Dubai is truly a unique place. It’s a melting pot of cultures, a concrete jungle of extravagant over the top architecture, a vastly distant lower and upper class and a culture that is truly confused between traditions and modernization. My initial impression of Dubai was positive as a whole. It was somewhere I could see myself and an inspiring place to live. My second impression is much the same, but I feel like I am seeing much of the uglier side of Dubai. This post will focus on mostly the negatives of Dubai.

Dubai’s main attraction from my point of view is its global population. There are literally people from all over the world here. Even with a diverse population there is still an unspoken racial food chain. At the top are the Emirates. Laws seem to magically bend in favor of locals. For example when driving on the highway, it never fails that a local Emirate will tailgate you doing double the speed limit, honking, swerving back and forth impatiently and flashing his brights.

Every business in UAE must be in partnership with a local, which automatically makes most of them rich by most standards. I cannot attest to how true it is, but it’s a common conception that the locals are very lazy. I guess it would make sense if there is not much they need to do, when laws are automatically in their favor.

Second from the top would probably be the Expats. Further down are the Filipinos, which seem to be hired on mostly as hospitality staff. Even further down are the taxi drivers which mostly consist of Pakistanis and Indians. Finally at the very bottom are the construction workers. They are paid next to nothing, work 12hr shifts, 6days a week and 24hrs a day. The live in worker camps on the outskirts of the city and fuel the Dubai’s colossal building growth.

With the rate UAE has developed, there have been many key elements in infrastructure that seems to be missing. The planning stage for this city seems to have been skipped. For a place so modern, it is amazing to discover that there is no sewage system. The entire city is run on septic tanks. Large trucks are used to dispose these tanks on a weekly basis and dump, pun intended, waste at a waste management plant in Sharjah, a neighboring emirate. These trucks wait in mile long queues and are paid by the truckload. Sometimes these truck drivers to get more payments will just illegal dump the waste in the sea.

Dubai roads and highways are oddly networked. The main highway that runs along the Emirate has only a few overpasses. Thus if you miss an exit or need to go the other direction, you sometimes find yourself driving miles down the opposite direction before finding an overpass or a U turn area. In fact U turns are commonly used in getting from point A to point B as 99% of roads here have medians, making left turns impossible.

The major roads and highways usually have names, but most roads do not. This makes getting around almost impossible. Directions are usually given by landmarks such as major hotels or malls. Because of this, Dubai does not have an official postal system. There are no addresses and buildings do not have numbers. “Are you serious?” was my response when I first discovered this. Instead packages have a box where you can draw a picture. For example when Mike gets a package the box shows that his building is across 2 streets from Lamcy Plaza, next to the Sunfresh supermarket, on the 5th floor.

The government is random in their policies. Things can change on a whim. I was able to experience several instances of this. First a bank holiday was declared the day before. Second, policies on UAE ID cards changed back and forth three times since I arrived. Thirdly, the day before New Years Sheik Mo, ruler of Dubai, declared that all Dubai NYE celebrations were to be cancelled to show solidarity for the people of Gaza. Thus all the hotels and nightclubs had to cancel their even at the last minute.

Lastly laws change depending how good of a day the police officer is having, how high up you are on the racial food chain and how soon his shift is up. To me it seems like kids are running this country. Speaking of Sheik Mo this guy looks the same on all of the pictures I’ve seen of him. He always has a grumpy look on his face and is blankly staring up into space. Kind of reminds me Zoolander. To quote the Will Ferrell “Blue Steel, La Tigra, Ferrari, they’re all the same. It’s the same look. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!”

Dubai is probably most known for the man made islands. Currently most of them are still under construction with the World Island as one of the newest developments. However after meeting some marine biologists that work out here, I’ve been told that these developments are completely destroying the marine life in this area.

I don’t mean to touch only on the negative aspects of Dubai and I don’t feel like Dubai is bad place overall. I just feel it makes a more interesting post than if I was to say “What up guys, I was in Dubai it’s awesome, like New York and Vegas times 100”

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