dubai for a year-end family holiday. The choice of location had less to do with us wanting to go to Dubai, and more to do with going to a place that was just one flight away. Given that we have a fairly raucous 2-year-old, we couldn’t afford any longer travel.
We had been to Singapore last year. We strongly considered Oman, but figured it is not very dissimilar to Jordan where we had been in 2023. So we ended up in Dubai. Here are a few pertinent observations from the trip.
Flying with Billy
This was the first time we were traveling in a flight after Billy had turned two, and what we had not realised is that the design of the aeroplane seatbelt is not conducive to toddlers. Basically, this guy quickly figured out how to open the seatbelt, and he just refused to remain strapped in. This happened both on the onward and return journeys.
It was worse on the return journey because the flight was delayed in pushing back by about half an hour or so, and they had asked us to remain seated for the time. This guy just refused to be seated! Also, for a two-year-old, he seems to have a very restrictive choice of what cartoons he wants to watch. It’s only the stuff on YouTube that he regularly watches, and so he refused to see anything that was there in the flight TV as well, where I think the choice was actually pretty good.
It didn’t help matters that both flights were late in the evening. We took off from Bangalore at 8:20 p.m. in an Emirates flight, and the way back, the flight from Dubai was at 9:35 p.m. This meant that his sleep schedule had gotten disrupted both ways, which made him especially cranky on the flight.
The Kid Tax
Historically, what we have found is that passport control is typically easier when you are travelling with an infant or a child. There have been times at Heathrow, which is notorious for extremely long lines, where we have been waved through a special line just because we were carrying Berry, who was extremely young then. It has happened to us in Bangalore as well where we have been given special treatment and a special line because we have been travelling with infants.
But Dubai seems to have it backward. They have implemented some extremely high-tech stuff at their gates where you use your biometrics to get through the passport control, both on the way in and out.
The problem, though, is that it doesn’t really work well or reliably with kids. So when the immigration officer saw us traveling with a child, they quickly directed us to the manual lines, and that took some 20 minutes. It’s almost like Dubai does things in the exact opposite way to the rest of the world, where passport control is actually faster when you have kids, but here it’s slower when you have kids.
Or is it that when you implement hi-tech solutions, the corner cases still have to be handled manually, and end up getting deprioritised?
Tourism and trust
Based on what my nephew told me after we had returned, there are a LOT of touristy things to do in Dubai, but with a 2-year-old, we ended up skipping most of it (they didn’t even come up in our research). The only touristy thing we did, and which we were really happy about, was this “desert safari”.
Most people do this safari in the evenings, where they are taken out to the desert, made to ride camels, pose for photos with falcons and then go “dune bashing” in 4x4 SUVs This safari is usually followed by a “cultural performance” and dinner.
Both because our kids sleep early, and because we wanted to avoid the faff, we chose a morning safari instead. It was exactly the same, but without any “cultural performances” or food. It was a blast - especially the quad biking, and “dune bashing” (going up and down sand dunes in the 4x4).
We (excluding Billy) had done dune bashing once before, at Wadi Rum in Jordan (sitting in the back of a jeep, unlike being strapped in here), but maybe because we were strapped in here, we seemed to go faster here!
And the end of the dune bashing, we did “sand boarding”, which is to sit on something like a skateboard and just hurtle down a sand dune. The first time round, Berry and I went together, and didn’t do well - midway through, we both collapsed (though falling on sand meant no injuries). Then we tried again individually, and that went much much better!
The whole experience got me thinking - a lot of tourism is dependent on placing blind trust in locals and guides. Here we had been taken deep into the UAE desert (close to the Oman border), having fully trusted our driver-guide. It was similar in Tanzania where we drove some four hours from civilisation to get into our camp in Serengeti. Or even the homestay in Sakleshpur where there was no cellphone signal, and we had been driven a few kilometres deep into the estate by our hosts.
So when people talk about improving tourism, I wonder how much it is about creating trust, and letting tourists blindly trust the locals. Without that it is impossible to have great experiences.
Food and drink
Coffee on the trip followed a barbell distribution. Most of it, drunk at the hotel (room, the “lounge” which our room had entitled us access to, breakfast) and for zero marginal cost, was extremely bad. Highly overroasted espresso from Nespresso or Lavazza machines.
The one time I paid for my coffee, at a shop called “roasters” in Dubai Creek Harbour, it was spectacular. The shop had several exotic beans, to be brewed using V60. And there was a literal “bar” where we could smell the beans before selecting.
I chose the cheapest (Ethiopian Sidama, for AED 40 (~₹1000; $12) ), and it was absolutely spectacular. I had gone to the coffee shop alone, with family at a nearby park, and slowly sipped my coffee over 20 minutes, doing nothing else. It was possibly the most relaxing time of the trip!
On the food front, we ended up eating a variety of cuisines - Iranian, Emirati, Egyptian, Lebanese (shawarma), Filipino, Bosnian (at a mall food court), etc. Most of it was very good. Maybe it was what our hosts ordered for us, but Emirati food seemed extremely similar to Iranian food (hummus, grilled meats, etc.).
Luxury and Option Value
There was a hot jacuzzi in our hotel, adjacent to the swimming pool. On the last day, I wanted to experience it once again before breakfast, and headed there around 7am. There was nobody else there, and I had to ask them to turn on the jacuzzi for me, which they happily did.
While sitting there (my 4 sessions in the jacuzzi, across 3 days, were possibly my second most peaceful time of the trip, after the time in the coffee shop), I was thinking about how “luxury” is basically about option value. In this particular case, it was the option that you could go to the pool any time between 6am and 10pm, and ask for the jacuzzi to be turned on and they would, no questions asked.
Elsewhere, we had booked a premium room (primarily because we booked late, and nothing cheaper was available!), and that gave us access to this “Club Lounge” (conveniently on the same floor), where we could go demand soft drinks any time! It was again this option that we could get drinks when we wanted that made it luxurious (though, as noted above, the coffee wasn’t great; I belted a lot of Coke Zero, though).
Similarly with the breakfast buffet - yes, the wide variety meant people wasted stuff after serving themselves, but the option of foods available made us feel good!
Malls
Can’t write about Dubai without writing about malls. We resisted until the last day, when we chose to go to Dubai Mall in the time between hotel checkout and when we had to head to the airport. This is an absolutely massive mall, with an aquarium and ice skating rink inside.
These “features” and the size apart, this was just like any other mall anywhere else in the world. The same kind of layout, same kind of shops and decor, pretty much the same smells even!
Generally we are not mall people (avoid going there in Bangalore), so found it a bit exhausting and tiring. Interestingly, a lot of people we’ve met after returning have expressed surprise that we “didn’t shop” in Dubai. In our defence, we didn’t find anything worth shopping!
Speaking of which, on our first morning, we visited the famed Souqs (spice souq, gold souq, etc.), and found them rather underwhelming as well (though the food nearby, in the hilariously named Irani restaurant called Bandar Bride, was spectacular)!
Nice to be a second tourist by reading about the city that I've refused to ever visit (it's now just become a thing, so I am sticking on😂).