Dubai, where there’s no time to sleep

When they say Dubai is a 24-hour city, I think they mean the airport.

My Singapore Airlines’ flight touched down at 1.15am. Sleepy and bleary-eyed, I was looking forward to whizzing through the airport which just this week was awarded Best Airport in the Middle East by Business Traveller at the Arabian Travel Market.

Modern day travel conspired otherwise. In the global, timeless world we live in, there is no such thing as day or night. I can’t help but shake our heads at what we road warriors put ourselves through in the name of business.

Late night flights that take us halfway round the world where we have to wake up midway through our normal sleep cycle to then behave like robots on auto pilot …

Immigration at Dubai airport looked like Tiananmen Square on a Sunday afternoon. I headed straight for Fast Track but was turned away by an officious-looking woman who said the line was only for Emirates’ first and business class passengers, and not for any other airline, premium, peasant or otherwise.

We – I recognise fellow business class passengers from the same flight – are stuck at immigration for an hour. At the counter, the officer couldn’t be more unwelcoming. He is probably as fed up as we were – working at this time of the morning.

“Why are you here?” he asked curtly.

“Arabian Travel Market,” I replied promptly.

He looked at me, glanced at my airport, stamped it and almost threw it back at me.

I go to Belt 5. Bags from the next flight are already on the belt, and baggage from my flight has been taken off and set aside in a huge pile. I was told this is the worst time to arrive in Dubai; all the flights from different parts of the world converge at this time. (I think they tell this to all travellers because a friend of mine arrived at 7am and told the same story.)

It’s 3am (7am Singapore time) by the time I get into the car to take me to my hotel. I am hoping for minimal traffic at this time.

Thankfully, most sane people are in bed. The drive takes me 20 minutes. The driver asks when my last visit to Dubai was. I said, a year.

“Ah, you will see many changes,” he said.

“What changes?” I asked.

“Many new buildings.” Under the clear moonlit sky, I see the outlines of as many unfinished buildings as new ones, hundreds of cranes and rows upon rows of billboards advertising promising slices of real estate paradise.

“What about new roads?” I asked, thinking back to the traffic jams I got stuck in 12 months ago.

“That’s impossible,” he said.

“Why?”

“Harder to build,” he said, shaking his head. “Traffic is still bad.”

In the city, they are working on the monorail, which means more construction work. They are planning a road toll system to ease congestion. Dubai, it is clear, is straining at the seams to cope with the incredible development.

Yes, Dubai is still being built and they’re still coming. More hotel brands have entered in the last 12 months. Travellers are still flocking in.

The average rates of hotels would make most hoteliers in other cities green with envy – more than 2,000 Dirhams at Jumeirah Beach Resort, for example. Shangri-La Hotel, Dubai, will achieve record rates and occupancies this year – its RevPar is among the top three in the group.

My first day at ATM, I stopped asking the question, “What’s new?” Because here there’s always either something new being built or something being torn down for something new. The most-uttered phrases at ATM have to be, “Have you seen …”, “unbelievable”, “incredible” …

Universal City Dubailand. Palm Islands with 210 hotels. The stream of mega projects continues.

This year, the talk of the town is Abu Dhabi which is undergoing what Dubai went through several years ago – except Dubai’s still going …

Dubai’s my third and final stop of what I call the “Hotel Golden Triangle”, after Shanghai and Beijing last week. As seasoned as I am, I am overawed by the development that’s going on in just these three places alone.

And I cannot help but think about the biggest burning issue today – global warming and climate change – and what do all these developments mean for carbon emissions and our planet?

Think about the energy that’s needed to power all the mega projects in the desert – to keep them cool in the sweltering summer months – and all the water that’s needed to keep things going, especially the golf courses being built?

A recent Newsweek cover story reckons that with the global warming patterns predicted, places like Dubai will become too hot to live in, in the summer months. Then what will happen to all the real estate being developed here?

And as I look at all the developments going on around me, I can’t help but wonder when, with all the resources and land available here, will someone build something truly unique and meaningful for the times we live in?

Not another Disneyland or Universal Studios or more mega-malls but a truly environmentally-friendly role model project for the future. Because surely if they can build the world’s largest indoor ski slope and the world’s biggest Palm Islands, such an feat would not be inconceivable.

Because, let’s face it, if there is one place on earth that could make anything happen, this

by Yeoh Siew Hoon/Transit Cafe