The UAE was just a short visit for me - 2.5 days with a flight out to London at a mortifiying 1:45am. I was locked up in meetings for most of the time and only got to break away to The Mall of the Emirates for a few hours. Ski Dubai, in the mall, was the most amazing thing. Talk about some real estate developers who had too much money. I heard a comment that someone had once said - “who would ever fly to Dubai to ski at the mall”? The nearby UAE citizen replied - “We didn’t build it for you. We built it for us.” ‘Nuff said.
With all the money they have, the infrastructure (in terms of roads) are horrible. My 4:30pm trip to the mall (25km) took 1 hour and at 7p on the return, took 1.5 hrs. Unbelievable. Dallas friends - we’ve got it easy, baby! I remarked to a taxi driver that while UAE has 5 million citizens (for the entire country), I’d just come from a city in China that had 10 million people IN THE CITY and the traffic wasn’t as bad.
I didn’t make it out to the “Sailboat” hotel, although I saw it from a few miles away. A stunning piece of architecture, even from there. I’m confused - some say it’s a six-star hotel, others say 7. Who cares - apparently it costs 60 Euros to peak in, if you’re not staying. 
Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Chili’s - it’s such a western place, it amazes me. While the Middle East might not like Americans, they do like our stuff, I will say that.
Speaking to the title of today’s post, as you can imagine, with the amount of money they roll in, it’s more normal to see Ferrarri, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Maserati, Lamborghini than it is to see a Mercedes. It seems in that country, you would be embarassing yourself if you were to try to make a financial boast by driving one of those. It’s all relative.
