To not get why people hate Dubai so much?

[Cutitup]

What is there to hate?

I think it's a great place to have a holiday. Great restaurants, great service, fab shopping and spa treatments.

I do understand the problems of domestic and construction staff being exploited but this is not a problem unique to Dubai. I just don't get the vitriol, the 'it has no culture' etc.. I say get out of the bitter farm and play with the hay!

Agree that Dubai is only 'singled out' because only Dubai (amongst these examples) markets itself as a luxury holiday destination, focused on r&r.

Yes, there are poorly paid migrant workers in other countries, but let's look at the demographics. At least 80% of the working population of the UAE are from abroad - some put it at 90%. At least 50% of these are estimated to be very poorly paid migrant workers in the construction and service industry.

Totally different ball game to other countries. Off the scale.

i have and a few others did

mine spain, sri lanka, california, thailand (not pataya), italy are just a few places i would like to visit

and as for St Pauls, The Pyramids and so on being built on slave labour yes they were but we have evolved as people most countries have some more than others and it is something that should be encouraged we should not be shrugging our shoulders and say well in times gone by blah blah

To be honest the great european monuments aren't a great example. Most construction projects in Europe were managed by an intricate and well organised system of craft guilds, which competed intensely to protect their rates and working conditions.

freudian please don't think I'm being controversial but why does excluding a region of a country make it ok to visit it?

Dubai is only part of the UAE and compared to Abu Dhabi, it is the poor relation and has been bailed out by Abu Dhabi already.

OK, reasons to like Dubai

1. The weather of course. Makes for a great social life. you can plan for a BBQ weeks in advance, for example. And you can buy a dress without needing to have to buy a jacket!!!
2. We earned good money and the work was very interesting
3. We met some amazing people who we might not have otherwise done, including very rich and very poor people
4. It was a great education. I worked with people from all over the Middle East and was able to have great discussions about politics and learn about the cultures in a way that is not possible to do from any book
5. DH and I moved there just after getting married. It was a fantastic start to our married life together, it's a great party town and we had a ball until DS1 came along
6. It's bonkers. The Jumeria palm is nutty but funny. Was always amusing to see what the next thing would be.

There are more good reasons and there are also things I didn't not like, least of all the very aggressive driving generally and the obvious hatred of women by men of certain culture, hence, btw the 'need' for women's queues. But there are things I don't like here either so prepared to cut them some slack. The Emiratees themselves were well educated and generally polite. Mental drivers though, skilled but very fast and pretty dangerous

And btw I did have a traffic accident with an Emiratee, driving a huge Lexus. And the accident was deemed his fault, which is was, so it was his insurance that was hit.

because pataya sadly has become a town built on the sex industry you can not (or we could not) get away from it the thai authorities are struggling to clean up its image maybe they have

isn't that because of the over building in dubai and lack of oil compared to the other countries

And btw I did have a traffic accident with an Emiratee, driving a huge Lexus. And the accident was deemed his fault, which is was, so it was his insurance that was hit.

I think the person who posted that you couldn't get away with hitting a local in a car crash was maybe thinking of Qatar. In the 80s it certainly used to be the case that if you as an expat had a crash with a Qatari, it couldn't be the Qatari's fault, on the grounds that if the other person hadn't been there, the crash wouldn't have happened, whereas the Qatari was entitled to be in his own country.

As Qatar has tried to modernise, the law may well have changed.

Holiday destinations : Europe, Caribbean - non resort, FAr east, North America, south America (some still on the wish list)
anything with resort or cruise on the brochure and I walk away

Dubai is built on a lie : it pretends to be a real glamorous destination, but its all a fake construct and most of it will be under water within 100 years.

Which would be why they called the hotel on the Palm 'Atlantis'. As I said, bonkers

freudian, so why is does your moral compass allow you to visit a country when at least part of the money you spend there is likely to be funding the sex industry as long as you don't visit the offending location?

Why not boycott it totally?

Does that mean you would visit the rest of the UAE, just not Dubai?

I am trying very hard not to make things personal on this thread but i totally fail to understand why it is acceptable for you to visit a country as long as you avoid the bad bits but it is not ok for me and others to go to Dubai?

no i would not visit the rest of the UAE though have flown Emirates and will not in future having read more about them and given it more thought, before i hadn't there are other airlines to choose from

thailand has so much more to offer than a nasty abusive sex industry but it is a big problem. sadly many people do visit there because of this but not all far from it. you can get away from it and it is not a country built on the desperation of others

heads percentages are completely meaningless so to say 'Totally different ball game to other countries. Off the scale.' is incorrect.

Dubai has a population of just over 2m therefore if 50% are poorly paid migrant workers that is 1 million people.

Bangkok has a population of more than 8m, are you really saying less than 12.5% of their work force is badly paid (as would need to be the case if Dubai has more badly paid workers that just that one city)?

Dubai is a relatively small city with a relatively small population and tourism is a huge part of its economy so it will attract a relatively high population of migrant workers.

Singapore is built on immigrant workers, it is a building site - who do you think built the airport and hotels? Hope people who are sneering at, insulting and feel superior to those who holiday or live in Dubai don't enjoy the delights of Singapore then as it is all so obviously black and white.

Bearbehind I wasn't being PA, I was asking an honest question and explaining why I thought you lived in Dubai. You were posting as if you lived there (IMHO), rather than holidayed there.

My last holiday destination was Brean Sands, just outside Weston-Super-Mare. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be on any 'watch' lists - although one family does seem to own most of the place, so maybe... (and that was sarcasm, not PA)

BadLad thank you for replying to my post. Hopefully my friend was just unlucky then, although from what you posted it does seem as it black women are treated as more second class than white women. Friends wife is Black/Asian (looks a lot like David Bowie's wife, can't remember her name) and tells of being passed over all the time in shops etc in favour of white women, and that was the least of her complaints. I wonder if the same would be true if their ethnic origin was the other was around? I hope my friend is able to break his contract, but it looks unlikely.

I daresay that if you have an accident with a member of the Royal family and associated lot, and there is any doubt, then you will get short shrift. And we Westerners would shine our halos if the shoe was on the other foot of course.

I do think it's very acceptable to slag off rich Arabs though. I'm not entirely sure why. I will admit my prejudices though, the Saudi's (almost without exception) that I met were not likeable and did seem to have issues with women. But that's all that Wahhabi shit that they are exposed to. The Emiratees, Omanis, Syrians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Iraqis and Egyptians that I met were very nice and had the normal level of good guy to fuckwit ratio that you might expect in any group of people. Which given the current state of things at the time with the bombing the shit out of the area was actually extraordinary

I really do despair, how can you possiblly say that something is 'a big problem' in a country but 'you can get away from it' and then think it is not supremely hypocritical to condemn others for visiting Dubai?

Bear have you been to Thailand? its population is much bigger, the majority of people are poor compared to our standards you do not have one group of people who are living in luxury surrounded by bling the others in craped, dirty hovels

if you have you will be able to see the difference in the countries

Also singapore i know has a bad record, i turned down offer to live there but it is far more diverse than dubai

because it is not the whole problem, dubai there are two camps you are in one or if a migrant worker the other

the biggest problem in thailand by far is poverty not the sex industry

Dubai is so rich it could do things right. It could treat workers well. It could develop a sustainable economy.
But the rulers choose not to.
That is why it and the other gulf states are sneered at.

Wealth earned from the rest of the world should bring responsibility
not bling and sexism and xenophobia

It would appear that I am never going to understand what I see as the blatant hypocrisy of some people.

Those of you who despise the place should all go ahead and continue to find excuses to condemn me and others for visiting Dubai whilst making peace with your own, extremely questionable decisions, where in many cases, the information used to make your choices has been tailored to suit your conscience.

I do not condemn anybody for visiting any country.
I have a huge problem with people flying to all inclusive resorts owned by offshore companies and contributing absolutely nothing to the locals except environmental destruction (yes Maldives that includes you).
Travel where you like
but remember to look around you and remember that you are in a box and think how the box got there

Nothing wrong with Brean Sands!

Where do we draw the line on our principles though. As someone said what about all the clothes, consumables being made by children and in sweat shops for pennies. And Thailand, many of the hotels are quite luxurious and bling, bling - the chamber maids who clean these luxury closed off areas after working long hours under stressful conditions go home to what we consider poverty conditions for little pay, often away from their families.

don't know what the answers are, just don't think it's always easy to be black and white about these things.

but people are perfectly entitled to dislike Dubai and not want to go there or agree with the racism and inequalities that does seem engrained - hopefully like most places things will be being challenged and changed.

What's hypocritical about it? OP asked what there is to hate about Dubai; people have said.

It doesn't appeal to me, mainly because I'm not interested in fab shopping and spa treatments, which OP listed as major attractions.

I like great restaurants and great service, but can find them in countries that don't have such dubious human rights records.

I holiday mainly in Spain and Italy. I go to the United States on business but not for pleasure because I don't find immigration a pleasurable experience. So, I suppose that's a bit like objecting to the standards in a place like Dubai.

The other thing I'd say is that I'd feel unsafe visiting a country where what many Westerners regard as normal behaviour was tolerated if I was discreet, just in case someone with a grudge against me decided to report me to the police for being 'indiscreet'.

Blingbang
Are the chambermaids in hotels in, say, Thailand from Thailand or have they been imported from a different continent eg Africa?

Migrant working has always gone on.
But the scale of it - migrant workers servicing not just rich locals but Europeans 'living the dream' - is pretty much unique to the Gulf states.