Is Dubai worth visiting? I am debating making a VERY long pit stop there for about 5 days on my upcoming trip. Its really the only Middle Eastern country I would feel 100% safe taking my wife to which is one of the main reasons I am debating it. However I feel like it lacks culture compared to alot of countries, which is something I do enjoy when I travel. Spending money and trying to look rich is not my cup of tea.
>>1062691
I was in your exact same situation and decided against it...
Only advice I can give you is to consider the opportunity costs, anon. What else would you be doing with your time/money?
I'd recommend a stop over in Bahrain. What do you mean by culture. There is metropolitan stuff to do in Dubai, like plays and such. There are souqs and things too. Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar are just as safe and easier to access the culture in some sense, because it has a lower ex pat pop. Qatar is still pretty high, but not as bad UAE
>>1062691
>However I feel like it lacks culture compared to alot of countries
very true. I wouldn't bother. or cut the trip to only 2 or 3 days. no need for 5.
The Emirates are very soulless and manufactured but of course they have traditional culture, it's just hard to see it when the native population is dwarfed by the expat population. It's pretty standard middle eastern Arab culture.
Any Islamic country that is not a warzone is basically safe for a woman--especially one accompanied by her husband.
If you feel fine feeding money to a country and city that is build and maintained by slaves.
I think Dubai is a disgusting place with insane energy consumption to show off to oblivious tourists who take the glimmering city for granted.
>>1062691
Dubai has no culture.
>>1062714
http://www.dubaiculture.gov.ae/en/Pages/default.aspx
To say Dubai doesn't have culture is like saying NYC or Paris or any other metropolitan world city doesn't have culture.
>>1062712
confirmed having never lived there. People oversimplify the slave thing. They amke it seem like everyone is running around with slaves. Or that every Asian worker is essentially a slave. And that's not the case. Yeah what they is overworked and underpaid compared to anything a westerner would do, but it's still more money for less work than they'd do back in their shithole in Bangladesh. And contrary to popular belief, they are free to return their shithole at anytime they want to. The only country in the gulf that still has overwhelming human rights issues is the one you can't visit anyway. Saudi Arabia. The rest have dialed it all back not to piss off the west, from where their money comes. Saudi has too much oil money to care. UAE will be out of oil within the next decade, which is why they are diversifying into tourism and banking.
>>1062717
Do you really think that Dubai has anywhere near the culture of NYC or Tokyo? I studied abroad there. Theres plenty of culture in the region but Dubai is a fake city with nothing in it. Oman and the other Emirates were much better. Abu Dhabi felt like a real city.
The single museum we found was nothing but some sand huts and a time line saying that people lived there for hundreds of years, accomplished nothing, then they found oil, and they became rich and built the fake city. Everything there is so obviously bought and paid for.
>>1062717
>To say Dubai doesn't have culture is like saying NYC or Paris or any other metropolitan world city doesn't have culture.
You can't make the comparison at all like that. There hasn't been 300 years of architecture and people building a community. Try 10.
Dubai is like a big suburban empty low occupancy shopping mall, the kind you only want to go to for an hour for whatever you came for, and then GTFO and go home.
OP, as far as being safe? If I was taking a wife anywhere in the Middle East, it'd be Israel right now, and nowhere else. There isn't 5 days of fun there. There isn't more than 1 day, and really not more than 5 hours.
On principle, and for safety's sake both, I don't fly through Dubai, either. I don't trust their security, their laws, their behavior towards foreigners who are victims of crime, and I certainly am not going to support them with landing fees and taxes. Being an airline stopover is one of the main industries of the country, and the slavery bugs the shit out of me.
>>1062741
>It really depends on how you define culture.
In the case of Dubai, there's no culture. Seriously, let it go. It's a phony movie set. It's not a real city with real people and a community at all. Never was.
>>1062741
Shopping mall, confirmed.
>>1062747
The only tall buildings that aren't half empty are hotels
