Due to an unplanned layover, I ended up spending a night in Dubai. While I wouldn't recommend it as a tourist destination, it isn't the worst place in the world to be stuck. The United Arab Emirates are a loose collection of semi-autonomous city-states, of which Dubai has the largest population. It is an incredibly modern port city and a commercial center, famous for its shopping of all sorts and modern architecture (in the colloquial sense). The architecture downtown is truly impressive and it is home to the world's tallest building, the
Burj Dubai, which recently passed Taipei 101 for the right to that title. Understandably, it was pretty hard to miss, even though I never got all that close to it. The
UAE is a Muslim country, but Dubai is now inhabited by a majority of immigrants from all over: Europeans, East Africans, Indians, Pakistanis. While I was walking around, I noticed a thermometer reading 45 degrees Celsius, or 113 degrees
Fahrenheit. Definitely the hottest place I've been, but it didn't seem that bad because it was so dry. Since I had a very early flight, I had to get up at 4:00am. Conveniently, this was the time for the first call to prayer in the mosque next door to the hostel, so I couldn't possibly have overslept. Dubai has the nicest airport I've ever been in, complete with free
wifi.




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Details:
I flew in from Beijing on Emirates ($333/¥2290), with an intended destination of Amman, but the flights don't connect well, so I ended up in Dubai for a night. I stayed at Dubai Youth Hostel, a basic, HI hostel ($31/110DHS) and one of the cheapest places I could find. It is not in the city, but buses connect it. To get there from the airport, the easiest way is to take the taxi ($7/25DHS), tell them it is near Lulu Hypermarket, but bus routes do stop close by, try booking on hostelworld to get directions. For the buses, it is obligatory to buy a pass of 10 for $5/20DHS. They do not run early in the morning so if you must travel then, you have to take a cab. All the cabs are metered and they wouldn't think of not using the meter and trying to rip you off.
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