Dubai, United Arab Emirates

[Charger4U]

Look at this place. I geuss alot of the middles easts oil profits go here, this city is suppose to be the richest place in the world. Here are some of the stuff they have.

This is one of the three plam tree shaped islands they have. Man made.

This is a indoor ski resort, with always 2 feet of packed powder.

outside building.

the worlds only 7 star hotel.

i couldnt find a room pic yet of the hotel.

Pretty sweet huh? thats where are gas money is goin.

Will try to find waht else they have here ina little while.

Fijan found osme room pic sat that hotel a few posts down.

DUDDDDEEEEEE!!!!!!!

the royal suite:

Presidential:

3bedroom

1 bedroom

i also found out that a one night stay, in the 1 bedroom deluxe suite averages out to $1200 us dollars    

Edited May 10, 2006 by Charger4U

[CARBIZ]

There has been a lot of programs on cable about Dubai because of all the massive engineering projects going on. The kingdom is pretty smart, re-inventing itself before the oil runs out. However, I do wonder how they will light the place once the oil is gone.

These places are in the desert! The a/c alone would shame Las Vegas. The UN is going to face an uphill battle with many of these Arab countries, who have no rivers to speak of to tap for hydro power. How will they generate power once oil hits $100 a barrel and they have to import it? They will all want nuclear power generation, but that is going to make the West very nervous.

[Cadillacfan]

Dubai is in the UAE: United Arab Emirates. It's a country bordering Saudi Arabia but much more capitalist in nature and it's one of the most valuable allies in the Middle East that the US currently has.

The palm island is still in construction mode. I saw a show called "Globe Treker" that was discussing it. Rich people from all over the world are buying up plots of land on this secluded island community.

Overall, Dubai is a very beautiful country and is the jewel of the middle east.

Edited May 10, 2006 by Cadillacfan

[Fijian]

x 4

heres the website for that 7 star hotel: http://www.burj-al-arab.com/

[Shantanu]

What annoys me is that they are building the world's tallest building in Dubai. This is not just a proposal, it's actually under construction right now:

http://www.burjdubai.com

These POS blow up our tallest building, then build the world's tallest in their own lands. And it's being built with money earned from oil exports to America, the very people that they hate so much. I hope it meets with some unfortunate calamity, so they can know how it feels.

Yeah, where's your Allah now?

Edited May 10, 2006 by Shantanu

[Fijian]

DUDDDDEEEEEE!!!!!!!

the royal suite:

Presidential:

3bedroom

1 bedroom

i also found out that a one night stay, in the 1 bedroom deluxe suite averages out to $1200 us dollars

[Charger4U]

What annoys me is that they are building the world's tallest building in Dubai.  This is not just a proposal, it's actually under construction right now:

http://www.burjdubai.com

These POS blow up our tallest building, then build the world's tallest in their own lands.  And it's being built with money earned from oil exports to America, the very people that they hate so much.  I hope it meets with some unfortunate calamity, so they can know how it feels.

Yeah, where's your Allah now?

they do wear rags on there heads but there not the ones that blew up the towers. And Fijan:

Sweet room and find!

[Cadillacfan]

What annoys me is that they are building the world's tallest building in Dubai.  This is not just a proposal, it's actually under construction right now:

http://www.burjdubai.com

These POS blow up our tallest building, then build the world's tallest in their own lands.  And it's being built with money earned from oil exports to America, the very people that they hate so much.  I hope it meets with some unfortunate calamity, so they can know how it feels.

Yeah, where's your Allah now?

Wow, that statement was so uninformed and racist. You definately need to start watching the news and have a reality check.

[Shantanu]

they do wear rags on there heads but there not the ones that blew up the towers.  And Fijan:

Sweet room and find!

I understand that the people paying for the construction of the tower are not the same as the 18 guys who rode on the Sept 11 flights.

But can it be denied that Sept 11 was highly popular throughout the Arab World, with people cheering in the streets? Can it be denied that Osama remains one of the most beloved figures in Arab history for what he did to America, "the Great Satan"?

Also, you need to look at the "big picture", to get a historical perspective. And in my mind it looks a whole lot like a bunch of Arabs came over here and blew up our greatest skyscrapers, and then a few years later the Arabs built the world's tallest in their own lands. And how do we respond to that? That is the question.

[Charger4U]

Wow, that statement was so uninformed and racist.  You definately need to start watching the news and have a reality check.

true.

[Shantanu]

Wow, that statement was so uninformed and racist.  You definately need to start watching the news and have a reality check.

Well maybe to show how progressive and liberal you are, you can congratulate the man in the Arab street about the world's tallest being built in his lands. And then he starts to cheer Osama, you can join in on that too.

Edited May 10, 2006 by Shantanu

[Enzora]

These POS blow up our tallest building, then build the world's tallest in their own lands. 

Ah yes, because every single Arabic person is exactly alike. Thank you for your insightful input on the situation in the Middle East.

PS: The WTC towers weren't the tallest buildings in America. The Sears Tower is slightly taller.

And Charger, a turban or ghutra is definitely not just a rag.

[Charger4U]

Ah yes, because every single Arabic person is exactly alike.  Thank you for your insightful input on the situation in the Middle East.

PS:  The WTC towers weren't the tallest buildings in America.  The Sears Tower is slightly taller.

And Charger, a turban or ghutra is definitely not just a rag.

Um sorry they look alike

anyway could we get back on subject? i dont want this thread locked.

[Robert Hall]

I'd like to visit Dubai..I think it would make for an interesting vacation..

[Charger4U]

I'd like to visit Dubai..I think it would make for an interesting vacation..

yes it would be very fun and interesting i would agree.

[wpbharriet]

Am I the only one who thinks this building looks like a giant metallic penis? Are they compensating for something?

[pow]

I understand that the people paying for the construction of the tower are not the same as the 18 guys who rode on the Sept 11 flights.

But can it be denied that Sept 11 was highly popular throughout the Arab World, with people cheering in the streets?  Can it be denied that Osama remains one of the most beloved figures in Arab history for what he did to America, "the Great Satan"?

Also, you need to look at the "big picture", to get a historical perspective.  And in my mind it looks a whole lot like a bunch of Arabs came over here and blew up our greatest skyscrapers, and then a few years later the Arabs built the world's tallest in their own lands.  And how do we respond to that?  That is the question.

Not all turban-wearers think the same, even if they look the same.

[pow]

C/D did an interesting piece on their Cayenne Turbo S experience in Dubai:

Preview Review: 2006 Porsche Cayenne Turbo S

In a land of $1160 hotel rooms, lavish artificial islands, and 115-degree heat, a $112,415 Porsche sport-ute feels right at home.

BY AARON ROBINSON

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFFREY G. RUSSELL

May 2006

Having consulted our Dubai guidebook and determined that it had no Arabic translation for “May we use your 10 camels to pull out our Porsche?” we started digging.

Perhaps the sight of two palefaced westerners scooping sand with their bare hands from under a new 520-hp Porsche Cayenne Turbo S near a busy freeway is a common one in Dubai, because nobody stopped to help. They probably figured the shurta, the police, who until then had been as ubiquitous as camel droppings in their green-and-white Chevy Luminas — actually, rebadged Aussie Holden Commodores — would arrive soon. They never did.

There’s a perverse pleasure in telling friends you’re headed to the Persian Gulf for work. To many Americans, any destination between Bucharest and Bangkok is certain to have bomb-toting fundamentalists on every street corner. Stuck for something sage to say, some tidbit of hard-learned wisdom from their own forays into Third World hot spots such as Cancún, most people just grab your shoulder and whisper, “For God’s sake, be careful!”

If they only knew. Visiting largely crime-free Dubai is less dangerous than visiting Dubuque, or even Miami Beach, a copy of which Dubai seems intent on making itself. Situated on the toe knuckles of the great mukluk boot that is the Arabian Peninsula, Dubai is the second largest and second richest of the seven semi-independent kingdoms that comprise the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dubai wasn’t blessed with copious oil and gas deposits as was the wealthier and somewhat more conservative Abu Dhabi emirate to the southwest, so Dubai has to hustle for a buck.

Run by the Al Maktoum family since 1833 more or less as a privately held corporation (check out the clan’s Web site at www.sheikhmohammed.co.ae), Dubai lives mostly on trade and tourism. A forest of high-rise luxury hotels and condos are ascending along Dubai’s seashore where the two seasons are “hot” and “hotter.” The former has temperatures of 80 to 90 degrees, the latter 105 to 115 degrees with humidity reaching 95 percent. The most ethereal of these new landmarks is the 1050-foot-high Burj Al Arab hotel, completed in 1999, shaped like a translucent catamaran sail and gilded with real gold inside. The smallest one-bedroom suite, even in the broiling summer off-season, is $1160 per.

But the Burj Al Arab seems quaintly modest compared with Dubai’s latest fascination: artificial islands. Three date-palm-shaped islands — the biggest one is 8.7 miles long and 5.3 miles wide — are already being built from trucked-in rock and sand, and a $2 billion project called “The World” envisions an atoll of 250 to 300 “personal” islands that, from orbit, will look like a map of Planet Earth. Who will live in Dubai’s new air-conditioned fantasy of the future? Jaguar drivers, according to one developer whose signs all over town advertise a free Jag with every new-condo purchase.

If it were a free Cayenne Turbo S, we might be tempted. When it’s not hopelessly stuck in sand, the Turbo S is stupidly fast, with a belligerent roar from the twin-turbo 4.5-liter V-8. Larger intercoolers and new control software allow for boost turned up to 12.9 psi, or 4.3 psi higher than that of the base $91,015 Turbo. It’s basically the same hardware as is currently offered in the Turbo’s $19,900 engine-upgrade kit, but with 20 more horsepower, courtesy of the software. Torque is 530 pound-feet.

Porsche says the Turbo S cleaves 0.4 second off the 0-to-60 of the pansy 450-hp Turbo, which has done the deed for us in five seconds flat. In the Turbo S, which weighs up to 5900 pounds with options, both sets of brake rotors grow more than an inch, the fronts measuring just shy of 15 inches across. Alas, the $112,415 Turbo S won’t save Dubai’s real-estate market, as just 1500 copies will be built each year.

Dubai is in a tough neighborhood with Iran and Iraq, but it couldn’t be further from them in terms of social harmony and apparent self-confidence about its destiny, even while embracing the western culture so repellent to the wider Muslim world. Maybe it’s because most of the folks you meet are from somewhere else.

Since forming its union in 1971, the UAE has developed one of the only open, safe, and stable economies in the region and has become a magnet for foreign investment and for immigrants from around the Middle East and south Asia. On our trip we encountered a Syrian who left home to avoid compulsory military service, an Iranian who fled stifling religious strictures, and an uncountable number of Indians who came for the relatively good wages. We did not meet one single native-born Emirati.

Just 20 percent of Dubai’s roughly 1.5 million residents are Emiratis, the cream that includes the ruling sheikhs and their retinues. You might just glimpse a family member, wearing the flawlessly white dishdasha gown favored by Emirati men — women wear a traditional black cloak called an abaya — blasting by in a Mercedes, probably headed for a helicopter waiting to whisk them to one of the sheikhs’ private islands. Dubai’s bottom social rung, which is much bigger and growing rapidly, involves new arrivals from south Asia. They hold most of the menial-wage jobs, especially in construction and service. Hence, a hotel in Dubai looks little different from a hotel in Mumbai, at least as far as the wait staff is concerned.

As a visitor sent to drive Dubai’s glass-smooth blacktops in a new Porsche Cayenne (and creep over its many speed bumps while dodging its phalanx of speed cameras), you’re more likely to meet the middle rung: western expatriots enjoying freedom from income taxes and more established Arab immigrants who own and manage many of the smaller businesses, guys like Mohammed Momani, one of our guides at the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, a fenced area of undeveloped dunes about an hour south of the city. It is said that the UAE has seven colors of sand — one for each emirate. We found at least two here, a red dusting of large, coarse grains over a bottomless sea of latte-colored powder into which a three-ton Cayenne will quickly sink to its rocker panels.

We had reached the reserve late after throwing down bits of concrete and our own floor mats to free the Cayenne earlier. Momani didn’t say much about himself as we sluiced sand in great tumbling sheets from the Cayenne’s now properly half-deflated tires. He reminded us of the sand-driving rules: Always keep moving, avoid using the brakes, don’t make tight turns, and only stop on the downhills.

Momani showed us how to wriggle out of a trap. Lock the diff in low, apply light throttle, and twist the steering wheel back and forth to build up sand under the tires. Slowly, magically, the Cayenne would move sideways out of its own hole and develop enough momentum to resume skiing the dunes. We were burning a lot of fuel as we slogged slowly through the sand, and the Cayenne’s water temp needle eased into the red.

“Don’t worry about that,” Momani commanded. I asked him if he were from Dubai.

“No, I’m from Jamaica, mon.” He said it as if the next words might be, “If I were from Dubai, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you.”

Wondering how the Cayenne rates with Dubai’s subculture of hard-core off-roaders, we met up with Emil Khneisser, a Lebanese who runs a popular 4x4 club rabid for Jeeps. Sipping Caffé Mochas in an Abu Dhabi Starbucks, I asked him if Porsche Cayennes turn up at the organized drives.

“People come from the city to show off. You will see these Porsches, Range Rovers, Hummers. They will go out and bash them. They don’t mind.”

The Cayenne Turbo S has all the off-road hardware of the other Cayenne models, including an adjustable suspension to lift the body on air springs, a lockable center differential on its permanent four-wheel drive, and a 2.7:1 low-range gear reduction.

But horsepower is what attracts its buyers, and that is usually their downfall, said Khneisser. “If you stay above 40 kph [25 mph], you can go anywhere,” he said, and you don’t need 520 horsepower for that. For Khneisser and his friends, a Jeep Wrangler is the only safe choice for escaping into the wilder part of the UAE called the Empty Quarter, there to camp, drink, and smoke from the water-filled shisha known as the “hubbly-bubbly.”

Shortly after admitting he wasn’t from Jamaica but elsewhere in the Middle East, Momani said, “Dubai is a fruit salad. You can tell where everyone comes from by the accent. But we never talk about religion or politics. The thing is respect.”

But Dubai is changing, said Momani, now on a roll. “Life in Dubai before was completely different. Today everybody is running after money — big houses, big cars. Nobody is looking out for the neighbor.”

Nor, indeed, two westerners digging sand by the roadside.

[Cadillacfan]

Well maybe to show how progressive and liberal you are, you can congratulate the man in the Arab street about the world's tallest being built in his lands.  And then he starts to cheer Osama, you can join in on that too.  

I never said I was liberal. In fact.. I'm a registered republican and I want Al-Qaida off the face of this earth and Iraq turned into a democracy as much as the next person. I'm just not an ignorant bigot who clumps a few bastards with an entire region and call them terrorists. Maybe if you got out of your bubble and talk with people who have emmigrated from that region to our country, you'd think differently.

I'll state it again... the UAE is very capatilist (extremely rare for an Arab country)and is one of our most valuable allies in the middle east because they don't want to blow us up. Instead, they want to buy our goods and have an economic partnership with us.

Really. Watch the news once in a while.. You'll learn something valuable.

I don't want to make this topic political so I'll just end my rant here.

Edited May 10, 2006 by Cadillacfan

[Charger4U]

I don't want to make this topic political so I'll just end my rant here.

Thank you. I dont want my name coming up in another closed thread.

BTW could yall take this to PM cause i thought polotics were not to be discussed in the lounge?

[Intrepidation]

Didn't edmunds do a road test with a Mini a while back?

Also, I just have to say this: Shantanu, you're a racist idiot.

[Charger4U]

Didn't edmunds do a road test with a Mini a while back?

Also, I just have to say this: Shantanu, you're a racist idiot.

couldnt you kept that for PM?

[Charger4U]

and all of you,

[Intrepidation]

couldnt you kept that for PM? 

maybe, but that's the only stsaement i'm planning to make about that. anyway, that hotel is sweet...looks awesome!

[pow]

Didn't edmunds do a road test with a Mini a while back?

Yep...

[trinacriabob]

I was in line at the airport in Athens to cross back to Italy before coming back to the States and there was a guy from Kuwait in line next to me. He spoke English fairly well and started talking to me. He said that their country is actually very progressive and that it would not be at all uncomfortable for a tourist and that I should make the trek...so this info about Dubai, with all of its wealth, does not surprise me.

[Intrepidation]

Yep...

that looks like a fun road to tear up!

Edited May 11, 2006 by Dodgefan

[Fijian]

i have always dreamed of living near this place...someday........someday....

...drive my M3 around that thang all daayy and aallll night!!

[capriceman]

driving a boat to town is not fun every day.

I like snow season so its a treat to wait for it. I hate instant gratification.

I rather stay at a econlodge even tho i can afford the radison.

In the words of Washington just modified " if america has political sides that the people let control there sides are future well being is doomed for failure. even tho parties are impossible to stop. we can let there curption rule are daily lives

[ZL-1]

I was in line at the airport in Athens to cross back to Italy before coming back to the States and there was a guy from Kuwait in line next to me.  He spoke English fairly well and started talking to me.  He said that their country is actually very progressive and that it would not be at all uncomfortable for a tourist and that I should make the trek...so this info about Dubai, with all of its wealth, does not surprise me.

I've been to Kuwait 2 times, and it is a fairly open-minded country but more conservative than the UAE or Bahrain.