Dubai + Abu Dhabi 2024

Overview

I went to meet up with Serena in Dubai on April 15, and traveled to Abu Dhabi as well in a 1.5 week trip.

Departure

SFO -> DXB.

Emirates business class. I didn't know that even with business class, there is free limo service to SFO if you're within 50 miles. Had my neighbor drive me to airport instead -- dumb. Next time!

The Airport Lounge

Emirates SFO lounge is good. Crowded but tables aren't too close so it doesn't feel cramped. You can board from the lounge normally, but we were delayed by 2h and had to change gates so had to go outside the lounge to board the plane. The food's OK.

The Seat

The seat's great. 1-2-1 configuration on an A380. I got the window seat. I like these because the lay-flats actually have room for your legs. In SQ business class, your legs are crammed into a small cubby hole, making sleeping a little difficult. Sleeping's very easy on an Emirates business class flight. Of course, I tried my best not to sleep.

The ICE entertainment system was great; tons of movies. I watched a lot of trashy American action films on the plane. My seat had 2 windows, whose shades are electronically controlled. There's also various plane cameras you can look on the TV--this made the takeoff and landing very immersive. The flight's 16 hours, going north, through the North Pole, and then down South. Witnessed 2 sunsets. As you can see below, the first sunset was on the left (since I'm flying north and sun sets in the west), and the 2nd sunset's on the right (since I'm flying south). Take that, flat-earthers!

When they dim the cabin lights, there are little LEDs resembling stars on the roof, like a Rolls-Royce.

Amenities

The PJs are really great. Nice, airy, and stretchy. And a bunch of other items, like lip balm and shaving kit, etc. in the amenities kit. The bag's more impressive though, and from Bulgari.

Airplane Lounge

This is the best part of Emirates business class. There's a bar area where you can keep drinking. And even better, there are large seating areas with windows that makes it feel like a private jet.

There's crowds of people in the first 2-3 hours of the flight. But the rest of the 16 hours, it's fairly private back there.

It's also where people line up to go to the bathroom. This is a good thing because unlike most planes, it's a pretty wide area so you're not cramped while waiting in line to pee on a plane.

The bad thing is there's almost always people waiting to go to the bathroom because everyone in business class can have unlimited free drinks.

The Great Dubai Flood

Met up with Serena in Terminal 1 of DXB which is a clusterfuck compared to T3 (which is where Emirates Airline's based). After a long wait to get an Uber, it started raining. Didn't think much of it.

Woke up next day and things were flooded. Luckily we arrived when we did, otherwise we might've been stuck at the airport for 19+ hours.

Not much to say here other than my 1st time in Dubai and my impression is that it's a 3rd world country. The hotel's leaking water everywhere -- the fancy Italian restaurant had leaks above the window, so the water was flowing down it, like a water feature. 3/4 elevators were closed, and the one that was open was dripping water from the shaft.

Most rainfall in 75+ years, yes. But it's still only 142mm of rain in a day. Many cities get 100mm+ in a day and don't flood like this. And buildings / malls don't leak water like this. Just shoddy construction, period.

They drained water with trucks that would suck up water and then dump the water in a local sewer.

And because of the flood, there are not many taxis available and many roads were flooded. As a result, price gouging for taxis occurred. Serena had to go to a conference and reported that a 10 minute ride was $50 USD (good thing it can be expensed).

Plus, there was a conference so there's many people in town + lack of ability to get from point A to point B = bad impressions for Dubai.

Anyway, due to the insane taxi fares I didn't get to explore Dubai much but my impressions of it, like I said, is that it's 3rd world. Except 3rd world infrastructure can handle a normal amount of rainfall like 142mm. So it's probably more accurate to say that Dubai's worst than 3rd world, despite all the marketing. Left for Abu Dhabi on April 20th AKA BTC halving day (4 days later) and some parts of the highway were still flooded.

Dubai Bling lied to me.

Abu Dhabi

We went to Abu Dhabi to check out some 5 star hotels there.

St. Regis (Apr 20)

They upgraded us to a suite. It's pretty amazing. A full living room, bedroom, grand bathroom, as well as a walk-in closet with stitched-leather walls. A corner unit, we got views of the gulf + neighboring islands from both the bedroom and the living room.

Other differentiators:

• There's a 24/7 butler service included
• Champagne Sabering, where they chop open a champagne bottle and give you free booze (2+ drinks per person)
• Regular welcome drink (nonalcoholic)
• 2 drinks in either of their bars, complimentary.
• 50% off drinks, happy hour (about $10 for a cocktail)
• Birthday cake with balloons for Serena in-room.
• During the Sabering, they also surprised us with another cake.
• Toilet is soft-close
• Impeccable service
• Insane brunch buffet, with tons of pastries and fresh protein from juicy roasted chicken to steak.
• Private beach.
• Only hotel that timed evening service properly (i.e. they know when we eat dinner, and just come up to clean during that time)
• Common area has Arabic coffee that someone pours for you, and sweets.
• Excellent service all around.

Since we had $100 Amex dining credit, we used it at an Italian restaurant. We were originally concerned about not being full, but after the 2 cakes and the below food, I was actually unbelievably stuffed.

5/5 stars.

Next day we went to the 3rd biggest mosque in the world / largest in UAE. Not as good as the one we went to in Casablanca, because they roped off most of the sections.

But it's free, so.

Here's a video walkthrough as pictures don't do the room justice:

Conrad (April 21)

As I write this whole post, I am in Conrad. Also very nice in its own way. St. Regis suite is very luxurious, smells amazing, and has its own personality. Conrad's room is more streamlined, but still very 5-stars and grand. Conrad's gym is also nicer.

Great view (it's only 5 mins away from St. Regis), and they surprised us with birthday cake + wine which I am holding in the picture below.

Differentiators:

• Killer views, like St. Regis
• Elevators are exposed so as you go up to the 31st floors, it's like your ascending/descending from a helicopter.

The toilet cover is not soft close, and the breakfast was OK--it was super busy and crowded.

Checkout was very slow. 15 minutes and there was only 2 people in front of us. There was 4 staff and only 1 did anything, and took their sweet time chatting people up even though the line was getting longer and longer.

Upon checkout, booked a 3-hour ride to go to a famous Ritz Carlton in the desert, where celebrities and royalty go.

3/5 stars.

Video walkthrough:

Ritz (April 22)

This Ritz Carlton was in the middle of the desert. It was very nice, and the room was huge, and we had a private pool. Tons of activities to do. We booked a package that includes:

• 1 activity
• Dinner
• Breakfast

We wanted to do the animal feeding activity but last minute, they said it'd cost 50 AED per person, despite the site implying heavily that all activites are inclulded in the $800+/night package.

So, we opted to ride horses instead the next morning.

But on April 22, we:

• Checked in
• Swam in our private pool
• Walked around premises and saw giant tortoises eating fresh salad.
• Had a buggy drive us around to take a look at the onyx on the property.
• Attended a falcon show.
• Ate a delicious steak dinner.

The next morning, we went to ride horses. We did it at 7AM and someone picked us up from a buggy at 6:45AM. This was great as instead of afternoon 40C+ heat, it was quite cool in the morning. This allowed the horse handlers to give us more time than normal, and let us feed the horses as well as take our time with nature. We also saw royalty doing equestrian training.

Main differentiators:

• Lots of nature-y things to do
• Extremely large suite
• Private pool
• Mostly great staff
• Yummy steakhouse
• Diptique amenities

Steak dinner:

Bad:

• Staff is confused. Some would say booking a taxi takes credit card, but last minute told us that we needed cash.
• Bad at email communication. We wanted to clarify some things prior to our booking, and never got a response.
• They nickel-and-dime everything which is annoying considering how expensive the package was. For example, they only told us that the animal feeding costs extra money at the very last minute. Only 100AED which is not a lot, but it feels really gross from the customer's POV. Why not just charge us $850 for example, instead of $820 and then nickel and diming us?
  • And, for the steak dinner, while included, they charged us for water. On top of that, the included dinner is basically an appetizer + main + dessert. Some of the menu items you had to pay extra to choose--fair enough. Except all of the steak options except 1 (at a steakhouse) requires extra money, and about half the other items require extra money. So to say that 'dinner is included' in the original marketing is, while true, somewhat deceptive. Again, $7 water? Why not just charge us $827/night and skip the annoying nickel-and-diming? Seems very odd to do for a high-ticket product.
• No awning on top of private pool, so birds keep pooping on the pool.
• Many flies.
• Many handles are dusty / hotel room not very clean.
• Timed evening service poorly.
• Toilet not soft close.

Overall, good experience but a lot of small details make the high-ticket pricing not worth it, and gross in some scenarios. For a 5-star experience, I expect everything to be smooth, but it wasn't. Glad to have experienced it, but not worth it in my opinion.

Rating: 2/5 stars.

Video walkthrough:

Back To Dubai

We wanted to stay a night at Dubai because we were leaving the next day, and didn't want to risk a very long car ride to DXB.

Haptoor Luxury Palace (April 23)

This is the last hotel.

Didn't have much expectations for this one as this was the cheapest Amex Fine Hotel Resorts. The room they upgraded us to was gigantic. Giant bedroom area that is probably much larger than most single family homes' master bedroom. And a living room area housing 3 sofas + coffee table + TV, with ample room to move around. The bathroom was large as well, a little bit smaller than St. Regis', but not by much, maybe 20 sqft. And a walk-in closet.

Anyway, here are their differentiators:

• Huge space
• Diptique amenities, like St. Regis, but you can take these home as they are packaged
• Like St. Regis, there is complimentary snacks + arabic coffee at reception lobby
• Live music from time to time (harp and piano) at lobby.
• Some complimentary amenities, like candied dates (ranging from dark to white chocolate to rose-flavored)
• Excellent service; they also have butler service like St. Regis
• Toilets are soft-close!
• Butler service can be done via WhatsApp, which is 100X more convenient than having to call them using their phone

They gave us a complimentary cake for Serena's birthday after I texted them. I thought it'd take them at least half an hour but they came up within 15 minutes. With custom lettering. Insane.

Here's the dates snack that they gave us:

Dinner was quite good; their steakhouse is a bit expensive ($200 for 2) but it is a tomahawk deal. We skipped it since we just had steak at Ritz, and Florence tomahawk steaks are less than half the price, so it seems like a bad deal, even with Amex covering $100 of the cost. Instead, we went to the restaurant next door, which is a French + Italian fusion place, as far as I can tell. Had escargot and pasta. Surprisingly good, given I normally hate fusion cuisine. And surprisingly full, as the portions are not small. The escargot was really good because they took it out of the shell for you, and was piping hot, with a little pastry puff on top.

Best part: for the entire 2-hour service, the large restaurant was empty and it literally was just us 2. The next morning though, we had free breakfast buffet at the same place, and it was packed.

Pasta was good - very tomato-y sauce and very generous with shrimp.

Next morning, we had breakfast buffet there like all other 5-star hotels. Ordered eggs, like all other 5-star hotels. Their hash brown's really good though compared to the other ones. Others are too burned, or not crispy enough, or too dry on the inside. This one was perfect though.

Whole stay was excellent overall. Since our flight was at 3AM next day, they let us extend our stay from 4PM checkout to 5:30PM checkout.

I give this a 4/5 stars though because 1) the room did smell like stale cigarettes, and 2) the check-in process was a bit confusing.

Long Way Home

Dubai Mall

We left the hotel at 6PM and walked around the Dubai Mall a bit, until 11PM. We went to their mall's Chinatown, which had pretty good food, though New York prices.

Here's some Lanzhou noodle we had, but we also had Dan Dan Mien and some grilled lamb.

Then, we saw the famed Dubai Fountain show. It is a bit lackluster compared to Macau's or Las Vegas's, but it's free, so whatever. It was crowded but the secret we found later on is that if you go to the Nike Store inside, you can see the fountain show again, without the crowds.

Walked back in and saw the aquarium. You don't really need tickets to go, as you can see the whole thing outside, and there are multiple angles you can view it, from different floors and areas of the mall. Tons of fish, shark, stingray, and other fish somehow getting along and not ripping each others' head off. Miraculous.

DXB

DXB is kind of a shitshow, but not as much as JFK is. We went to a lounge but Priority Pass / Amex wasn't accepted, even though there are large signs to say that Priority Pass is welcome. This is confusing. Next, we went to another lounge, which is a restaurant, basically, and sat there for a couple hours.

Went to our gate, but there's additional security checks. The guy literally scanned every single item in everyone's bags. There were only 4 people ahead of us, but the whole process took 25 minutes. This is to the point where they were announcing final boarding which was hilarious because half the plane is stuck behind the guards doing their jobs very slowly.

Even the guy's manager is telling him to hurry the hell up, to which he continued at the same pace.

And the irony of it all? Despite it being the longest and "most thorough" security check I've ever been in, Serena still accidentally had her water bottle we got from the airport lounge through. (No, water's not allowed--they made me throw mine away).

It gets kind of worse.

Serena had premium economy and I rode in economy, in the same flight. It's always suffering to fly one way business class, and the other economy.

But what made it worse was the people. Different airports attract different demographics.

You see, doing economy from SFO isn't that bad because you get the tech bros and some VCs, mostly. The latter are annoying because they talk too much, but nothing like the demographic that DXB attracts. Here's a shortlist of the highlights of what the DXB takeoff demo:

• They boss around flight attendants around constantly, like they are flying first/business, despite being in economy.
  • Flight attendants running around constantly, very busy, all 14 hours of the flight--I have never seen this much flight attendant activity.
  • Ex: They might order food, but want to schedule it for 45 minutes later while the rest of the cabin has their food now.
  • Ex: They want extra slippers, even though there are no amenities for slippers.
  • Ex: They want to swap seats on takeoff and landing, just because.
• They don't respect personal space. One guy kept touching my jacket and I told him not to touch my stuff and he looked at me like I am a maniac and told me to "calm down."
• They are entitled. I already scooted out of the way so these guys who kept touching my jacket could go to the bathroom but they told me to move even more so they can go to the toilet (I guess they wanted me to go all the way to the front, past the bathroom). I'm not going to do more than the minimum to let someone go to the bathroom, because what's next, they want me to wipe their ass for them? Instead, I just retorted that the toilets are in the back and I was in front of them and was already out of their way, so I don't know where they want me to move.
• They are entitled, part 2: someone kept complaining to one of the flight attendants that during the great Dubai Flood, Emirates wasn't answering her phone calls, as if it was the flight attendant's fault. She kept bitching for 20 minutes, and seem to be unable to wrap around the concept that call lines are probably busy if you all of a sudden have 100X the call volume as normal, and that it is unrealistic for an airline to hire 100X more call operators, and train them, within a 72 hour period.
• Many times, I saw the attendants' face (yes, multiple) with sighs of frustration, exhaustion, and general questioning of life choices. I have never seen this once in flight attendants, even on United. But I saw this many times during my 14 hour flight.

Keep in mind that these are only the things I witnessed. I asked Serena about this and she had many more, but similar, horror stories in the premium economy cabin.

After this painful 14 hour flight, we were welcomed in Terminal 4 of JFK with a very full Global Entry line. It was very full because it was full of people in line that were:

• Tourists that thought Global Entry meant "tourists," despite the fact that there is an explicit tourist line right before it.
• People not registered for Global Entry, who lined up in the wrong line and thought they would register there (it's a different line).
• People who are Global Entry, but didn't bother doing the 3-second face scan, so held up the line as officers needed to verify that they were in fact Global Entry.

What should have been a 20-second line was 30-mins+.

Good thing the luggage took 90 minutes to get delivered to the belt though, so it didn't matter much.

I live in NY and so I always joke around internally that NY is a shithole, but I've never felt such relief and joy getting out of the airport and home to my NY apartment.

Conclusion And Lessons

Aside from the staycation style 5-star hotel stays, Dubai sucks.

I travel a lot and try to keep an optimism for different cultures and differences, but Dubai is simply a joke. Here's what I hate about Dubai:

• It's shallow and there is no culture at all. Many landmarks are just a bastardized copy/paste of other landmarks. Vegas does this too, but it is obvious that it is supposed to be a parody. Dubai tries to spin their landmarks off as high-tech or something authentic, which feels gross.
• The people work really slowly, like in Europe, except they don't have the vibes nor the attractions to back it up.
• All Dubai attractions can be done for cheaper and much better elsewhere (except for 5-star hotel staycations which there are an oversupply of in UAE).
• It's inauthentic: it's a 3rd-world country marketed as a tech-first, high-tech place. It cannot weather a regular-sized rainstorm without shutting down the city for days.
• There's not really good food there, except restaurants that copy other cuisines.
• There's a strong sense of hierarchy there, where if you have more money you are better than other people and can treat others rudely.
• Aside from 5-star hotels, service everywhere universally sucks. Worse than NY and that's saying a lot.

Without drugs and hookers / strip clubs, Dubai is basically Vegas, minus the fun and is more expensive.

For Middle Eastern culture and authenticity and a place worth visiting (and MUCH cheaper), I find Morocco to be superior in every single possible way.

Lesson

Marketing > product. Dubai is super popular (and I went because of Dubai Bling, mostly) and is marketed as a very high-tech, cool place to be. But upon visiting, you find out that the product sucks. Despite this, the marketing keeps Dubai alive and there's something to be said about marketing hard despite your product being complete shit to do well in business.

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