Monday, August 01, 2005

Yes Dubai Does Exist

Dubai....it is Aug 1st, I am in the Emirate's VIP lounge....it is 650 AM and already over 90 degrees going up to a purported 110....sure it is dry...but an egg will fry on your egg.

I arrived at the Taj late late late but it was all rectified by the most opulent suite since the Noel Coward in Bangkok's Oriental....a HUGE living room (maybe 750 sq ft) with everything electrical known to Edison and Bill Gates....a bedroom almost as large with a mammoth sultan-sized bed...in the bathroom, a complete 4 person SAUNA (a first), a huge jacuzzi tub big enough for four, enough products to stock a Walgreens....all complimentary on top of the minimum rate I was paying...they sent up a fruit basket (ugh) though it had lovely local dates in it (the one thing which Dubai seems to actually produce)...and then at 500 AM a guy who whispers softly for a wakeup call (no phone call) and has laid a great breakfast on my dining room table off the living room...it is all quite absurd, appar. very Dubai....and I felt like the highest roller at "poshest" Las Vegas hotel.

GETTING here:

Left singapore on time and flew wrenchingly over the Aceh tip of Sumatra...I could almost peerceive of the swath of the tsunami...then the fun started as we approached India (which is having the worse monsoon in 90 years): we were a bucking bronco in the sky. It certainly was not SQ's fault and they managed to serve a lovely oriental luncheon....part of which ended up on the ceiling of the plane in one of the big downdrafts...people PAY for such a ride at the State Fair....I was not totally amused....then arrival Dubai: the storm had somehow jammed the cargo doors on the Boeing....and after the heinous hour of going through passport control here (it is wickedly unpleasant....one can PAY a type of baksheesh to be "edpedited" but I heard George Orwell whispering to me about "more than equal" there was a 3 hour wait as they jimmied with the door and finally opened it manually which takes forever....like winding up a 120 day clock the nice Singapore rep allowed....YES dear Yasir from Peshawar was waiting still after all of this time to whisk me to the Taj Palace and the rest is history per above.

I did not walk in Dubai..I had been here once before....what's to find in a city built more quickly than Cammack Village was. The whole thing is so ghastly that it will take me a bit of time to ingest the horrors. In my living room were the local publications...the SOIREE/Town and Country types...all involving cosmetic surgery, renewal spas, dentists, new restaurants and useless consumer goods.

Nice Yasir told me that of the 700,000 people living here (there are over 3 Mil in the Emirates...and Abu Dahbi is still the capital) opnly 20% are real Emiratis (or whatever they call themselves)....as a class they don't seem quite as obnoxious as the Kuwaitis up the sea....but Yasir says after 5 years here he hasn't ONE local friend. The entire economy seems based on multi nationals at the top (no European looks over 35 years old), about 5 times as many serfs (Paks, Indians, Sri Lankans, Banglas, Philippinos)....and the whole thing strikes me as one big sickness.

I am sure if I lived here I would find good company (there were awfully nice people from Dubai on ARANUI...French) but the weather is so ghastly, the scrim of sand seems to semi-obliterate the sky, the architecture is so silly.....I would require every Duabi-ite to read THOREAU....

I am about to fly to Munich...that place which seems to have given birth to everyting rotten in German history (remember Hitler the Austrian was a shocking failure in his own land)....but there one can breathe.....

All of this costs a lot of money and I need a bit of sangfroid to justify it.

-F

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