Arab hospitality

I have had some of the best times of my life in UAE. Dubai is a fucking awesome city. But as you stated the Brits have basically took over UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain.
dubai is cool, but it has it's limitations. it's basically like an entire state arranged to simulate a Disney image of America... with thousands of Indians and Pakistanis (and Filipinos and Sri Lankans and...) working behind the scenes to keep it ticking.

They do have a cool "meeting point between asia, europe and africa" thing going though. I never suspected that the global village, center of the Dubai Shopping Festival, would be as cool as it is.
 
asshat.thanks.tribs.jpg

That's like, two jokes in one for this thread :p
 
they better hope they don't run out of oil anytime soon.

iirc, they are out of oil. Their entire economy is based on tourism.

edit: I was wrong.

The UAE has an open economy with a high per capita income and a sizable annual trade surplus. Its wealth is based on oil and gas output (about 30% of GDP), and the fortunes of the economy fluctuate with the prices of those commodities. Since the discovery of oil in the UAE more than 30 years ago, the UAE has undergone a profound transformation from an impoverished region of small desert principalities to a modern state with a high standard of living. At present levels of production, oil and gas reserves should last for more than 100 years. The government has increased spending on job creation and infrastructure expansion and is opening up its utilities to greater private sector involvement. Higher oil revenue, strong liquidity, and cheap credit in 2005 led to a surge in asset prices (shares and real estate) and consumer inflation. Any sharp correction to the UAE's equity markets could damage investor and consumer sentiment and affect bank asset quality. In April 2004, the UAE signed a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) with Washington and in November 2004 agreed to undertake negotiations toward a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US.
 
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