{"id":2150,"date":"2023-01-24T07:11:01","date_gmt":"2023-01-24T07:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ld-wp.template-help.com\/wordpress_63333_default-sample\/?p=2150"},"modified":"2025-08-10T21:07:52","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T21:07:52","slug":"visiting-the-uae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_18709\/v4\/visiting-the-uae\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting the UAE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before visiting last month, my friends painted a picture of a city hot, filled with malls and expensive stores, restaurants, lots of expats, and a bit soulless. \u201cIt\u2019s artificial and fake like Vegas and doesn\u2019t demand more than a day or two,\u201d they told me. But when people tell me to zig, I always love to zag, so I decided to spend five days there, determined to find something redeeming about the city. (I picked an excellent time to visit too: an English friend had just moved to the city, so I had a place to stay and a tour guide!)<\/p>\n

Dubai: The Las Vegas of the Middle East?<\/h5>\n

It\u2019s a city that conjures up images of Vegas-like glitz (minus the gambling and drinking). Before visiting last month, my friends painted a picture of a city hot, filled with malls and expensive stores, restaurants, lots of expats, and a bit soulless. \u201cIt\u2019s artificial and fake like Vegas and doesn\u2019t demand more than a day or two,\u201d they told me.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nIn a way, Dubai reminded me of most expat-heavy places in the world. It seems whenever cities attract a lot of foreigners from various nations around the world, they in large part tend to live in a little alcohol-fueled bubble \u2014 going to a small selection of restaurants, bars, and neighborhoods, often with scant interaction with locals. Dubai is still a mystery to me. I can\u2019t wrap my head around it and am determined to return, turn over more stones, and get under this city\u2019s skin. But one thing is for certain \u2013 this city is more than a stopover destination!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot of people think travel is just plain expensive, but in reality there are incredible deals happening all the time. They usually don\u2019t last too long, and you have to act quickly. That can sometimes be a problem when a deal requires jumping on a plane tomorrow (how many people can do that?), but in fact most deals are for months in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-2150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trip","tag-romantic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_18709\/v4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_18709\/v4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_18709\/v4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_18709\/v4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_18709\/v4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_18709\/v4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7093,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_18709\/v4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions\/7093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_18709\/v4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_18709\/v4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_18709\/v4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_18709\/v4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}