“What should I or my child see in Dubai? Skyscrapers and shopping malls?! I went there with many prejudices. But I came back without”
I have to say right off the bat that I don't live in Dubai and nobody is paying me to write about how wonderful it is. I am talking about my experience as a tourist in Dubai, a city that I have seen several times, each time with my child, because it attracted us with what it had to offer. I tell the story of how my relationship with him began – I was full of prejudice – and what I discovered when I saw him beyond the clichés. But I wouldn't want to be there now, writes journalist Laura Udrea, from Totuldespremame.
There is a lot of talk about Dubai these days. Not good at all. Many of his critics have never been there. I don't judge them. That's what I thought before I arrived. My child was 9 years old when she first visited there and, I admit, I imagined Dubai as a place of opulence, expensive clothes, with people who have a rigid attitude towards women. I was thinking that maybe it would be more appropriate to take my child to a classic place with history, rather than a desert town that I knew only clichés about. And yet, I went to Dubai with my family.
The first time I set foot there I was unlucky. The child caught a virus that kept us in the hotel room with fever and earache for the entire vacation. Goodbye climbing the Burj Khalifa! He only complained of earache when we took the elevator to the 9th floor, where we had our hotel room. There was no problem going up to the 148th floor… Goodbye Dolphin Bay and swimming with dolphins! I couldn't go out during the day neither because of the fever nor because of the temperatures outside. I was doctoring the child in the room, according to the recommendations received from the doctor on Whatsapp.
Soup like at my mother's home, only in Dubai
This incident, totally unfortunate, by the way, was the one that changed my perception towards “camel sellers”. There was no clear chicken soup on the restaurant's menu, the kind with boiled root vegetables with chicken meat, only cream soups. I was so desperate to get the baby something to eat that I called the front desk and asked them where I could find it. They forwarded my call from the room directly to the chef. The man was on the phone with me, I explained to him how to make the soup and in half an hour they brought it to our room. Three times a day they came to ask us how the child was doing. They brought us tissues, fruit and extra water. And the soup! After we talked to the doctor in the country and got the antibiotic prescription, the boy who brought us the soup also went to the pharmacy to get our medicine.
After a few doses of antibiotic, we started to go out. Only in the evening, when the heat subsides and where do you think? In Dubai Mall – “the biggest mall in the world”. Into the world of perdition! I also liked the fact that from the hotel I had a few steps to the subway, and from the subway, above-ground, glass, air-conditioned passages that took you directly into the mall. I didn't get to spit in my chest when I entered the mall, because I bumped nose to nose with that huge aquarium and I actually forgot to pray that God would keep us from being deprived of opulence and luxury.
More, on Totuldespremame.ro.
