DUBAI
ИЗ “ЕДНО ПО-РАЗЛИЧНО ПЪТУВАНЕ: НЕПАЛ”
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What it feels like to be scammed in the vast cosmopolitan Dubai and how your preconceptions of it crumble from the very ground beneath your feet upon landing there, you will find out in the following travel guide to Dubai.
The entire Nepalese journey began with the purchase of flight tickets. We gathered a group of four people – myself, Simeon, and two other girls. To tell the truth, I was the last one to buy my ticket. The other three managed to take advantage of a super bargain offer for flight tickets from Sofia to Kathmandu for 270 euros with Flydubai. However, I bought my ticket three weeks before the trip and it was much more expensive. I don't even want to write down exactly how much 🙂
After missing a number of sights, among them the Dead Sea in Israel due to lack of organization and prior information gathering, this trip to Nepal will be the second one where I will try not to organize everything down to the last detail. This aspect of the trip will be a big challenge personally for me. I am someone who likes to plan what and when will be done, how much it will cost, and how to get to certain places and sights. Whether the experiment with Unplanning was successful you will find out later in my travel guide to Dubai and the subsequent series of travel guides to Nepal.
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Our luggage consisted only of plane tickets, a reservation for the first 3 nights and a sheet with the main attractions and what else we could do there. The main idea of the four of us was to go there and see what the atmosphere is like, what the people are like and only then decide exactly what we feel like doing. Only the overnight stays were organized and booked through booking.com. Everything else we wanted to decide on the spot. What I knew for sure was that I also wanted a few days in the capital Kathmandu, a few days in Pokhara and a few days trekking in the Himalayas.
And so, on the first day we had a Flydubai flight from Sofia to Dubai, where we were going to have a 17-hour stopover. According to the schedule, our flight was supposed to depart at 14:20 and land in Dubai at 21:30. We had previously booked an apartment where we could sleep if we even had any time left for sleeping. This was my first visit to Dubai and I was looking forward to seeing it.
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Our flight, however, was delayed by 40 minutes at takeoff, but to make up for it the pilot caught up and we arrived in Dubai with only a 5-minute delay.
Flydubai is considered a low-cost airline and does not offer free food on board. I also noticed that there was very low control in the airline – at the airport, when boarding the plane, and inside the plane itself.
Here is part of the incredible views through the airplane window:
The plane on the way to Dubai was half empty.
We arrived in Dubai around 21:30 local time. We got off the plane and oh, surprise! It was cold outside! Something completely unexpected for us. How can it be cold in Dubai?! We passed passport control and left the airport. We had to find a way to get to the apartment.
A big problem turned out to be that we had landed at Terminal 2 of the Dubai International Airport. The airport is located right in the city, but the problem came from the fact that Terminal 1 and Terminal 3 were located at one end, where the metro passes, and there were also many buses and trams to connect with the city, while Terminal 2 was on the other side of the airport and was completely isolated from the rest of the city.
The transport network in Dubai can be used via prepaid cards, into which you load the amount you want to travel for. The card (plastic) costs about 7 dirhams. Tickets are paid for separately, costing 3 dirhams if you travel within one zone, 5 dirhams if you travel to a neighboring zone, and 7.50 dirhams if you travel to other zones. One of the girls had previously found such cards and now we just had to top them up.
We asked at the airport where we could top up our cards and were told there was nowhere to do so. Later we found out we had been lied to. That was Lie No. 1. We had to take a taxi from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 and from there take the metro to the apartment. We had agreed with the taxi driver on 40-50 dirhams, but of course, he took a more roundabout route and in the end asked us for 61 dirhams. Throughout the ride, the driver complained about why we were making this whole detour instead of taking us straight to the apartment for 140 dirhams. We arrived at Terminal 1, where we topped up our cards with 30 dirhams inside and got on the metro. We went to the very last carriage from where we could observe where the train passes, and it passed right in the middle of the tallest and most famous buildings in Dubai.
We got off at the station and started looking for where our apartment was. For an hour, we asked the receptionists of the various towers whether our host was there, and for an hour we wandered from the first tower to the second, into the third, back to the first, the second, and so on until finally the host managed to find us.
The apartment was hostel-type and had 2 bedrooms with two bunk beds each. The mattresses were extremely hard, and I couldn't blink an eye all night. We also had a kitchen, living room, and 2 bathrooms and toilets. We left our luggage and asked the host how we could get to the Dubai Marina. He said that today the metro was working until 11:00 PM. That was Lie No. 2. Instead, we could take the tram, which operated until 1:30 at night. Lie No. 3. Since we were tired from the flight, we sat down first to grab a bite at a nearby establishment that didn't look very nice on the outside, but offered very tasty food. Everything we ordered and were served was very delicious. Of course, in the end, they had charged different prices than the ones we ordered...
And as we were having dinner around 11:30 PM - 12:00 AM, we saw the metro moving back and forth on the tracks, which were located very close to us. We decided that we would go by metro, which is also the fastest way to get around in Dubai. We went to the metro station. It was, in itself, some huge building, and right in front of us they closed and we couldn't catch the metro.
Our tribulations in Dubai didn't end with this. We walked two kilometers to catch the tram, which supposedly worked until 1:30 at night. We reached the station and were told that the last tram for the evening had already passed and they were closing the station. The only option left for us was to take a taxi. Okay. We caught a taxi. He drove us somewhere and said that if we went a little further ahead, we would reach the Marina. The meter showed that we owed him 14 dirhams, but he said that 20 dirhams was his minimum. When we told him to take us closer then for 20 dirhams, he replied that he couldn't go right here, couldn't go left, and generally didn't want to bother. We gave him 20 dirhams and set off in the direction he pointed. Well, it wasn't as close as he made it seem. So we were cheated for the fourth time in 3 hours!
We arrived at the Marina. It is a place with a lot of water, maybe a deep bay, along which there are numerous skyscrapers and nice little restaurants and walking alleys.
After all the obstacles and adventures this evening, we were too tired to enjoy the Marina. We walked around just enough to get a vague idea.
From there, back by taxi to the apartment. This time the driver turned on his navigation to make sure he wouldn't take some roundabout route, and overall he looked very decent compared to all the other people we had access to this evening. Unfortunately, he accidentally missed the turnoff to our hotel and had to make a detour, for which detour we, of course, had to pay afterwards.
After four hours of "sleep" in a hostel setting, an atmosphere that I do not recommend in any way to families with children... we got up and got ready for more adventures in world-famous Dubai.
Dubai is one of the 7 emirates in the UAE – the United Arab Emirates. This morning started out perfectly from a logistical point of view 🙂 We caught the bus to Jumeirah without any problems. Along the way, we passed through a huge wide boulevard with 6-7 lanes in each direction. At sunrise, the view was impressive.
Jumeirah is a replica of an antique Arab city or rather like Venice, but in an Arabic version 🙂 There are water canals that can be crossed by boat, as well as many restaurants and bazaars. Also, within Jumeirah there are many hotels and restricted access zones. Therefore, our walk there was quite limited and short.
Nearby is also the world-famous hotel – Burj Al Arab. It is the only 7-star hotel in the world and features its own helipad located at a height of 211 m, as well as 2 infinity pools and an underwater restaurant. There are no rooms in the hotel – only suites. There are 202 in total, with the smallest one (although that word is hardly appropriate) having an area of 170 sq. m, and the largest one – 780 sq. m. All of them are on two levels, and the higher up they are located, the more luxurious they are.
Each apartment has a butler who takes care of satisfying even the smallest whims of the guests. The cheapest overnight stay comes to about 1,000 US dollars, and if you want to stay in the royal suite, you will have to pay the mind-boggling 28,000 US dollars per night.
An interesting fact shared with us by one of the girls was that if a person stands on the artificial palm in Jumeirah and looks towards Burj Al Arab, they would see a cross. Therefore, the Sheikh of Dubai explicitly forbade people from taking photos from this vantage point, because the builders and architects had inadvertently included a Christian symbol during the construction of the famous sail-shaped hotel.
The next attraction was Burj Khalifa – the tallest building in the world – a whopping 829 m! We set off to look for a station that turned out to be completely missing in reality. We had to walk all the way to the metro to get to Burj Khalifa. The story of Burj Khalifa is that when they started building the building, the Sheikh of Dubai ran out of money. Therefore, the Sheikh of the neighboring emirate decided to provide money to complete the construction of the Tower. That is why the tower bears the name Khalifa, which is the name of the Sheikh of the neighboring emirate.
The distances in Dubai are unexpectedly huge. An example of this is the metro station near Burj Khalifa. From the metro station, it is still about two kilometers to the Burj Khalifa itself. The path to the Tower passed through the Dubai Mall. This is the largest mall I have been to and the 21st largest mall in the world. In it, besides the huge abundance of clothing, shoe, and tech stores, you can discover a waterfall, an aquarium, and a gold alley. From the Dubai Mall, you exit to the fountains, which are located directly beneath Burj Khalifa and are one of the main attractions in Dubai with their evening music and light show.
This morning the temperatures were low again. It was genuinely cold! But lo and behold, by lunchtime it became clear that the desert is right next to us.
We took pictures with the tallest building in the world and headed towards the Old Town. We are the kind of travelers who are not as impressed by luxury as we are by the authentic atmosphere of a place – the locals, culture, traditions. We wanted to see not only the starry and luxurious part of Dubai. We wanted to see how the locals continue to live in the old town. According to one of the girls we were traveling with who had already visited Dubai, it was a good idea to get off at Deira station and from there we would see what we were looking for. Unfortunately, as soon as we exited the metro station, we found ourselves surrounded again by many malls and shopping centers, and there was no trace of anything more authentic. It is possible that it was there, just behind the first, behind the second, and all the way behind the third mall, but we simply didn't have the time and energy to walk around that much.
It was already time to head towards Terminal 2 of the airport. We asked people around and figured out that we could take the green line of the metro and get off at the station named Airport Free Zone and from there walk to the metro. That is what we did, except it turned out that from the metro station to Terminal 2 there was about another hour of walking.
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Two things we will remember Dubai by, and which I never expected, are the huge distances between the various places. We were not mentally prepared for such a huge cosmopolitan city like Dubai, where people of all nationalities live – Thais, Pakistanis, Chinese...
The second thing we will remember Dubai by is their Arabic mentality of always trying to rip off and lie to the tourist. It might just be that we happened to run into such people, but really, without exaggerating, 100% of the information the locals gave us regarding logistical matters mainly, but not only, turned out to be wrong or incomplete. It is true that Dubai develops by the minute and for some things it is possible that the locals are not yet informed, but for most things the people of Dubai lied to us like pros. Not a single little thing turned out to be true. We started doubting every word they told us, and rightfully so.