Yes, I know that most of these things are obvious if you lived in Dubai during the last decade. However, this article is specifically for those who have never been to Dubai but want to know more about it.The article is a bit lengthy, if your time is that important to the survival of the human race, feel free to just skim the headlines. If you enjoy or find this useful encourage me to write more by following on twitter.

1.Camel Burgers

People have a lot of presuppositions relating camels and the Middle East. Well, this is going to be a big let down because camels are not as common as people think; most of the people living here never even rode one or tried the awesome Camel meat Burgers..partially because there is only a handful of restaurants that specialize in Camel meat.

2.Prostitution & Hooker Streets

Despite the strict rules about ‘displays of public affection’ there are areas that always have a supply of prostitutes,

“Couples who publicly kiss are jailed, yet the state turns a blind eye to 30,000 imported prostitutes” (Read more)

There are numerous articles and videos about this topic, here are a few:

First is a video/documentary

Why Dubai’s Islamic Austerity is a shame, an article published by the Guardian.

A nice short documentary titled Sin City of Arabia:

3.Ramadan

For those who do not know what Ramadan is, it’s a holy month for Muslims where people refrain from eating/drinking during daylight hours, some interesting points about Ramadan:

-Companies are legally obliged to reduce working days by two hours during Ramadan for muslim AND non-muslim workers. Pretty cool.

-It is illegal to eat, drink or smoke in public during daylight hours. It’s not highly enforced but if somebody saw you eating and called the cops, you will be fined heavily.

-Mosques offer free Iftar meals to basically anyone during the month, also you do not have to be a muslim to take advantage of that !

-No matter in which part of Dubai you are in, you will hear calls to prayer at least five times a day. Even in shopping malls, the calls to prayer are put out over the speakers, to remind Muslims that it is time to pray.

4.Driving & Cars

-Speeding is Dubai’s national sport, Seriously! You will understand when you come here.

-Dubai has one of the best road networks in the world in terms of quality..However,

-Driving can be very very scary at times. Just to compare: UAE has six times more deaths from road traffic accidents per year than the USA & Europe. SIX TIMES! and here is an exert from a study done on this traffic accidents in the UAE:

“Careless driving is identified as the most important factor in RTAs over the period of study, accounting for over 35% of all incidents, while excessive speed was the second most common cause.” (Link to the study)

-There is no exotic car/super car/conceptual car that is hard to find in Dubai (Video-Super Cars in Dubai).

-It is very normal for some people to get stuck in traffic congestion for hours every single day they go to work.

5.Taxes

There are ‘No Taxes’ in Dubai but it’s more of a marketing thing because you end up paying shitloads of government fees and whatnot for everything that you do. A more accurate statement would be “less taxes than North America and Europe”.

6.Racism

I dont think there is any country that has zero racism but in UAE its much worst, as much as people hate to admit it, your passport pretty much determines your salary. It goes something like this:

High Salary: North-American/European

Mid-range: Arabic, East-Asia

Low-range: South Asia

So a German doing the same job as a person from Nepal could be paid twice as much.

7.Weather

-Sunshine for 350+ days a year

-Summer (may-august) is very harsh, you can’t go out till the afternoon because the temperatures are above 40C (thats 100+ Fahrenheit 90% of the summer days)

-For the rest of the year, the weather is amazing ! oh yea and we get less than 20cm of rain per YEAR.

8.Addresses

Or lack thereof, there is NO proper address system, no house/street numbers… everything is done by description and locations are relative to landmarks or famous streets

What about deliveries or online purshaches? same thing, that’s the main reason why shopping online is not as common in UAE.

9.Population

-Well, the population doubled since 1995, and 80% of the population are foreigners.

-When do you get UAE Citizenship, if you were:

Born here ? nop

Lived here for past 10 years ? nop

20 years? nop

10.Construction

-50 Years ago there wasn’t even one building in Dubai (Photos of Dubai in 1960’s)

-The Craziest/Biggest Buildings are in Dubai.

-Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world also broke 15 other world records.

-There is a lot of controversy about exploitation of South-Asian workers, regardless of the controversy, you can not have a nice peaceful life as a construction worker because the salaries are negligble compared to professional jobs, there is no unskilled worker that receives more than 400$/month. A lot of exposure for this topic, here are some resources to get more information;

Dubai’s Dirty Little Secret, a documentary from ABC News.

Another documentary published about workers in Dubai construction.

11.Internet

-Facebook penetration rate in UAE is more than 45% which is almost same as the USA. That rate is highest among the Arab countries and one of the highest in the world.

-At some point Skype,Hi5 and Flickr were blocked throughout UAE, not sure if they still are.

12.Education

UAE has one of the highest youth literacy rates in the world (97% for boys, 93% for girls)

13.Celebrities in Dubai

It’s easy to find the celebrities in Dubai because there are only a handful of places where they visit and live in, some of the places: The Palm Islands, Dubai Marina, Dubai Mall, Burj Dubai and Burj Al Arab. If you really have nothing to do then pass by all those places and keep your eyes open and I guarentee in a few days you will find some famous peeps.

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