Due to it being one of the most expensive places on our travels, we are only staying in Dubai for 3 days. It's quite an incredible place - with traditional communal houses cooled cleverly with 'wind towers', next to huge modern skyscrapers built along a bustling trading port on 'the creek' in the middle of the desert! It also boasts the world's only 7 star hotel and by 2008 will have the world's tallest building! Hard to believe that only a few decades ago (before the discovery of oil) that this was just a little fishing village on the Arabian Gulf! We've done the whole touristy bit - fought off the touts in the Gold Souk, visited the museum and the original house of the Sheik, Saeed Al Maktoum. Also went deep into the desert and went 'dune bashing' - imagine plunging down a black slope sideways in a 4x4 and you get a bit of an idea of what our crazy driver put us through!! Pure terror but great fun!!! After that we went to a touristy 'Bedouin' camp and had an Arabic feast and watched a belly dancer (from Russia!!!) perform, smoked a Sheesha pipe and got henna tatoos which last for three weeks - and the end stages apparently look like a horrible rash...seemed like a good idea at the time! :o/ The food is wonderful - especially the freshly squeezed juice stalls which are everywhere! Also loved the Arabic breakfast dish, called 'Foul Madam' (sort of a refried bean dip) and had a bit of a giggle trying to figure out how it got it's English name... "So what do you call this dish back in England, Sir?" "Back in England we would call this..." tee hee!