Impressions of Dubai and another Rant on Gulf Culture

This is a long-overdue post. I really have no excuse except that I didn’t realize I had a few pictures on my camera to share (I like to include pics with my posts since there's not much groundbreaking content here).

Let me start by saying that this 'Dubai Review' morphs into a semi-coherent rant and may be on the wrong side of political correctness (to be debated). My only defense is that it's been a long, but interesting, 2 and a half months and I'm eagerly awaiting my return to Boston.

Prior to my trip, I was really looking forward to a weekend in Dubai. First, any weekend not spent in Bahrain is a reason for joy. Second, our good buddy, Patrick, was stationed in Dubai over the summer working at McKinsey. Patrick, for better or worse, is among the hardcore partiers at Sloan so I knew we were going to have a good weekend. And indeed we did. We went to a club called Neo that had banging music and hot women. We went for the bottle service and had 4 bottles between 4 of us. This was followed by an afterhours eatery where we invited ourselves to sit with some random girls and proceeded to eat their food, tell them to leave, and then ordered more food. The next day and a half was spent combining our MIT Sloan brain power to piece the night together. Good times...

If the story above is reminiscent of a trip to Vegas, well, you're not far off. Dubai is considered to be the Vegas, or perhaps L.A., of the Middle East. Opulence and decadence abound. Not really my sort of thing. I see it more as "fake" and "tacky". It's one of the reasons that I could never live in Vegas or L.A. Yes, they are great places to visit and party in but after 4 days, I'm usually ready to call it quits.

(note: the ranting is about to start, so let me insert a few pics here. I'll add to these when I get more from AofA)



Dubai's population is 85% ex-pats which includes both white collar (typically Westerners) and blue collar (typically South and Southeast Asian) workers. The other 15% of the population are native Emirates (pronounced Emiratees) who control the flow of money. Of course, they wouldn't know what a hard day’s work is if it came rolling in on an oil tanker, but their money is what attracts foreign workers to this hellish part of the planet.

On that point, it is becoming more and more clear to me why someone would move to the Middle East, and specifically the Gulf. Ask anyone, A-N-Y-O-N-E, why they are in Dubai, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, etc., and they will tell you 'money'. Simply put, the almighty dollah bills y'all. Fine, you may also get natives / locals who also claim family ties, but I've asked some Arabs who had lived in the States for a while and the primary reason they came back was still for easy money.

I suppose the one reason Dubai is more tolerable than Bahrain is its ex-pat community. You wind up living in an extremely diverse community so you are bound to find good people who share interests with you. Other than that, however, the only advantages I can see are bigger malls, nicer buildings, and a bigger paycheck.

So there you have it. As you can see, a summer spent in another region of the world has really opened my eyes to how great we have it in the U.S. and Canada. I thought I would gain a greater appreciation for a supposedly misunderstood culture but, quite the opposite, any stereotypes I may have previously had have only been strengthened and added to. I have very few, if any, positive things to say about the region in general although there have been people that have been open, warm, and a pleasure to meet. I've developed a sense of frustration, almost anger, at the way my Indian brothers and sisters are brought over here in the hope for better livings to support their families, and then taken advantage of with low wages and sub-par working & living conditions. I think that, if I were to ever do business in the Middle East, it would be to try to get all the blue and white collar ex-pats to leave and make the Gulf community do the work for themselves. That would be the day...

I hope that I do not come off as an arrogant western traveler. I consider myself to be a fairly worldly, accepting, and insightful person. I think that my assessment of the Middle East is fair. To this point, I have spent the last 2 weeks in Africa (and will post about it soon) and I am amazed at the natural beauty, the kindness of the people, and the promise that this region has with its enterprising community who are starting to become more empowered.

My advice for all those would-be globetrotters in search of money:
Don't chase the easy money in the Middle East. Go to Africa or Asia where the upside could be so much higher, you'll be making a real difference, your life will probably be more fulfilled, and you can still live like a king.