Last month I made a trip to Dubai in United Arab Emirates and Doha in Qatar. This was my first trip to the Middle East so I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

We went to Doha to watch a MotoGP race, so we didn’t really see much of the city, so I will only comment on Dubai here. The MotoGP race deserves a posting on its own.

The pace of development in Dubai is overwhelming. There are cranes and road construction absolutely everywhere. I used to think the Las Vegas strip was growing quickly, but this is on a completely different scale. The population in 1969 was 60,000. Now it is 1.8 million. Not only is there a lot of construction going on, the scale of the building is amazing. We saw Burj Dubai, the worlds tallest building, under construction. There are also huge malls going in. One condo building was saw advertised had 120 floors. It’s hard to tell in the picture below, but Burj Dubai is surrounded by a lot of other building under constructions. It’s like they just decide to build a new city and put it up in a few years.

Dubai is very cosmopolitan. 80% of the population of Dubai is from outside of the UAE. This makes English the common language for everyone. Almost everyone we met spoke very good English (there was one cabbie who seemed to have a little trouble understanding us) and all the signs that we saw were in English only or English and Arabic. Any tourist who speaks in English will have no problem getting around.

All the new development and the prominent English actually made things a little less interesting from a traveling point of view than I imagined. It is very hard to find any type of culture in Dubai. Walking through the Mall of the Emirates (currently the biggest mall outside of North America until the next mall is finished in Dubai) was like walking through a mall in any suburb in the US or Canada.

That being said there were some interesting things I hadn’t experienced before. All the loudspeakers blaring prayers from the mosques five times a day was different. We also went to check out the Souks (markets) in the older part of town (but really not that old, we have older building in L.A. and that’s not saying much). To get to the Souks we used a Dhow (ferry boat, see picture below) to cross Dubai Creek - that was a pretty interesting experience.

Overall I had a great time, but I don’t know if I would hurry back unless I had a specific reason to do so, like maybe MotoGP again next year

We were at Laguna Seca for the MotoGP race last weekend. We had a great time. I think staying in an RV right beside the track and getting Flag Room passes is the way to go. Staying at the track gets rid of all the problems people have getting to and leaving the race. The flag room was a great oasis where we could sit in the shade and have some drinks and food. Two years ago we didn’t have the flag room and trying to find ways to hide from the sun was not too fun.

We’re seriously thinking of going back to Laguna Seca for next years USGP, and maybe even to Qatar to see the race in March!

I found this great video of the race highlights of the weekend. It captures some of the stuff we saw and some of the things we weren’t able to see:

2007 Laguna Seca MotoGP

Also, here is a video that shows some of the excitement of the event:

And this is a short, low quality video, but I though it captured the speed and noise of being there pretty well:

This is a post to keep track of all the visits I have made to Vegas. Basically it is a list of the hotels I have stayed at. (#) indicates multiple stays. Dates indicated when I remember them. I will update it whenever I make a new trip.

Aladdin
Bally’s (2)
Barbary Coast (3)
Excalibur (?,Nov 2001, Sept 2006)
Flamingo (2)
Imperial Palace
Luxor (?, Nov 2007)
Mandalay Bay (Aug 2007)
MGM Grand (Nov 2006, Sept 2007, Feb 2008)
Monte Carlo(?,April 2006, Dec 2007)
New York New York
THEhotel (Dec 2006)
Treasure Island (September 2005)
Stardust
Wynn (October 2005)

I saw this on Kottke.org and thought it was fun. Bloggers are making lists of cities they have spent one or more nights in. The * indicates multiple, non-consecutive nights. Here’s my list:

Los Angeles, CA*
Austin, TX*
Las Vegas, NV
Toronto, Ont
Udora, Ont*
Orillia, Ont*
Chicago, IL
Monument Channel, Ont (on Georgian Bay)
San Francisco, CA
Sunnyvale, CA
Big White, BC
Carnival Pride (Cruise Ship off the coast of Mexico)

Overall it was a very slow travel year.