Dubai

… A city full of contradictions, divided between the old and the new, the need to be on top of the game and the one to preserve the traditions of the Bedouin, embracing the Western world or protecting the Arabic heritage.

My bucket-list is full of countries that I wish to one day explore. The United Arab Emirates, and Dubai in particular, had never made it on the list. I could not see myself ever traveling there, not even for a simple layover on my way to Asia. Dubai represented everything I was against: an aberration from an ecological standpoint, an empty, fake, and soulless world, a Disneyland for the rich. Still with all these preconceived negative ideas, I accepted an internship offer and flew to the sand pit to settle for a couple of months. I was convinced that by the end of my internship, I would hop on another plane and finally go settle in Bangkok or Singapore, as living in Asia had always been a dream of mine. But I was wrong. A three month internship turned into a full year of adventures. Dubai is the glossy glamorous world it likes to advertise itself as. It has the tallest tower, the biggest mall, all the 5 star hotels, and so on. But it hides treasures that are revealed only to the most curious.