Dubaï : Conclusion

There are a lot of other projects, but as you can guess by reading this article, Dubai has financial issues. Some projects are just forgotten, other are on standby… I can mention Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Hydropolis, Dubailand Ski Dome...

On a personal advice, i 'd say that I really like their projects, because, each of them is very huge, bigger than ever, and each times completly blows my mind. It is just crazy, and I like architecture. But someting is still bothering me. A lot of money are used, too much money. And there are some controversial about condition of people who worked on them. Most of the case, workers aren't paid much, and they work a lot of hours. Some videos, or reports show that workers was not well-treated, and sometimes, even worst, almost used as slaves.

Dubaï : amazing projects

Dubaï, which used to live thanks to oil and gas, knows that ressources won’t be here in 20 years. So Dubaï prepares itself to the future by changing its economy. In fact, this is already the case. Oil and gas represent only 5% of the Gross domestic product. Now, and since a few years, the city develops luxury tourism and trade. That’s why Dubai have the craziest projects int the world. I will introduce some of them.

Burj Khalifa/Burj Dubai

This is a skyscraper, but not just another skyscraper… This the tallest building ever built, with 828 m high ! This is just crazy. The structure of the building is very original and has a good design as you can see in the picture. Construction began in 2004 and it officially opened on 4 January 2010. As we all guess, the cost of this project is very impressive : 1,5 billions $ ! It is a part of large district called Downtown Burj Khalifa which will cost itself 20 billions. Crazy numbers… There are 160 floors habitables. The others levels are booked for business.

Palm Islands

The palms Islands are artificial achepilago. The principle is that each settlement will be in the shape of a palm tree. Once again, the project is completely crazy… Only for building the first two islands, it has needed 100 millions cubic meters of sand and rock …! There will be 3 Palms :

• Palm Jumeirah
• Palm Jebel Ali
• Palm Deira

On this islands, you will find luxury hotels, exclusive residential villas and appartments, marinas, water theme parks, restaurants… The first two Palm are built, but since the crisis of 2008/2009, we don’t know when Palm Deira will be finished. This palm is bigger than the other…

Burj Al Arab

This a famous luxury hotel easily recognizable by its shape : it looks like the sail of a ship. It is the fourth tallest hotel in the world. It stands on an articificial island (again :-) ) . This project was very important for Dubai. The aim was to build something that will illustrated Dubai, in the same way that we associate the Eiffel Tower to France. The construction begans in 1994, so it's kinda old compare to previous projects I‘ve introduced. It includes suite rooms, restaurants, a big atrium and other features.

The world

It is another amazing project, but since the global financial crisis, it seems to be stopped. The story begans in 2003. The project was supposed to build small islands which, together, look like the world map ! In 2008, 60% of the island were already sold, even the project wasn’t finished. Unfortunatly, we don’t really know what will happen to the project… You have the picture above near the palm.

Kuala Lumpur : The misterious city

Kuala Lumpur is an urban agglomeration of 7.2 million, is capital of Malaysia, the second most popular tourist country in the asian continent. This city is not too exotic, it is rich enough.


Over there, you can see the Petronas Towers in wealthy neighborhoods. They are 452 meters above the ground. And they were the biggest on the continent during 6 years. But honestly, for me they are the most beautiful in the world.

In summary Kuala Lumpur has neighborhoods, rich, medium rich, poor, very poor, roads and buildings everywhere, trains (rails up), huge roads, many people, cars ... But a city so original in term of buildings architecture, culture, environment ...

Anecdote: During our trip with Matthieu, we visited a few markets. On one side the big shopping malls and other street markets. We saw the street China Town (books of Travel advises against to buy, but it appear that it is a major commercial heart for the city). In this street, there were only rapid Chinese who sold counterfeit products. This land is really a scam.

Kuala Lumpur : Quality of life

For lunch, we could eat Nasi Ayam (rice/chicken) and excluding holidays, we could order one of the 20 meals Nasi Goren (rice cooked and chicken or fish or other meats). In the evening we ate Roti Cynai (pancake with chicken, very good Indian food) or Fish & Chip (very expensive) (fish with fries, cabbage and potatoes (very small)). This does not vary much, we eat very often rice/chicken, rice/chicken or chicken/rice ...

Well, we could go to McDonalds (for change lol) to buy the cheapest Big Mac in the world ! 11RM the Maxi Best-Of meal (arround 2.7 €).

Otherwise they have good technologies (laptops, flat screens, computers, cameras ...), same for cars, they are modern and have a good equipment, though it's possible to fall on a old car without belt at the rear but with air conditioning anyway (in fact, they drive on the left).

However, some areas stay very poor and don't have access to modern technologies of course, maybe not to safe drinking water. But these neighborhoods tend to disappear progressively.

Kuala Lumpur : The exotic nature

Over there, it's hot, he averaged between 30 and 40 ° C during the day and the air is very humid. There are thunderstorms usually every day. One day there was a really big thunderstorm, it rained very lot. There is not short rains, over there lol. They have large channels to drain water.

The jungle is very dense in this region. Very green. There are even bits of jungle in the city of Kuala Lumpur. It is strongly not recommended to walk without a guide to risk getting lost or to fall with dangerous animals.

There are all sorts of exotic animals there. For the nicest, monkeys (but who are thieves), birds of the future lol ... For the most dangerous, iguanas, boas ... Strangely, there are very few mosquitoes near the jungles. Actually, Malaysians exterminated them weekly with insecticides.