Dubai, UAE

Hello everyone and welcome back to another travel post! I’ve finally graduated high school, and so I have plenty of time to write these blog posts. Yay! I hope everyone is doing well :]

Shortly after we finished our European Capitals Cruise, we flew over to Dubai!

I’ve written about my European Capitals trip here:

Part 1: Honfleur, France & Hamburg, Germany
Part 2: Aarhus & Copenhagen, Denmark
Part 3: Gothenburg, Sweden & Oslo, Norway
Part 4: Rotterdam, Netherlands & Bruges, Belgium

We decided to go to Dubai to have a vacation from our cruise. Cruising is really hard guys. Okay no, just kidding. We figured that we were quite nearby already, our cruise ended and started back in London, so from London we flew to Dubai!

Dubai Marina

Let me just say… Dubai is so hot. It feels like when you open a pre-heated oven to bake something, but instead of closing the oven, you step inside. I call this “oven weather.” Dubai is such a dense city and this only adds to the heat.

Our hotel was located at the Dubai Marina. It’s called the Vida Hotel and it gave us a lovely view of the marina! The marina had many many yachts, and they would constantly come in and out. If you know anything about Dubai, you’re probably familiar with all of the wealth (popularized by Netflix shows like Dubai Bling and many influencers). Let’s do a quick dive as to why Dubai is such a hub for rich people, shall we?

Dubai is the capital city of the Emirate of Dubai (an Emirate is like a province or state, but the country to unite all of the Emirates is the United Arab Emirates, or UAE). The UAE borders Saudi Arabia, which is famous for their oil. However, Dubai does not have an overwhelming supply of oil itself. Instead of focusing on oil, Dubai focused on growing infrastructure, building airports, roads, and other buildings. Since then, Dubai has become a hub for tourism, trade, finance, and real estate. Dubai focused on attracting business rather than focusing on oil like its neighboring countries.

Dubai now houses incredible feats of building like the Burj Khalifa, the Palm Jumeirah, the World Islands and even the Dubai Marina is man-made.

Around 90% of Dubai’s 4 million population are not Emirati. There are so many rich people that come to Dubai because it is in a good geographical position and Dubai itself has no personal income tax, and long term residency.

The photos below are of our hotel, Vida Hotel. You can see all of the yachts and Dubai Marina! Our hotel was in a good location that allowed us to take public transport. We took the subway/metro to the Dubai Mall and the Burj Khalifa.

Burj Khalifa

Our first stop and attraction was the one and only, Burj Khalifa. The tallest building in the world, with a total height of 829.8 metres. The Burj was finished in 2009, surpassing Taipei 101 when it was the tallest at the time.
At first glance, the Burj actually doesn’t look that tall. It has many many other tall buildings around it, and though it is certainly taller than those, it doesn’t appear to be towering over them as much. Nonetheless, it is 100% the main attraction in Dubai. The Burj contains residences, a hotel and offices as well as observation decks for tourists. They say that the Burj is so tall that you can watch the sunset from the ground, ride the elevator quickly to the top floor and then watch the sunset again. The Burj has a very fast elevator, the world’s longest travel distance elevators, and the highest elevator installation. The elevator to get to the top only takes 1 minute and 22 seconds.

Regularly, the tickets for the Burj Khalifa only go up to the 124th and 125th floors, but a VIP ticket (SKY ticket) grants you access to the 148th floor as well. I would totally recommend paying the extra money, it is truly so cool to be so high up! (I’m not afraid of heights though. If you’re afraid of heights I don’t know what to tell you.) There are also some refreshments and sweets while you’re up there, nothing too big, just some cookies and lemonade. Its like hotel lobby sweets haha, but its a nice touch.

Mall of Dubai

The next day, we went to the Mall of Dubai! And what do you do when you’re in the dessert and it’s “oven weather” outside… you go skiing, of course! The Dubai Mall has an indoor skiing area with real snow. It’s very cold, but its also very hot outside. Pick an extreme.

I have a confession to make: I’m not a good snowboarder. I don’t practice much. I live in warm countries most of the year. The slight chance that I’m in a cold climate, I try to do winter activities. Snowboarding is not something I’ve gotten lots of practice with, but nonetheless, its still really fun. I got a few good runs in but I was put to absolute shame by my dad who’s been skiing since he was little + was the assistant ski school director. I think its safe to say he’s a pro. Me not so much. I kept falling.

Ziplining

Extreme sport #2(?) that I did in Dubai would be ziplining!
Across the entire Dubai Marina!
(what)
Yeah here’s the video.
It’s on as an Instagram Reel.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyYHQhqvUbw

Zipline stats:
170m high
1km long
80km/h
Superman style harness

This zipline was really really fun. Genuinely felt like I was flying! It’s also a really long zipline, in fact, it is the world’s longest urban zipline! I could see people going down the zipline from my hotel! They really just flew right across my hotel every day. It was such a cool experience and I would totally recommend it. My dad was disappointed that he didn’t try it with me (he was too scared to do it, but shhhh don’t tell anyone).

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyyyNm5vb5m/

Desert Glamping

Our next 2 days were spent in Dubai’s actual desert. We booked the most amazing experience, overnight camping! Well, more like overnight glamping. When you think of camping in the desert, maybe you’re thinking of the scene in dune where they have a little tent and sand is everywhere. This is not what we did lol. This experience is actually a whole resort in the desert.

The tour involves the following:
~ Sandboarding
~ Dune bashing (driving on high sand dunes)
~ Dinner
~ Entertainment (fire shows and dancers)
~ Activities: Henna tattoos, smoking hookah pipe
~ Camel ride in the evening
~ Camel ride at sunrise
~ Bonfire with snacks cooked over an open flame
~ Stargazing
~ Breakfast.

When my parents first told me that we would be camping in the desert, I didn’t know what I was supposed to expect. I thought it would be like Dennis Villenuve’s Dune films, but it is actually quite pleasant. This desert is called the Empty Quarter and this is shared with Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE and Yemen. Yes its hot, but the desert gets much more breeze and its quite cool, especially at night. I really enjoyed the camp (which isn’t much of a camp at all, its a resort) There is so so so much food, the entertainment is top notch. There are fire shows, dancers, you can get henna, you can stargaze! We had a whole tent to ourselves, and there was even an AC unit inside.

The afternoon portion was filled with dune bashing and sandboarding. The “dune bashing” is when they drive on high sand dunes and the car goes up and down a lot. Its a really fun driving experience if you’re into that kind of thing. I don’t recommend eating or drinking anything beforehand, though! Sandboarding was pretty cool as well, all I managed to do was ride in a straight line. I think it’s pretty cool to go from snowboarding to sandboarding in a day or two! I have seen people who are really really good at sandboarding though. I would love to get good at a sport like this, but sadly… I do not live in a place where we have a desert with gorgeous sand dunes.

Fun Fact: the Dune movies were filmed not too far from Dubai, in the neighboring Emirate state of Abu Dhabi.

Note: they also gave us these scarves to tie around our heads to protect from the dust and sand!

Photos from where we stopped to get some cool desert shots and go sandboarding! Our tour guide actually took all of our photos, and these turned out so well. I love the one where I’m jumping!

Pictured above at the nighttime activities, the food, the fire shows, and the… camel rides of course! The number one animal that you certainly want for desert travel. Camels are really cool. I think I like them better than horses. They have long necks and funny knees that fold inwards to sit down. I feel like they’re also more gentle than horses.
My parents’ bed in the tent had a canopy like a princess. We had to get an extra spare bed for me, and I didn’t get the canopy. Unfair.

We woke up early for a sunrise camel ride!

After our camel ride, we were served a very yummy breakfast. Their falafel is absolutely, positively scrumptious! I loved it so so much and it was mixed in with the eggs here. I have since only found one other place with falafel nearly as good as this one.

Here’s the video of me sandboarding, and what they call “dune bashing!”

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CybULIpxxaD

Yacht Charter

And finally… Dubai’s grand finale. A yacht! They had so many yachts in the marina, and all of this made my dad want to rent one for the day. He had a very specific request that he wanted to go swimming, so that’s what we did!
Our yacht was able to hold 10 people, so we invited my mom’s cousin who lives in Dubai! She also brought her boyfriend and they joined us out on the ocean.

Yachts are like bobbers in the water. They’re big but they’re also really small, and so its a rough ride when you bring a yacht out to sea. The boat rocks side to side a lot, but there’s a cool ocean breeze which is nice! The yacht took us around its usual route, we saw the Burj Al Arab and the Atlantis hotel. These are both hotels, very lavish and have exquisite architecture. The Burj Al Arab is on its own island, meanwhile the Atlantis is on the Palm Jumeirah, a man-made palm shaped island!

The Atlantis is the one where I’m at the helm of the boat alone. Look at how big and beautiful it is! It really looks like it belongs underwater with plenty of fish swimming around it.

The Burj Al Arab is the building that looks like a sail (because thats what its modeled after!).

Our lovely yacht ride started with a tour of the famous iconic buildings and ended with a picture perfect view of the Dubai skyline at sunset. As the sun went down, we anchored at the Marina and took a swim. We weren’t the only ones swimming, there were a few others! You can see the picture here:

The water was so warm… it was like a heated bathtub. Hopping into the water is not a relief from the heat, it just gets you wet!

That brings my little Dubai trip to a close. I had so much fun, I think my favourite was the ziplining! I think Dubai is really neat, there’s obviously a lot of wealth there. I really loved that there is such a vast array of things to do. You can have a desert experience, but you can also go ziplining and skiing. There’s things for extreme sports lovers, and things for shoppers alike! Some of the things that I wanted to go to but didn’t get to are:
The Museum of the Future
The Palm Jumeirah (actually going inside)
The Dubai Eye (ferris wheel)

(Abu Dhabi)
Ferrari World

There’s still so many more things to do. I want to go back and do all of them.

Anyways, that is all for today! I hope you enjoyed reading this post!
Have you every been to Dubai? Would you have done any of these things? Let me know in the comments :]