The Real Dubai Is The Underbelly
Not the Posh Beachside Resorts
Dubai likes to paint itself as this luxury relaxed place for tourists but there is a seamier side to it if you know where to go. For the ex-pat workers who have to rent cheaper apartments and stretch out their wages to make it pay it is still the easiest going of the Emirates and the other Gulf States, although some of the other states like Bahrain and Qatar have seen the success of Dubai and try to keep up with it’s more liberal side and turn a blind eye to some of the ‘real life’ that goes on in its underbelly.
I have seen many changes there over the past 20 years or so from the days when even bars were allowed. That didn’t last long before some of their Islamic cousins in Saudi leaned on them and the bars all moved indoors to hotels only.
Away from the holiday hotel beaches, the Palm, and Jumeirah, the posh apartment areas around the Marina, there are some more alternative happenings. Over the years I’ve sampled many of those and had great fun, much of which I’ve used in my novels of “The Dream Team” series, certainly in the first book “Face and Justice.” It is where my main character the roguish Barry Parker met his lovers and cohorts Annie the Chinese bar girl and Stella the Nigerian former Madam. As a threesome, they scam a British merchant banker of millions of dollars in a fraud…
