Arriving in Dubai started off great, cough. I decided to fly from Cairo to Sharjah instead of Dubai International. The price difference was about 60 euros, but after I left the airport I began regretting my decision. It was about 30kms to get to Deira, Dubai’s old town where I stayed for the first days. I wanted to take an Uber, it was expensive but I would be there within an hour, this would have been nice since it was already 8pm and dark outside but alas. No Uber wanted to accept my ride, so I headed off with the bus. First they only accepted cash so I had to head back into the airport and withdraw from an ATM. So that’s what I did, I head back to the bus, Google maps telling me completely different bus lines than the ones I’m seeing. Waited a bit and saw the right one, and off I went. Ended up at the bus station, I thought to myself: Great, that’s a good start. With some help from another traveller, got on the bus to Dubai. Had to buy a transport card at the ticket office to pay for it. Quite nice cards actually, you can use them for everything in Dubai. Bus, tram, metro… One long bus ride later, it was time for the metro. 2 more stops later, and after 3 hours, almost midnight, I had finally arrived at the hostel.
It was a very friendly hostel, nice people from everywhere in the world. It was small but clean and for Dubai the price was excellent. I spend my first day reapplying for my Pakistan visa and after that working on the blog. The posts take a while to make and I’m slacking. 2 Hours before sunset I decided I should still visit something for my first day, I looked at what was closeby: the Dubai frame it is.
It has the Guinness world record of the biggest frame in the world and it’s about 200 meters tall. Fully decorated in gold, it’s quite impressive to see. You take the elevator to the top. All of the walls are full of windows, you watch the ground dissapear below you as you ascend. Once you reach the top, you can walk from one side to the other and enjoy the view. Again there’s windows everywhere, even at the bottom. They have a milky colour, until you step on them, then they suddenly become transparent and you’re looking down at the ground 200 meters below. The view is equally impressive. On one side you see Deira, the old town with low buildings. On the other side you see Dubai centre with all of it’s skyscrapers and special buildings. You can see the whole skyline, with the Burj Khalifa making the scene complete.
The second day I moved to another hostel closer to the centre of Deira, it was more of a capsule hotel and it was very comfortable. The cleanest hostel I have ever seen. I decided I wanted to see more of the city, so I went to the beach first and wanted to take the water taxi going to Dubai mall and Burj Khalifa. I enjoyed the beautiful views at the beach and headed to the boat. Turns out the water taxi don’t run anymore since Covid… At first I wanted to walk but 7 kilometers is not nothing. I ended up taking an electric scooter and drove along the river, while enjoying the cool buildings moving by. Took me about 30 minutes but I managed to get there. Seeing the Dubai mall area with the big lake and the fountains impressed me all over again. You stand there surrounded by all these enormous buildings and you feel very insignificant. It’s always busy there. I was walking around for a bit until I saw an Irish pub. I went to sit on the terrace for a pint of Guinness.
After I drank and had a snack, it was almost evening and it was time to find a spot to watch the famous Dubai fountains. They start at 6 o’ clock but it gets very busy so if you want to see them properly you have to guard your spot ahead of time. The whole display takes about 10 minutes. The big lake contains over 100 metres of fountains, spread in different patterns. When it starts all of the fountains are going at the same time paired with some nice music. It makes for a great spectacle. They can spout water over 100 metres high and are the highlight of Dubai’s downtown.
Still impressed by the fountain display, I headed inside Dubai mall with all of it’s wonders. There’s almost anything one might need, from luxury shops to a Decathlon (which I happily went to shop at). Inside are also a couple things you wouldn’t expect in a mall. Inside there’s an ice skating rink, a giant aquarium, a zoo and even more fountains! In the mall of the Emirates they even have an indoor ski-slope! The waterfalls inside are almost as impressive as the fountains outside. 3 Stories high they fall from the ceiling, with floating statues sticking out of the water.
It was already late so I headed back to the hostel, ate some nice Indian food in Deira. I ordered chicken biryani and it was really spicy. At first I thought there were green beans inside but they turned out to be green peppers. I was struggling to finish it and ended up throwing half of it away.
Day 3 I worked on the blog for the whole day. The hostel beds were too comfy to get up. In the evening I went to the same Indian restaurant, this time asking for something less spicy. They brought me chicken afghani and it tasted great. I visited the Dubai river closeby and strolled through the Deira Soukh. It’s a busy area full of stores and cafés. You can sit at one of the countless restaurants on the shore and enjoy some sisha, or take one of the many local boats ferrying you across the river. They are called Abras: historic wooden boats they used when Dubai was still a small fishing village. There’s a big number of them there and they are constantly sailing up and down the river.
I was about to head to bed when a cool Latvian guy named Arthurs arrived. We started talking and went to drink something at a bar. It was fun.
Sadly for Arthurs, I had already decided the previous day that I would be heading to JBR, a popular area on the other side of the Emirate, where a lot of Europeans live. I found a good hostel for the same price but it was in a tall tower, with great views over the area. It even included a swimming pool and gym to use.
We did hang out tho, that evening he took the metro to my area and we ate dinner at the Marina. They have very good food at European prices. We also smoked some sisha and chilled there. They are not allowed to serve alcohol however, so that was for another day.
After checking in I decided I wanted to go to the beach, it’s very famous and celebrities frequently visit it. I felt very out of place walking in my flip flops and beach wear along the street, surrounded by fancy hotels and expensive cars. Once I arrived at JBR beach, I was completely overwhelmed for a moment. Surrounded by high buildings, 2 peninsulas sheltering the bay from both sides, on one side a giant ferris wheel sticking out over the ocean, on the other side a runway build above the water for skydiving planes. The water is filled with yachts and jetskis racing from left to right, the sound of their engines can be heard everywhere. This went on for the whole afternoon, soo over the top. Every 5 minutes there would be parachutes coming down, making the picture complete. Despite being so busy it’s a very nice beach with very chill people. After some swimming I laid in the sun for a couple hours until the sun set. I saw some interesting figures there, from models taking Instagram pictures in the waves to a crazy Austrian guy who couldn’t stop talking to anyone he saw. He might have been on drugs or something. After that I headed back to the hostel. I got an email my Pakistani visa was finally granted! Time for celebration! There was a pool table and I ended up playing pool the whole evening with some Russian guys and a French guy. For the rest of my time there, we were playing pool all the time and we even played some chess. Shoutout to Alex, Yevgeniy, Artyom, Pavel and Max!
In the morning I went for a swim in the pool of the complex. It still made me feel like a rich man walking in the private plaza for the appartments, between all these high buildings. Just sitting on the balcony of the hostel 100 metres high and looking at all the towers, it never gets old.
That day I headed to the palm Jumeirah, I had found a nice post card earlier I wanted to send home. Dubai has great postal service and for 1 euro you can send cards to anywhere in the world, taking less than 2 weeks to arrive. The city is just amazing, and way less expensive than you would expect.
I wanted to visit the palm today. It was about 30 minutes with the tram to the monorail. It’s basically a big man-made island in the form of a palm and it’s very famous. Measuring 7 km’s from the coast to the tip of it, it’s too big to walk. You can take a taxi but I was excited about something more special there.. They have a monorail! it runs from north to south of the palm, on an elevated track through the middle and it has great views from all sides. I managed to get on first and sit in the front seats right at the window.
I rode the monorail all the way until the end. From there you can walk to the tip of the palm along the coast. It was beautiful there and ended up sitting there and catching up with family until the sun set. There is the Atlantis hotel, looking like it comes straight out of a Disney movie. The perfect spot for pictures. Taking the monorail back I again went to sit in front and took some more beautiful photos. It really looks and feels like paradise.
In the evening I again went for a drink with Arthurs, we went to the Burj Khalifa area back to the Irish pub. He has a business in digital marketing and is planning to get the UAE residency.
The last day of Dubai, I was flying to Karachi in the evening. Packed up my stuff and went to palm Jumeirah once again. This time straight to the view tower, it’s located in the middle of Nakheel mall. On the monorail there I met some nice Dutch guys, gave them some tips and we walked around the mall for a bit, until we parted and I went to the tower. I bought my ticket online from Groupon, so for the same price as a normal ticket I had fast-track, meaning that I didn’t have to wait in any of the queues and could just go straight up. The views were breathtaking, I was blown away by them. It really feels like being in a movie in every direction you look. The tower is 200 metres high and sticks out above everything in the area. You can see the whole skyline of Dubai, from left to right, the whole palm from above and in the distance even the islands in the shape of the world map. I wish I had more time to spent there because it was just stunning.
After taking way too much time at the palm I had to rush to Deira, to eat something with Arthurs and to head to the airport for my flight. We ate at a nice restaurant, the service was quick and the food was good. I thought I still had 15 minutes to go to some of the electronics shops next doors to buy a laptop. The prices were very cheap in Dubai and after 45 minutes of searching and I found one for me and had to rush to the airport again. It was very stressfull there. First my flight did not show up on any of the TVs! After asking some employees, I got to my check-in counter. They wouldn’t let me on the plane without a return flight out of Pakistan.. So I had to buy a quick flight and I was heading to my gate with 20 minutes before my plane departed. I was running the whole time… Full-on convinced I was going to miss the flight.. Then I arrived at the gate and they weren’t even boarding yet. All that stress for nothing… I even sat there for another hour and a half before we could finally get on the plane. A great first impression with Pakistan Airlines :p