Westworld Alberta
Issue link: http://westworldmagazine.ama.ab.ca/i/40418
(clockwise from top left) Guides from the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding (SMCCU) give visitors an introduction to the Islamic faith; Dubai's Grand Mosque; a $20 hot lunch at SMCCU headquarters. square footage of natural beachfront didn't cut it, they manufactured more – in the shape of three giant palm trees extending from the shore. And where fi ve-star service is so pedestrian that at least one hotel skipped six stars and went straight to seven. Even as we exited the elevator to the Burj Khalifa's At the Top observation deck, I spotted a gold-dispensing ATM. (Simply deposit $1,500 and receive a freshly minted one-ounce bar). Yes, standing at the top of it all certainly makes me feel as if I've arrived. There's only one problem: money. More precisely, my lack of it. For more than 10 years, I'd read about the exotic curiosities of the United Arab Emirates and, determined to see them fi rst- hand, convinced my husband, Grahaeme, that Dubai had it all ("Sea, sun, shopping – er, I mean, culture"). He grunted his acqui- escence only after I promised that Dubai could be done on a budget. Natasha Mekhail, (Grand Mosque) Getty Images We're off to a good start. The trip up the 828-metre-tall Burj cost only $26 each (100 Arab Emirates dirhams). Our guide, tower marketing executive Waseem Khan, tells us the tower is "the pride of Dubai. It doesn't get any bigger than this, literally." Planning a tower – and a city – of this magnitude takes immense vision. Fortu- nately, Dubai has it in Sheikh Mohammed, the 62-year-old ruler of Dubai and prime minister of the Emirates, who, from his youth, saw a way to curb the siphon of oil revenues from his country into foreign lands: make Dubai into a global investment centre in its own right. Later, as we cruise down the city's main thoroughfare, Sheikh Zayed Road, the num- ber of cranes we see on the skyline is a testa- ment to that vision. Our driver and guide, Abid Hussain, takes us through the new developments (we've hired his services at $220 for the day – a little pricey but worth it to see the whole city). In the works is Dubai- land, a combination of Vegas-style strip, Olympic-calibre sport complex and residen- tial community. It will also include a theme park in which major world monuments – from the Eiffel Tower to the Pyramids – are reproduced to scale. Near the sea, Hussain points out Burj Al Arab, an iconic "seven star" hotel in the shape of a ship's sail, where the two-storey, gold-leafed suites start at $1,200 a night. He turns onto the trunk of the Palm Jumeirah, a tree-shaped artifi cial landmass that, when complete, will house 4,000 residential units and more than 15,000 hotel rooms – one of three Palm Island projects planned along this stretch of the Gulf. It's hard to believe that a generation ago this was a nation of fi sherman, pearl divers and desert nomads. At the Burj Khalifa, Waseem Khan explained it best: "Dubai is the modern Constantinople." Unhindered in its growth, WESTWORLD >> SEPTEMBER 2011 33