Dubai: destination re-branding urgently required - from 'playground of the rich' to the complex compelling place we know it can be

"Dubai has always been seen as a playground for the rich. What is the Dubai tourism authority doing to pull in people with less money?" That was one question among others that came to me Friday via the DK-Rough Guides PR office, as author of DK's Top Ten Dubai and Abu Dhabi guidebook, from a London journalist writing a story on Dubai. Although I suggested he contact Dubai Tourism for comment, I still shared my thoughts. While Dubai Tourism has appeared to focus on marketing Dubai as a luxurious, safe 'sun, sand and shopping' destination, the media, which loves covering the rich and famous and the glitz and glamour, has lapped it. There's no denying Dubai does luxury well (better than many places), but it's always been so much more than simply a lavish destination where you can spoil yourself silly, especially to the people who live in Dubai. When I lived in Al Mankhool, for five days a week my everyday experiences were more centered on Dubai's gritty backstreets (the 'off-the-beaten-track') and the city's heritage, culture and arts. We'd regularly walk to the Creek and Bastakiya, wander through Bur Dubai souq to Shindagha, both for exercise and to shop at the Shindagha supermarket, browse the souqs at Bur Dubai or across the Creek at Deira, or see a traditional performance at the Heritage and Diving Village. We'd frequently stroll along the Creek and through the parks, especially Al Seef Road and Za'abeel Park. We'd attend opening nights at galleries like The Third Line and B21, and we'd go to events like the Dubai International Film Festival. Occasionally we'd do very 'local' things like watch the camel training or even go falconing with some of the local guys. It was only on weekends when we'd go out with friends for drinks, dinner and a dance, at the bars, restaurants and clubs in the five-star hotels that we'd experience 'luxury Dubai'. But our Dubai, the Dubai most locals and many expats (not all) experience, is the one I've always tried to promote through our guidebooks and writing like our Insider's Guide to Dubai. But while Dubai for us is a set of complex experiences and representations, for much of the global media and potential tourists (as I'm reminded everyday) it's nothing but a luxury destination. It's time Dubai Tourism gets serious about re-branding Dubai and telling the world about the things its residents love about the place. Don't you think?

Dubai on a budget: the best things in life are free

So what do budget travellers do in Dubai? There’s lots of fabulous stuff to do that is free or costs next to nothing. Your biggest costs are going to be hotels, transport and food: see this post for ideas on keeping those down. After that, Dubai’s your oyster:
1) Dubai’s museums – Dubai boasts a number of fascinating but compact museums that take no more than an hour or so to see yet offer an extraordinary insight into the way of life in pre-oil days. Most museums are either free or cost a dirham (30 cents) or three (one dollar). Dubai Museum in Al Fahidi Fort, near the Bur Dubai waterfront is the best, providing a great introduction to Dubai’s rapid development through a multimedia presentation and engaging displays of musical instruments, coins, firearms, costumes, and jewellery, a rather whimsical and very kitsch life-size diorama of an old souq, and a small but superb archaeological exhibition. Also, don’t miss the lovely Heritage House, a restored pearling master's residence, and Al Ahmadiya School, Dubai’s first, near the Gold Souq in Deira.
2) Bastakiya – this tiny old labyrinthine quarter on the waterfront near Dubai Museum boasts breezy narrow lanes that are home to traditional Persian merchants' houses that have been restored and in some cases reconstructed; the area was ramshackle and almost lost until it was decided it should be rejuvenated in the late 90s. The buildings are now home to charming boutique hotels, superb art galleries such as XVA and Majlis Gallery, and atmospheric cafes such as the enchanting Basta Art Café. Try the refreshing Basta Special, a thirst-quenching fresh mint and lime juice drink.
3) Dubai Creek and Dhow Wharves – it costs nothing to wander along the waterfront of Dubai’s buzzy Creek. From the Bastikya, stroll through Al Seef Road Park for spectacular views of the Deira skyline opposite, with its stunning architecture. We never tire of the reflections in the glass buildings of the shimmering water and dhows (old wooden trading boats) and abras (small wooden water taxis) cruising along the Creek. In the opposite direction, wander through the wooden arcades of lively Bur Dubai textile souq, and then take an abra (1dh/30 cents) across the Creek to Deira to saunter along the dhow wharves and check out the amazing stuff they load and unload from the boats – everything from enormous flat screen TVs to chickens and cars – and see how the guys live on these things! Or continue to stroll along the Bur Dubai side of the Creek to the…
4) Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum's House – one of several wonderfully restored old houses lining the waterfront. This grand building, like most in this area was built from gypsum, coral and sand, and boasts big cooling courtyards and beautiful wind-towers, the traditional form of air-conditioning. The former residence of Dubai’s ruling family, it's home to a fascinating and eye-opening exhibition of old black and white photos of Dubai.
5) Heritage and Diving Village – Dubai’s wealth initially came from the pearling industry and the city was once a diminutive pearling and fishing village, so visit this recreation of the first settlement at Shindagha, at the mouth of Dubai Creek to get an idea of what Dubai was like not all that long ago. There are barasti (palm frond) houses, a small souq, beautiful old wooden boats, and traditional performances (pictured), when you’ll see more Emiratis than tourists. It’s loveliest and liveliest in the evenings. Afterwards, you can head next door to the sprawling al fresco Arabic eatery KanZaman when you can feast on Arabic food (a few mezze and a juice will cost you around $10) and try the aromatic sheesha, as you savour the sublime views of Dubai Creek, enchanting at night when the fairylights twinkle on the boats.

10 Reasons to Shop Dubai - a taster

Since you twisted my bangled arm, here's a taste of my 10 Reasons to Shop Dubai or The Ultimate Dubai Shopping Guide. Visit Viator for the full article, which includes fab extras like what to buy where, and a lesson in bargaining.
1.Dubai Shopping Festival - citywide sales, massive discounts, crazy promotions, extravagant raffle prizes, entertainment, street fairs, food stalls, nightly fireworks, and cultural activities, in the cool winter months (Jan-Feb).
2.Dubai Summer Surprises - summer (Jun-Aug) equivalent; hotel prices are slashed but it’s a sweltering 45 degrees Celsius outside. It's as if you’re in a giant sauna or God has placed a blow heater above Dubai. An experience!
3.Dubai’s Shopping Malls - I’m not a fan of malls normally; give me a shopping 'hood like Amsterdam’s Nine Streets any day. But in Dubai, where it’s too hot to stroll the streets for six months, malls make sense. Dubai’s malls boast restaurants, cinemas, theatres, art galleries, child minding centres, mosques, and ski slopes!
4.Mall of the Emirates - my favourite; enormous, opulent, marble floors, spacious ‘avenues’, fab selection of shops, swish Harvey Nichols, Virgin Megastore, superb restaurants (Almaz by Momo) and bars (Apres), chic Kempinski Mall of the Emirates, and indoor ski slopes.
5.Dubai’s Souqs - these bustling bazaars aren't the most attractive (get Marrakesh and Istanbul out of your head) but they’re atmospheric, gritty, ramshackle, and real; they don't exist for tourists, this is where real people shop for everyday stuff.
6.Because in Dubai Bargaining is a Fine Art - part of the fun of shopping Dubai’s souqs is haggling; it’s not a requirement as in Cairo or Istanbul, but if you pay the first price offered, you’re probably paying double the value. See my Viator article for bargaining tips.
7.Dubai’s Best Buys - Dubai’s best buys are carpets, textiles, perfume, spices, and gold. Buy these and other exotic goodies at the Spice Souq, Deira’s Covered Souqs, Gold Souq, Bur Dubai’s Textile Souq, and Karama Souq. (I tell you what to buy where on Viator.)
8. Souq Madinat Jumeirah - this wonderful air-conditioned, contemporary take on a souq is the place to shop when you can’t face the souq chaos, the heat has got to you, you’re not in the mood for bargaining, or you want a chilled glass of white with lunch. Prices are higher but the quality is better.
9. Dubai’s Homegrown Fashion - Dubai’s fashion scene is blooming; watch cheeky young designer Raghda Bukhash, whose fabulous Pink Sushi label playfully appropriated the red and white gutra (Arab men’s headdress) to produce cute skirts, handbags and clutches, well before everyone started wearing gutras in Europe. Available at Amzaan, owned by princess Sheikha Maisa al-Qassimi. Other hip boutiques stocking local fashion include Five Green and S*uce.
10. Dubai’s Shopping Hours - 10am-10pm daily for malls; stores outside malls close afternoons and on Friday (Muslim day of worship). Shopping is most fun in the evening when locals shop. It means nights end late, but what are days for if not dozing by the pool?

The Ultimate Dubai Shopping Guide

When we arrived in the UAE over 10 years ago, the guy from my company who picked us up from the airport chatted all the way into town, giving us a detailed intro to the country while extolling the virtues of living in Dubai compared to Abu Dhabi – where we’d just moved! “… and Dubai has a shopping festival!” he proclaimed proudly. In those days, Abu Dhabi didn’t even have a mall so we’d have to drive to Dubai to do real shopping, like buy an espresso machine for the apartment. A shopping festival was something else! If a little weird… what kind of country had a festival dedicated to shopping, we wondered. Abu Dhabi now boasts several swanky shopping centres, but Dubai, with its scores of malls and souqs is still the King of Shopping, and according to my husband Terry, I’m the Queen of Shopping, which is why I’ve written the Ultimate Dubai Shopping Guide, or 10 Reasons to Shop Dubai for Viator. You can read the full story here.

Breaking News: Orientalist Dubai Dream Tour Shattered! (part 1)

By Terry Carter*
Dubai is still sizzling as a travel destination, no matter what part of the planet you look at it from. But let’s look at Dubai from an Australasian travel media perspective for a moment. Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald and sister publication The Age love running stories on Dubai, but they've really run out of steam if their latest article is any indicator. But really, what should we expect from a once well regarded publisher that has a blog called ‘The Backpacker’ that explores themes such as 'Joining the Mile High Club', 'Travel cliches (sic): are they worth it?' and 'How to get rid of your backpacker'. Seriously. However, this latest anonymously authored story, which ran in New Zealand’s Dominion Post first, manages to set the bar to an all-time low, appearing like a package tour report that wouldn’t be out of place on TripAdvisor. The 'author' of the article has an odd preconception about Dubai from the start, but then feigns surprise when the destination doesn’t live up to his skewed expectations. So, what does he do? Call the story ‘Truth and Trickery in Dubai’. So, what's wrong with this story?

‘Anon’ as we’ll call the writer, is disappointed to learn the belly dancer on his desert safari is from Egypt, claiming she’s no more a Dubai local than he is (we’ll assume it’s a ‘he’). Last time I checked Egypt was in the Middle East and New Zealand wasn’t. We’re already off to a weird start. I don’t want to get into the much-contested origins of belly-dancing, but if you have an Egyptian belly-dancer in front of you, that’s a lot more authentic an experience than most visitors to any Middle East destination get these days. Even in Egypt itself (arguably the spiritual home of the dance), you’ll probably be confronted by the ‘fake’ shimmying of an Eastern European dancer if you go to an ‘Oriental’ show.

Anon then contradicts himself by saying it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the dancer isn’t a Dubai local as “one is lucky to see an ankle belonging to a local woman, let alone an exposed navel”. Actually, local women do a dance similar to the ‘belly-dance’, just not half-naked, not in public, not in front of men, and certainly not for creepy foreigners like Anon. So, let’s get this straight. He’s saying: the belly dancer is inauthentic because she’s from Egypt, Dubai women don’t do the belly dance, therefore Dubai=Fake. Or perhaps that makes it doubleFake? Can’t argue with logic like that.

To be honest, I debated whether to bother going further to deconstruct this article, but a story as misanthropic, sexist, and filled with thinly veiled racism as this (not to mention being published in such well-regarded newspapers), deserves it. So, let’s just get the attacks on the people that our fearless Orientalist comes across out of the way first. Here are some of Anon's choice quotes:
“…a pock-marked Bangladesh-born wide-boy”
“…one hapless male whose game attempts to mimic her pelvic thrusts are slightly impeded by his fluorescent bumbag and complete lack of coordination”
“…fat-bottomed tourists” and
“It is fun to get lost in the narrow alleyways of the gold and spice souks and get high on the heady mix of cloves, cardamom, incense and armpit.”

Clearly Anon dislikes acne, fluoro bumbags, people lacking dancing skills, fat-bottomed tourists, and people who don’t wear deodorant. I’m still trying to figure out why this is exclusive to Dubai. Really, did anyone edit this? But what Anon really dislikes is how ‘fake’ Dubai is. And he’s in Dubai to separate the truth from trickery.

But if Anon was ‘tricked’ about what to expect in Dubai, who deceived him, and what were his expectations? It’s clear – at least for the purposes of creating an angle for his story – he was expecting some sort of Orientalist fantasy of Bedouin goat-hair tents lining Dubai’s main thoroughfare Sheikh Zayed Road, where there’s a ten-lane camel highway (and perhaps a flying carpet lane as well?) leading to ARABIA, while the score from Lawrence of Arabia fills the air. However, Anon never sets out his expectations at the start of the story. Heaven forbid that would create a narrative! But here’s a hint as to where his desires lay: the belly-dancer is “an exotic apparition” before the spell is broken and he finds out she’s a ‘fake’ from Egypt.

And it gets worse... (read part 2 here.)

* Terry Carter is my partner and co-writer

10 Places You Must Go in 2008: places I have been

These are the 10 places I think you should experience in 2008, based on places I have been myself, and here are some quick reasons why. I'll give you my own wish list of 'it' destinations for 2008, places I have never been but hope to visit, in the new year.
1. SYRIA: colossal history confronts you at every corner, the world's best archaeological sites, crusader castles, sublime Umayyad Mosque, bustling medieval souqs, the Mid East's tastiest food, beautiful Damascene houses, artisans at work, Euphrates River, Dead Cities, Palmyra, Bosra, and the friendliest people in the world.
2. BUENOS AIRES: because it is as buzzy as they say it is, atmospheric barrios, architectural mishmash of architecture, lively markets and parks, fabulous bars and restaurants, great meat and wine, all-night nightlife, traditional peñas, Feria de Mataderos, gritty backstreets.
3. MOROCCO: do a road trip for moonlike landscapes, sublime desert scenery, abandoned mountain palaces, Berber desert citadels set amid date palm oases, then stay with Maryam in Marrakesh.
4. WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Broome for Australia's best beach and sunsets, Monkey Mia for WA's most tranquil beach and best indigenous walk, spectacular Kimberley & Pilbara regions, Margaret River's wild coast and wonderful wineries.
5. ANTWERP & BRUSSELS: because Antwerp is Europe's most underrated, easygoing city and Brussels isn't boring at all, superb dining scenes, laidback bars, pubs and atmospheric brown cafes, multicultural neighborhoods, lively jazz scenes, excellent museums, cutting-edge fashion, and those fantastic mussels!
6. THAILAND: road trip it off the beaten track, through lush green landscapes of limestone mountains and impenetrable jungle, eat tasty food in small town markets, meet the world's sweetest people, and well, okay, squeeze in a spa treatment at beach resort if you must.
7. ISTANBUL: after the umissable historical sights, the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia, Grand Bazaar, Topkaki Palace, and whirling dervishes, explore modern Istanbul, its lively backstreets, vibrant restaurants, bars and cafes, and get on the water for a cruise up the Bosphorus.
8. BALTIC CITIES: TALLINN: beautiful walled old city with perfectly preserved pastel-colored medieval architecture, kitsch experience of trying medieval food, sublime contemporary cuisine; RIGA: elegant art nouveau architecture, great walks, pretty parks and squares, lively pubs; and VILNIUS: laidback vibe, beautiful baroque churches, hearty food, and wild nightlife.
9. DUBAI: for reasons most travel writers won't tell you: Emirati and Bedouin culture and heritage, the courtyard wind-tower architecture in the Persian Bastakiya neighbourhood, gritty backstreets, Deira 'Creek' views from Bur Dubai, hospitable people, superb restaurants, and a lively contemporary art scene.
10. OMAN: majestic forts that make you feel like a kid again set in lush date palm oases, the Musandam peninsula, the Arabian Norway, the pretty waterfront at Muscat with its stunning harbour, and laidback Muttrah souq.

Dubai: best backstreets vol 2

Not far from Dubai's gritty Karama and Satwa 'hoods is Al-Musalla Rd, Bur Dubai, the city's ‘Little India’. The side streets are lined with Bollywood tape shops and boutiques selling bejewelled and sequinned numbers modelled by kitsch mannequins. There are cheap Pakistani, Azerbaijani and Russian eateries, and Indian sweet shops. There's a tea shop one block from Al-Fahidi roundabout with plastic stools on the pavement out front. On Fridays big groups of expat workers from the Sub-Continent gather outside to share stories from home and, in season, watch cricket on the black and white television. Equally as interesting, in the nearby neighbourhood of Mankhool, near Al-Adhid Rd, local families live in big villas with half a dozen cars out front, there are diminutive white mosques on the corners, and children ride bicycles down the quiet street. This is as close as Dubai gets to an ordinary middle-class 'burb. If you're staying at a beach resort, it's worth wandering around Umm Suqeim, between Jumeirah Beach Hotel and Umm Suqeim beach. In this low-key Emirati neighbourhood of whitewashed single-storey houses and bougainvillea-filled gardens, you'll be sharing the sandy lanes with straying chickens and scrawny cats. Don't worry, it's okay to help yourself to a cup of water from the coolers out front. That's what they're there for.