Dubai - Johnny's View

To avoid repeating myself in every post, I’ve explained my writing style and the ‘why’ behind it in this disclaimer.

As I mentioned in my last post, I booked a minibus transfer from Abu Dhabi to Dubai - specifically to Sharjah, which is essentially a neighboring emirate that blends right into Dubai. When I originally booked it, I thought it was still part of Dubai, but I wanted to be close to Sharjah Airport for our flight to Bangkok.

On December 3rd at 10:39 AM, I got a WhatsApp message from a guy named Khalid. He told me that, unfortunately, our apartment was “no longer available,” but he had worked so hard to find us an even better replacement. This is a classic bait-and-switch scam I’ve run into before (like in Warsaw). They list their best apartment, wait until the last minute, and then claim there’s a “burst pipe” or some other emergency, only to move you to a worse spot for the same price. The booking stays active on the site, but you end up somewhere else. The fact that he messaged me on WhatsApp instead of through Booking.com was the first red flag.

Back in Warsaw, I fought this tooth and nail with customer support because they refused to cancel the booking on their end, but this time, I let it slide. For one, it was peak season and everything was either booked or overpriced. Two, the photos he sent didn’t look too bad. And three - we came here for an adventure, didn’t we? 😅

The Sharjah stay cost 202€ (101€/night), which was actually cheaper than Abu Dhabi (124€/night). I had booked it back in June. Here’s what it was supposed to look like:

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The new place was even further from Dubai but closer to the Sharjah airport. He sent some photos, but conveniently left out the kitchen and bathrooms. Here it is:

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It was on the 23rd floor of an apartment tower mostly populated by Indian expats. The ground floor had a massive grocery store, a food court, and various small shops.

Simona, however, was absolutely horrified by the state of the place. She said it was “worn out, filthy, and moldy.” Honestly, as a guy, I barely noticed. Unfortunately, we didn’t take any photos of our own, but Arthur caught some video (fair warning: it’s long and pretty boring, only for the patient souls 😅):

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Either way, we were checked in and ready for the next chapter.

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We headed out to find the nearest bus stop to catch a ride to the metro. We wandered for a bit since Google Maps wasn’t quite lining up with reality, but we eventually found it. The bus showed up shortly after. I paid the driver with my card - about 3.50€ per person (except for Simeon). It was a surprisingly fancy bus with AC and tablets on the back of every seat for the kids to play games or watch movies. They immediately went for Angry Birds, obviously 🤪.

Once we hit the metro station, we had to buy Nol cards (Silver). I got five of them and loaded 70 AED onto each, so everyone had about 17.50€ in credit (x 5). There’s a Gold version too, but it’s twice the price. It lets you ride in the Gold Class cabin, which is more luxurious and less crowded at the end of the train. At the front, there are pink cabins reserved for women and children. Women don’t have to use them, but plenty did. That said, the inside of the train is basically one continuous open space.

The metro was sleek, modern, and spotless. It’s that high-tech style where glass panels separate the platform from the tracks, and sliding doors only open when the train is perfectly aligned. No driver needed - the whole thing is automated. It hits the mark every single time, down to the centimeter. And it runs all the way from Sharjah into the heart of Dubai.

The Metro

I’m going to break the timeline here for a second because this belongs in the metro section. When we were heading back around 6:30 PM, the metro was so packed we couldn’t even get on. We missed the next one, and the one after that. Even the locals were stuck. We eventually just sat on a bench to wait it out. Trains were coming every 90 seconds. You read that right. From the time the doors closed on one train to the time the next one opened was about 1 minute and 35 seconds. Driverless, automated, and totally slammed.

Leo and I did the math: 14 doors, and roughly 100 people crammed between each set of doors. That’s about 1,400 people per train. Every 90 seconds, 1,400 people were being moved in one direction. That’s 56,000 people per hour 😮. And this rush lasted for a good 2-3 hours. Apparently, this is just standard evening rush hour from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM. We finally squeezed onto a train around 8:00 PM.

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In the end, we didn’t use all the credit on our Nol cards - we had about 40€ left between us. I tried offering them to some friends on WhatsApp, but since nobody took them, we decided to leave them as a gift for our host. My AI assistant gave me bad advice on the top-up; we loaded 70€ for two days and only spent 30€.

Demographics

In the metro, you rarely saw many “men in white” or “women in black” (local UAE citizens). That’s probably because locals are a massive minority here - only about 10% of the population. The rest are expats from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and other Arab and Asian countries. And they never get citizenship. They are essentially the labor force for everything the locals don’t want to do. The locals hold the lucrative positions (if they work at all). That’s what makes Dubai such a melting pot.

Even people born in the UAE who have lived there for 40 or 50 years remain “foreigners.” Citizenship is only granted in extreme exceptions by royal decree, usually to the elite (scientists, major investors, artists) - and even then, without full rights.

There’s zero assimilation. Everyone lives in their own “bubble.” That’s also why English is the common language here, not Arabic. Order is maintained by strict laws, heavy penalties, and zero tolerance for any kind of stepping out of line.

Here’s what ChatGPT had to say about it:

🧨 Demographic Fragility

If the expats leave → the country collapses.
If they get citizenship → the locals lose power.

➡️ That’s why the system is intentionally “frozen” in place.

Anyway, back to the sightseeing.

Dubai Mall

On the first day, our late-afternoon plan was to check out downtown Dubai and the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. We got off the metro and the crowd funneled us through a massive tunnel toward the Dubai Mall. It was a long, air-conditioned tunnel with moving walkways, just like at an airport. Even with the walkways, it felt like it took an eternity. And it did. Checking the map later, I realized it’s a 27-minute, 1.2-mile walk. In the December night air, it wasn’t too bad, but I can see how in the summer, this tunnel is a life-saver - kind of like a space station on Mars from the movie Total Recall. You just do not want to be outside.

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After that exhausting trek (remember, we have four kids and we’re carrying the youngest), we bought ice cream and juice as soon as the tunnel hit the mall. Big mistake! It was the most expensive spot simply because it was the first place people saw at the busiest entrance. But hey, the ice cream was great!

Malls aren’t really our thing, so we tried to find the exit toward the Burj Khalifa as fast as possible. Easier said than done. We did a lot of wandering and got lost more than once.

For those of you who are into malls, here are some fun facts about the Dubai Mall:

Opened in 2008, it was once the largest mall in the world by total area. Today, it’s #2, right after the Iran Mall.
It’s still the most visited shopping mall on the planet.
Total area: ~1.1 million m².
Retail space: ~350,000 m² (that’s about 50 football fields).
Number of stores: 1,200.
Floors: 4 main retail levels, plus several underground layers for parking and logistics.
Traffic: Over 100 million visitors a year. On an average day, that’s 280,000 people. On peak weekends? Over 400,000 daily. To put that in perspective, that’s like the entire population of Bratislava showing up in one day.
The Aquarium: Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo, one of the largest in the world with over 10 million liters of water, sharks, rays, and a giant crocodile named King Croc 🐊.
The Ice Rink: An Olympic-sized rink right in the middle of the mall for real training, hockey, and figure skating ⛸️.

I actually didn’t know about the aquarium, so we missed it. We just wanted to get to the Burj Khalifa. I also saw some pretty absurd sights - like a “posh girl” sitting in a little chauffeured cart with her shopping bags, while a driver in a full uniform and cap navigated through the crowds. Right behind her was another cart for her “dude,” who also had his own driver. They could have easily shared one cart, but nope. He needed his own sultan-style ride 😎.

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Burj Khalifa

The Dubai Mall and the Burj Khalifa were built together as one massive project. It was planned to be grand: the biggest mall and the tallest building. It stands at 828 meters and still holds the world record.

But here’s a fun fact: the top 30% of the building is uninhabitable. Why? Because it’s too expensive and technically difficult to run elevators and water that high. The highest occupied floor is the 160th. Everything above that is purely for technical services and, well, “bragging rights” just to have the tallest building.

It’s mostly home to wealthy expats, investors, and hotel guests. Definitely not us 😅. We didn’t even bother going to the observation deck. Tickets are about 60€ per person, and even more at sunset. The whole process takes about two hours just to spend 30 to 60 minutes at the top. It didn’t seem worth the 360€ for our family. We had already seen Dubai from the plane when we landed at night anyway.

Looking at it from the ground was enough for us. Honestly, it didn’t really blow me away. I mean, hats off to human ingenuity and entrepreneurship, but I’ve studied the details of this building for so long that seeing it in person didn’t add much for me. I’m sure others feel it more deeply, though.

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But it’s not just one skyscraper. It’s an entire oasis of them, and every single one has the “EMAAR” logo on it. I looked up what it meant, thinking it was a tribute to the Emir, but no. It’s just the development company that built everything. I find it a bit tacky, to be honest. It’s like a teenager who has to tag every clean wall he sees. It’s a total eyesore. Some might say that’s the point, but for me, it’s a huge minus for that company’s brand.

We walked around for a bit. The temperature was perfect - December nights are great. Anything else would have been too much. I can’t even imagine being here in the summer. I don’t want to. We saw those famous glass-enclosed, air-conditioned bus stops. You probably couldn’t survive without them. Though they looked pretty crowded 😅.

And the traffic! Cars just sit there honking, barely moving. I don’t get why anyone would own a luxury Lamborghini here just to sit in gridlock like a total chump.

We had our own version of that on the way home, sitting on a metro bench for an hour and a half waiting for the rush hour to die down 😂 (though that was actually on day two, but you get the point - it’s a struggle even without the Lambo).

Day Two

On our second and final day, we headed to the Gold Souk - the famous Gold Alley. It’s a street lined with shops selling gold jewelry, and it’s where they display the world’s largest gold ring. The shopkeepers were relentless. Five “no’s” wasn’t enough to get them to leave you alone. Besides gold, they were hawking pearls, “Rolex” watches, and who knows what else. It was Arthur’s idea to see this place in person.

What really struck me was the sheer amount of gold in one place. They say if you took all the gold in the world and melted it into a single cube, it would only have a side of about 22 meters. Looking at this alley, I find that hard to believe. Every city we visit has gold jewelry for sale. People have it at home, in their teeth, or around their necks. Governments have reserves. Industries use it. It’s on monuments, roofs of temples, and even on steaks. Not to mention all the historical pieces in museums and the gold toilet seats of dictators. It just doesn’t add up in my head. I felt like a quarter of that cube was right there in that alley 😊.

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After the Gold Souk, we took a boat ride (an “abra”) across the creek. A guy tried his hardest to sell us a one-hour ride for 30€, but I held my ground and insisted on 30 minutes for 15€. Good call. There wasn’t much else to see. You could do it even cheaper on a shared boat with other tourists, but I was happy to have the private one. I almost roasted in the sun, though - I had to stay under the little canopy the whole time.

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Funny story from the public restroom:

In the public toilets, there were cut-off water bottles sitting above the urinals. The guy peeing next to me finished up, grabbed the bottle, and rinsed his “fire hose” right there. While I was still processing that, I turned around and saw an Indian guy at the sinks drinking straight from the tap - and it was hot water. This is a country where you definitely do not drink the tap water. But hey, I guess compared to the Ganges, it’s nothing! 😂

After that, we found a really cool place to eat called Table 3 Restaurant. They served almost every cuisine you can think of, and everything was delicious. I even left them a 5-star review: “It was delicious and Umair made it perfect with his service and kindness.”

Finally, we hit the beach. It was actually really nice. The water was warmer than Croatia in August. The beach and the water were both super clean. The kids had a blast splashing around, and then we slowly made our way home. It was a long trek, including a ride on a double-decker bus. We have a 45€ taxi to the airport (booked through Booking.com) at 4:50 AM, so it’s going to be an early wake-up call.

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Final Thoughts

For me, once was enough. I don’t really get the hype around Dubai, or why celebrities (including Slovak rappers like Rytmus) keep saying it’s the best place to invest in real estate. I honestly can’t imagine what I’d do here long-term.

Sure, if I were rich and into a more consumerist lifestyle with people serving me, maybe I’d see the appeal. But even then, I don’t know if the UAE would be my first choice.

On the other hand, Dubai is relatively close. Our flights were only 175€ per person (including bags). I can see why someone looking to escape the Slovak winter would come here in December or January - it’s warm, but not “die of heatstroke” warm. It’s definitely a better option than Egypt, where you’re basically stuck in a resort because leaving it feels like a risk.

It’s clean, incredibly safe, modern, organized, and family-friendly. There is an insane amount of stuff to see, do, and eat. So, why not? For a 2-3 week winter escape, it makes sense.

For our two days and nights, we spent 625€ (excluding flights). Accommodation was 202€, buses 70€, Nol cards 88€, taxi to the airport 45€, and the rest on food and fun (220€).

I still don’t quite get how the locals handle the bus fares. One round trip for our family was 35€. That would be 1,050€ a month just for daily commuting. Surely they aren’t paying that. I must have been doing something fundamentally wrong 😲.

Regardless, the kids loved it. Leo kept saying he wanted to live here. That feeling didn’t last long, though - after visiting a few other countries, he completely changed his mind.