Can't touch Dubai

The headlines in Dubai, where I'm spending the day in transit to Yemen, are about Gulf banks cutting interest rates, following the lead of their U.S. and European counterparts, to try and head off a liquidity crisis.

But there was little anxiety in the air today at the Mall of the Emirates, the gargantuan temple to retail that makes the Mall of America look like a 7-11.

They call this "the world's first shopping resort," which certainly seemed accurate, but it's probably best known as the mall with the ski slope. And while the Ski Dubai attraction -- accompanied by a cafe named "St. Moritz," where you can sip hot chocolate next to an artificial fire to escape the 100-degree heat -- is as garishly wondrous as advertised, the head-spinning doesn't stop there. While Americans would recognize most of the brand-name outlets -- Guess, Lucky Jeans, Tommy Bahama, Ralph Lauren -- they'd be stunned by how expensive everything is, even with the exchange rate having improved a bit. To me it felt like a retail museum with a strict policy of look-but-don't-dream-you-can-touch.

I met a couple of middle-aged American women coming out of a Hugo Boss store (there was more than one). They had been eyeing a knee-length black coat with a price tag equal to a couple months' rent. "We're just looking," one said in a bright Midwestern voice, and her friend added, "That's all you can do." Dubai has always been expensive, but in today's climate it seems positively fantastical. You can tell who's shopping here by the three languages that the mall issues maps in -- Arabic, English and Russian.

We walked outside to the taxi rank, where we saw a silver-gray Mercedes parked by the entrance. The license plate number was "2" -- it belonged to a royal. But it looked practically modest alongside a black Bentley convertible, a banana-yellow Hummer and, a few yards away, another Bentley, this one painted like a two-toned tennis ball in orange and black, a car that only Ocho Cinco could love.

As tourists ran around snapping pictures of the cars with their cell phones, we three Americans, from the country that basically invented consumerism, felt very, very small indeed.

Comments

[Monty in New Mexico]

...and for all this we now owe a great big debt of gratitude to the Bush family?They keep hugging these people as they continue to get richer by manipulating America into it's decline. Please remember that Daddy Bush is still actively in business with Bin-Ladens father and made the family money from their massive oil businesses in Yemen and Kuwait and that both he and his son George W are now richer because of their international non-American holdings than they ever were. George W Bush and family have succeeded in bringing America down with the help of his sneering greedy and sniveling sidekicks Cheney and McCain. If you don't believe it then you are doomed to suffer from your ignorance. They are laughing all the way to the world banks.

[Yatin]

I don't know how the different UAE's are all inter-linked, but from a WSJ article a few months ago, that #2 plate must have cost a pretty penny

http://www.zawya.com/printstory.cfm?storyid=ZW20080701000020&l=043850080701

[lbug]

Dubai is no place for the faint of wallet!

[Shashank]

Fascinating WSJ article...the locals seemed to think the "2" plate belonged to a royal, but I suppose anything is for sale for the right price these days.

[Dubai Boy]

This is an interesting view of the Ski Dubai facility. I'd say, yes it has attracted attention of the media because of the contrast between warm climate and a snow sport but on the other hand you may want to think in terms of gigantic Six Flags Roller Coaster in California or miles and clusters of theme parks in Orlando. Once we put things in perspective, this tiny 200 people facility is nothing but a drop in the big bucket of themed park entertainment. Just my 2c. Cheers, Amar