After a grueling eleven hour flight disjointed journey from Brisbane through Singapore, I finally arrived in Dubai at the local time of 6:30am. If the heat that blasts you leave the plane to join a transit bus was any indication, today was going to be a hot one. Summer temperatures in Dubai range from 29°C to 40+°C on any given day. Today was certainly no exception and although we were walking around in the 41°C day maximum, we were lucky enough that today was not such a humid one.

I met up with my sister at the airport (who flew Air Italia), and we quickly made our way to our hotel. Australians, like many other foreign nationals, are given free entry upon arrival to Dubai. It is something that the United Arab Emirates intentionally does as it tries t move away from oil as its number one source of income to incorporate a wider portfolio including tourism. I was thankful that my sister had done a lot of planning as I had enough to take care of, tying off loose ends before moving countries. After checking in at the Le Meridian Fairway on Internet rates (it’s definitely worthwhile getting these), we caught the complimentary bus into town.

We ended up in the city rather late, and ended up in a Vegetarian Southern Indian restaurant to grab something for a lunch (it was well past breakfast time by now). Dubai is heavily populated with many foreign nationals, with a percentage of something like 60% being Indians, Pakistanis and Filipinos. Budget eating is not very well advertised, with most of the advertisements you see catered for restaurants in your Marriott, Hyatts, and Burj Al Arab (the only 7-star hotel in the world), although I believe there is a good lonely planet guide that might have helped in our journey. We stumbled across a decent looking place called “Vege World” where we feasted on three different bread and curry dishes including Aloo Paratha, Puri Bhaji, and a Cookie (an southern Indian chilli-bread like dish) for a measly AED15 (AU$6) between the two of us. Dubian (is that a word?) people are lovely and the person who served us also helped tell us what it was we were exactly eating. It’s always pretty exciting ordering things you have no idea about and then being pleasantly surprised.

We walked all throughout the souks (think marketplace) in the Deira area, with the gold and spice souks being the most visually stunning. The gold souk is, of course, the most obviously eye-popping with such intricately detailed necklaces, bracelets and rings lavishly draped all over a number of hanging bars in the store windows. Although we did not enter any of the stores (my budget certainly wasn’t extending to buying any jewelry), we have read that it is apparently a bargain.

We also managed to hit the Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum’s house, the Dubai museum, Bastakiya, Creekside Park, and the mega shopping complex that is Wafi City. Taxis are relatively cheap with fares starting at AED3 (about AU$1.20) and is slow to actual tick over. An even more bargain way of traveling around Dubai across the water is the Abra. A short small boat driven by a single person only costs a person 50 filas (a half Dirham) and gets you from one side of the creek to the other.

Food here is pretty amazing. We stopped for afternoon tea at the Basta Art Café, a hidden treat nestled in the buildings of the Bastakiya area where we indulged in some delicious mint Moroccan tea, some Arabic tea and some baklava. Although we ate inside an air-conditioned tent because the heat is pretty ridiculous, it does have a court yard that would be lovely to sit in during the cooler months. We also ended up having dinner at The Spice Club, a restaurant in the hotel where we indulged Indian banquet of 11 dishes for about 80AED (AU$30). Completely stuffed we went to bed, ready to hit the city for the second day.

I’ll continue to post some more pictures, but for now you can check them out here.