Dubai......

has anyone heard of that hotel in Dubai or seen the show on National Geo?! i was watching it lastnight about the "palm islands" that they built, the "world islands", and the 7 star hotel "Burj Al Arab". that is some insane stuff! they said they built the "palm islands" and "world islands" b/c right now, oil is their main thing, and they know that it WILL run out eventually. so they are trying to build up the whole tourist thing over there to bring in more money. the hotel, you MUST check out! for ONE NIGHT IT COSTS $5,000 and that is for a bottom of the line, nothing TOO fancy room!
 
here's the hotel page http://www.burj-al-arab.com/
 
i'll just stop explaining and show some pics......
 



 
 

those oil hording bastards have more money than they know what to do with....that been goin on for some time now...saw that a 1yr or so ago.

this is like 2005 news. well, not really but you know what i mean.
dubai has many of the worlds craziest man made cities.
they are blowing up like nitro.

im well aware its old news. but i just saw a show about it last night (Re-runs) and thought i'd post it up....b/c its wild as HELL if you've ever seen the inside of the hotel, or what they ACTUALLY did w/ the "world islands".

Yeah, I saw part of the one where they were talking about the world and the Ireland island.  I have been interested in watching those episodes since they showed the first one when they only had the hotel and the first palm a few years ago.  Neat stuff.  However, there is a downside to all this, which is the labor force they have there is all imported and they are treated like shit.

hey rrasco, it actually comes on national geo quite a bit, i'd say atleast once a month it seems like. just keep an eye out. its some pretty interesting stuff to see....how they make it and all.
 
and yeah, those "world islands" are pretty much customized however you'd like! for the amount of money it costs to buy one of those islands.....i'd hope so!
 
donald trump's son has a place on the "palm islands" aswell as owning one of the "world islands".

that place is an ecological disaster...

i've been to dubai, on a deployment. it wasn't really that amazing. i think we went to the third largest mall in the world, and there were about five or six of each store, it was neat, but poorly run. plus its still the desert and hot as he!!.

Well I thought everything there was pretty amazing actually. And if it's too hot for you go in their huge ice cold ski resort they built where they keep temps in the entire complex below freezing year round lol. Everything there is like Las Vegas on steroids where money is no object. Like everywhere else it has its good and bad .. it's as close as anywhere in the world has gotten melding east and west (for the rich anyway) but it's difficult to co-exist, outside of touristy resorts, when those cultures are so vastly different from one another (hence the recent news reports of some things happening there that they're trying to keep out of the news) .. regardless, it's still a man-made marvel ... I enjoyed it.

I think my run-on sentences get worse the later it gets.

That's impressive...............until mother nature decides to be a b**ch and throw a hurricane their way.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Blue Fox

That's impressive...............until mother nature decides to be a b**ch and throw a hurricane their way.

It is one of those situations that you sit back and say "this can't end well."

Hotel isn't THAT expensive.  Their prices are in UAE Dirhams, naturally.  US $1 = $3.27 UAED

there was a huge documentary on the president of Dubai and how he is changing their country.  He's even giving big companies tax incentives to come to Dubai and setup their headquarters there.  it was on discovery lots of good information.

I remember seeing something about this and they said they had sold all of the houses in about a week.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Blue Fox

That's impressive...............until mother nature decides to be a b**ch and throw a hurricane their way.

Well anything can happen with today's odd weather .. I still blame it El Niño :) ... but if you had to pick a spot to do all that, UAE is about as good as it gets. If you pull up UAE Dubai in google satellite you'll notice they are not facing the open side .. historically that area has avoided weather disasters. Plus it's not low lying.

the AE has enough money to buy out the world's best engineers. I would not worry too much about them. If a natural disaster happens then its no different then what we have in US.
I was offered a jobie in Dubia but at that time I did not know anything about industrial power engineering. So, since I did not want to be fired within the first 3 hours of my new job I did not take it.

i wonder what those symbols around the palm island mean or if they translate into anything at all

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dluv35

i wonder what those symbols around the palm island mean or if they translate into anything at all

I recognized the Arabic lettering but I can't read it .. from Wikipedia:

quote:

The Palm, Jebel Ali

The Palm, Jebel Ali began construction in October 2002 and is expected to be completed in mid 2008.[1] The Palm Jebel Ali is expected to accommodate 1.7 million people by 2020.[2] Once it has been completed, it will be encircled by Dubai Waterfront. The project, which is 50 percent larger than the Palm Jumeriah, will include six marinas, a water theme park, 'Sea Village', homes built on stilts above the water, and boardwalks that circle the "fronds" of the "palm" and spell out an Arabic poem by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum:[1]

Take wisdom from the wise
It takes a man of vision to write on water
Not everyone who rides a horse is a jockey
Great men rise to greater challenges

good find

And it keeps going ... worlds tallest building set for completion in less than a year ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Dubai

you dug that one up, KB . nice find though, on the tall building. i''d love to visit that place to see all this stuff they''re building. crazy man, crazy!

I saw that a while back, I think they''re planning to top that one shortly after. Pretty interesting to see what a filthy rich country does when they pour it all right back into the place.

quote:

ORIGINAL: jaynd

you dug that one up, KB . nice find though, on the tall building. i''''d love to visit that place to see all this stuff they''''re building. crazy man, crazy!

I was actually going to post a thread when I read about it nearing completion on the news this morning and saw the updated pics but then I remembered this thread.
Think of it this way jay; if more people used existing threads on related topics we''d have 10 pages in o/t instead of 400

they are topping everything big.  they are supposed to be building the biggest waterpark, they already have an indoor ski resort and only god knows what else.

I was there back in late 2004.  From where I was staying to downtown was about a 30 min cab ride on the freeway and on both sides of you all you could see was the construction of one skyscraper after another, I can only imagine what the place looks like now.

As for the islands I hear the SE corner islands around Australia are going for the most, as they have the best view of Dubai.