Dubai is a great city. It reminds me a little of Las Vegas in that it is created in the desert rather than evolved, but doesn't have quite the same over-indulgence as Vegas; or maybe it does but in a different way. It also reminds me of an old computer game called SimCity. In SimCity you would point your mouse and click, and an area of land would be given over to Residential properties, or Industry, or you would build a police station, Library, etc. The computer controlled occupants of the city would then prosper or decay depending on how you determined the compositions of the land use. Here, I feel that someone has clicked a mouse and said "That shall be the tallest skyscraper in the world!" (Burj Khalifa at 2,723ft), or "That shall be the most luxurious hotel in the world!" (the 7* Burj Al Arab Hotel), or "That shall be an enormous entertainment complex" (Dubailand currently under development and estimated to cost ~US$64 billion). This obviously takes huge amounts of money, but there is also a whiff of genius here. The company that is developing and running the metro is only allowed for charge passengers at little more than cost of the service, and makes its money instead in land trading. Before the metro is extended, it is allowed to buys land at pre-extension prices, and then sells the land after the extension. Therefore, it is strongly motivated to develop the metro in a way that increases the value of the area being developed. Rather than scrimping on the cost of development, it is driven to enhance the value and prosperity of the area. Clever hey.

Earlier this week I went to the Dubai Pet-show. The largest part of the show was given over to dogs, with show rings for best in breed etc., and an agility trial. Visitors were allowed to bring their dogs and enter them in the show, so there were lots of dogs about - and nearly all of them very well behaved. A few got a bit excited and a little overheated, but you could see that most of them (and their owners) where have a great time. A smaller section was given over to cats looking to be re-homed. I've tried hard not to accumulate "stuff" as I have travelled, but this was surely my sternest challenge. There were some achingly cute cats, but I couldn't see how I could squeeze them into my backpack.

Afterwards, to help cool down, I visited Ski Dubai - a 22,500 square meter indoor ski area (click goes the mouse). I would love to say that I jumped into a pair of ski's and did the 400 meter long black run. Instead, I did the zorbing, coming down a small slope in an inflated sphere, and a longer toboggan-style run in an inflatable type. My only other experience of artificial ski slopes was a wet afternoon in Merthyr Tydfil so I've little to compare against, but this place is truly extraordinary.

Another day I did "the desert thing". In the morning I did a Dune Buggy ride (relatively tame in truth), and in the evening I did a the Sundowner Experience. The latter is a combination of a falconry display, a drive through the desert in a land cruiser, watching the sunset over the desert, and then to a desert camp-site for dinner and entertainment (Belly Dancer, Short Camel Rides, Hookah waterpipes, ...). The desert sand is so fine and dry, it blows around very easily. By the time we had finished, everyone's face felt like a piece of fine sandpaper. I think I'll be digging out bits of sand from my ears for weeks to come, but it was a nice change from the glamour of the city.

On my last day I visited Dubai Mall, the world's largest shopping mall by area (click) with 1,200 shops. It was probably one of the nicest Mall's I've been to and was spotlessly clean. Given the local fine sand, I'm tempted to suggest that Dubai is the only country to have invented the feather duster before the wheel. Then I went up the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest skyscrpaer (click-click) to the observation deck on floor 124. The ride up was in an elevator travelling at over 20mph. As you can imagine, the view was amazing. A very nice touch was the "telescopes" which allowed you to view the scene as it is at the time, but could switch to a night-time image or to an image from the past all of the same perspective. But I still think seeing the tower from a distance gives you the best view, when it makes all the surrounding skyscrapers seem so, well, inadequate.

To add a bit of balance to my experience, I finally did a walking tour around "old" Dubai. We started at a restored building, take a boat across the creek before wandering around the spice market, the gold souk, and the fish and vegetable markets. The thing that knocked me over though was when our guide said that this "old" stuff was really as it was only about 50 years ago when they discovered the oil. My SimCity analogy was closer than I had realised.

I've only had a short time in Dubai, and been fighting a bad stomach for all my time here, but this is definitely a great place to visit. Of course, money can't buy everything, but if you are the least bit curious, the Dubai can give you a peek of what modern money can buy. It will be even more impressive in the future since the development is still on-going, but the local oil wells are only expected to last another 5 years. However, I suspect that the money has been expertly invested and that this place has built up enough momentum to survive very nicely.

And today my holiday finishes as I travel back to the UK. I think I'm going to need a little while to put this into some perspective, but I've had an amazing experience. Of course, given the snow in UK, perhaps my flight will be cancelled...