.

Change
They have given streets names instead of numbers since we were last in Dubai. Jade’s old place is no longer Villa 23 on street 20, off street 1 in Jumeirah 3,off Al Wasl Road. It now has an address, although I failed to note what it was and, we are told, taxi drivers ignore the new system anyway. But Dubai, has changed, and locals will tell you that if they have been away for a week they can notice the difference.
Dubai now seems less a city where the old Arabic world meets a modern western one, but more one where new meets even newer, and bolder means brasher. The Burj Dubai, the not yet completed one kilometer high tower, the tallest in the world, is already facing competition from a planned second new one, one mile high. The Mall of the Emirates, with its indoor ski slope, had been the second biggest shopping mall in the world, but has been surpassed by the recent opening of biggest shopping mall in the world. The Jumeirah Palm is now inhabited, at the outer end by the immense Hotel Atlantis complex which put on the world’s largest-ever fireworks display at its opening, has the underwater restaurant and is riddled with celebs.
We were holed up at the Metropolitan Hotel, off Sheik Zayed Road. You don’t have to leave the premises. It has its own movie complex, theme bars and restaurants (The Red Lion bar is an English pub, right down to artificially beer soaked carpets), a pool and spas, and then there is Rattlesnakes, a nightclub where young women are on hand to part men from large amounts of money in exchange for bodily pleasure.
The pool temperature was 29 degrees, the air temperature 23 in the middle of winter, and Kaelene was unwell having ice-on-the-lung, an illness resulting from the inhalation of cold European air. In these warmer climes we are expecting a quick recovery.
They say you can tell how hard the recession has hit Dubai by the level of traffic congestion. Apparently the current Auckland-style rush hour motorway congestion is mild by comparison to the pre-recession traffic. Ex-pats are leaving in droves as building projects stall, often leaving behind creditors and jail, the mandatory penalty for the non-payment of debt.
There is something alluring about the glamour and glitz here, the hustle and bustle, the opulence and the sheer audacity of the transformation of desert to luxury you would not think possible.
We have not yet heard the call to prayer which rings out over the city five times a day. Hedonism must make more noise.