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Well... here I am in UAE.

One unsurprising thing about UAE is that a lot of things are illegal. For example, alcohol (without a permit), Skype, poppyseeds, Xanax, and racing in the desert. Other than that, things are weirdly ordinary for a foreign country. All of the buildings look vaguely American, except that there is an extremely heavy emphasis placed on building things in novel, futuristic shapes.

One night we went to visit the Sheikh Zayed mosque, which is on the outskirts of the city and is the main cultural site in Abu Dhabi. We weren't dressed fully appropriately for it - I don't own a head scarf, and Paul had on shorts - so they gave us local outfits to put on while in the building.

Much of the tour of the mosque was devoted to naming the various materials and their countries of origin (clocks from Switzerland, crystals from Italy, eight kilos of gold per chandelier, etc).

On the weekend (Fri-Sat here) a labmate was kind enough to rent a car and drive us to Dubai, which was like driving into a lunar colony. There is nothing but desert and rocks until suddenly -- a horde of bizarre-looking, half-built skyscrapers. The development priorities of this city are clearly style over function, and narrowly aimed at claiming as many superlatives as humanly possible -- tallest building in the world, fastest roller coaster in the world, biggest ferris wheel in the world. Dubai already built the biggest shopping mall in the world, but weren't satisfied and are now building an even bigger mall. (Meanwhile, the Saudis are now trying to outdo Dubai's tallest building, and Abu Dhabi is building the biggest, most expensive statue in the world: a giant pyramid of oil barrels. I find both of these facts completely unsurprising.)

The drive into Dubai...

At some point, you start to seriously wonder what the point of it all is. In Las Vegas, the buildings have reason to be flashy -- they want to lure people inside so they spend money gambling. But here things are showy just for the sake of being showy. For example, Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, seems to have no real reason for existing other than to be the tallest building in the world. Apparently there are condos inside, but they are not even all occupied, and for a long time were barely occupied at all. This is a repeating theme. Almost every other skyscraper in Dubai is a hotel or condo building, which is built in some funky shape (e.g., a rotating circle with a rooftop lightshow) and is 80% unoccupied.

It wasn't on my bucket list to see the tallest building in the world, but I did it anyway. Here it is in all its glory, the half-mile-tall death-star-meets-office-building.

Dubai also built an entire island in the shape of a palm tree. After we saw it, I immediately realized why it is impossible to find a non-aerial photo of Palm Island on the internet, i.e. a photo that was taken on the ground. The reasonis that, when you're actually on the island, you can't even tell its an island, much less a palm-tree-shaped one. You drive in on an generic highway flanked by ordinary condo buildings and large, high construction fences that obscure the view of almost everything. You can't even see that there is an ocean nearby unless you park and try to seek it out (which is impossible, because there are almost no parking garages). Hmm...

After driving on Palm Island, we went to check into our hotel in Jebel Ali. Jebel Ali is... I don't even know. It's a bizarre warehouse district on the outskirts of Dubai which, from the highway, looks to contain large factories of name brands like Nestle situated behind barbed wire fences. Entrance to Jebel Ali is secured by military-style checkpoints and you cannot get in without proving your worthiness and answering questions about your luggage. It is entirely unclear why any hotel would locate itself there. But it was literally the cheapest hotel in Dubai (as they boast in their hotel booklet, "the first and only one-star hotel in Dubai!").

Dubai as seen from Jebel Ali

View of "DP world" from Easy Hotel -- luxury all the way!

Our tour guide picked us up at an Islamic-themed mall for our "desert safari." "Desert safari" is sort of a catch-all term for every possible tourist activity UAE has to offer, all of which take place in the desert. First they drive on the sand dunes like maniacs until you think the car is going to flip over (this actually has a name: "dune bashing"). You stop briefly to take a picture with a falcon and buy an overpriced keffiyeh, and then continue to a camp where you smoke shisha (hookah), sit on camels, see a bellydance, get henna tattoos, and try on local outfits.

Getting ready for "dune bashing"

The saddest camel in the world, can you blame him?

There aren't really bars in UAE (except in expensive hotels) so after we got back, we went out for coffee and wandered around a beach adjacent street. Apparently this is The Street for driving flashy cars for girl-impressing purposes.

The next day, we walked around the old town, which is the three square blocks where the old traditional buildings were not torn down and replaced by high rises. We ate watermelon, drank tea, and took an afternoon nap in a cool courtyard. This was my favorite part of the trip, though I sadly forgot my camera.

Then we went to the biggest mall in the world! It looked like a regular mall, only WAY bigger! Here's a view from outside of it:

... And that's sort of it.

I didn't take that many pictures while I was there, because there's actually already an existing series of images that captures the experience somewhat better.