Tuesday began very early: at 4am I was at the lobby waiting for the shuttle that would transport me to the balloon in the desert. After 95 km south of Dubai we arrived to take off point. In a few minutes we were flying over the dunes, and seconds away to see the sunrise in the desert. What a beautiful and relaxing scene, the hour flight seemed like 10 minutes.
After ballooning, I began touring the city. Just incredible how in the middle of the desert there’s this marvelous, green, in construction city. The sheikh Maktoum knew the emirate wouldn’t live from petroleum for eternity, so he began investing in infrastructure, education and health.
Hotels, banks, highways, skyscrapers, neighborhoods for electronic companies, for media companies, shopping malls, grass, flowers, trees, the biggest airport, the biggest building, the biggest handmade port, an airline, artificial islands, the Burj Al-Arab hotel in 1999 and BOOM, only 7% of Dubai´s income comes from petroleum nowadays.
A city well planned and well executed for tourism and investment.
Huge shopping malls with very low prices as the government doesn’t collect taxes, cars so cheap (for the same tax reason) that even taxis are luxury cars, futuristic and historic design 5 star hotels, hundreds of restaurants with any type of food, snow covered park to sky, Dubailand, F1 autodrome, everything you would like for an adult playground is in Dubai. Just amazing what they did turn sand into.
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