A city in the dessert. Oh that’s Las Vegas isn’t it?

The journey to the hotel is a tour of high rise. Towering either side of the road through the business district.

The Doubltree Hilton is a modern clean soulless creation.

It might develop character in a few decades. I think that probably is what you would say about Dubai. We took a tour from the Emirates shopping centre, one of their bastions of ‘retail tourism’. I would say that I was being unfair but I spent the best part of a day on a jump on jump off city tour.

Traffic sites. More traffic and more sites. For sites read mostly shopping centres and high rize.

Is it 120,000 or 140,000 meters of windows the Burj Khalifa has.

In a city of superlatives the stats. Get mind numbingly boring.

Most interesting fact was that the top is cleaned by guys on ropes. Puts the health and safety concerns of NI window cleaners in perspective.

Well if we heard the origin of the word Dubai once it must have been thousand times.

On having the oldest building in Dubai shown to us it was not unexpected to be told it had been beautifully restored.

That is the thing Dubai is an artificial construct from ground up. It is just too new, too tasteless and too lacking in the character that comes with time and history.

I’m not a fan and though I’m sure it does appeal to some I think it’s a commercial excerise to protect the Emirates once the oil runs out. It will work on that level but if it didn’t exist would the world be missing out on anything?

The tallest building.

The tallest hotel.

The most hotel bedrooms.

The first 7 star hotel.

The list goes on

And on

And on

And on

but it is easier to count sheep to get to sleep.

So onwards to Bali.