Not a reporter, not a historical writer, just a write for fun and report opinions and what I see so when I say factoids with a question mark, it means that I have not looked things up in the encyclopedia or even Wikipedia, I'm just telling it like I see it or like someone related to me. Interesting things I think and passing them along for fun.
Dubai uses some 150 million (yes MILLION) gallons of water a day. Approximately 97% (YES 97%) of it is from desalinization meaning they have taken the water from the ocean and boiled it and processed it and basically distilled it to get rid of the salt and minerals. Not an inexpensive process. On my hubby's projects, they allow for 100 gallons of water a day per person for their use for showering, drinking, etc. So Dubai's daily use could possibly cover 150 million people in some circumstances. Imagine that.
Our guide today told us that Abu Dhabi has 1.8 million occupants and Dubai has 3.5 while the total number of people in the country is 8 million. Of the 8 million, only 20% are native. The rest are ex-pats, construction workers, contractors, etc from a wide variety of nationalities. We have seen a lot of Philippinas in stores and as caretakers and a lot of men from various African nations in the hotels plus a lot of Indians and Sri Lankans as drivers. Not sure they even know.
There is construction everywhere. We saw a couple of buildings where we weren't sure if they were going up or coming down. The freeways are all fairly new as is the monorail system. My last visit here was 2009. I didn't recognize a thing. Burj Khalifa was not finished then, no monorail, now satellite sky scrapper cities. I think if we came back in another year or two, we wouldn't recognize anything then either.
there are sky scrapper satellite cities all over the place. It's like having half dozen main "downtown" or "city center" areas. But many of them seem to have a single purpose such as Internet City, Marina City, or whatever they have named it, commerce, banking, whatever. And in each area of specialization and sky scrappers, there are hotels and malls and restaurants galore.
We've seen more Rolls Royce's on the road and in hotel and mall parking lots than we've ever seen elsewhere. Places like Monte Carlo are not playing into the picture here because I wasn't looking at stuff like that when I visited there.
You can buy some antibiotics here over the counter but you can't buy a beer anywhere except in a hotel bar, that we've found yet.
Dubailand is being built which will be bigger than Walt Disney World. And supposedly will have the biggest and scariest roller coaster.
There are about 5 aquariums I think. we've not seen them all. most are in a hotel or a mall.
There are many new mosques under construction. If someone is rich enough, he can build a mosque to help pave his way into heaven. There are a lot of rich people here.
Carrefour, the French grocery store chain, seems to be the grocery store of choice in most of the malls. But there is a heavy presence of British stores as well, Harvey Nichols, Debingham's. Starbucks are everywhere as well as Popeye's Chicken, Tiffany, Crate n Barrel, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme. Each mall that we've been in so far have been almost exactly alike in the stores and name brands and such. Except for the Arabic writing, you could be in a mall anywhere in the world, they are all so similar and alike. And it is quite hard to find things actually made here that are not glitzy, over-the-top, shiny, and very, very pricey.
There will be more factoids later
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