Homes in Dubai

Inspired by my sister-in-law, Nat (whom I've yet to meet) I am updating this blog with my exploits over the last 12 months.... Her stories of life China are far more exotic than life in Dubai, and though the title 'Arabian adventures' is honest, it's more Las Vegas in the Middle East than the romance of Arabian nights! Dubai is a boom-town of road works and construction, filled with expats - all of whom speak English, but the climate is very nice.....


I arrived in Dubai in July 2004 and since then have lived in 3 different homes, the first was a lovely villa on a new development of ten thousand - you read that right, 10,000 homes! Now I grew up on a housing estate, and am proud of it, but this takes the biscuit! The Springs as it is known was partially completed when I arrived, and is in the middle of the desert, well I suppose the whole of Dubai is a dessert! With the infrastructure, as well as villas still under construction, getting in and out was an adventure in its self, especially at night; there were no street lights, and roundabouts had little or no warning, with NO reflectors. Many times I saw cars that had ploughed into one; their driver going straight when the road went round to the right! Add to that, the fact all these villas look the same, finding your way home, especially when drunk, was not easy. Taxi drivers did not know the place at all; "Springs 5, street 2 villa 72 please" slurred to a Pakistani or Egyptian wannabe Stirling Moss, would be met with a vacant stare. My record was 70 minutes being driven around the 'estate' before I finally found home!

One year later, I moved in with Alain. His amazing villa was far more central and in an area where only UAE nationals can buy homes. Most Nationals buy a plot of land and build their own villa; as a consequence the villas in this area where a myriad of shapes, styles and sizes, making the whole place feel less like a leggo town. There I enjoyed 8 months of bliss, our wonderful garden full of birds was so relaxing and quiet. This was a big villa so we had ample space for visitors, more on them later.... Unfortunately our landlord, Mr Ali wanted to move back into the villa as his family had outgrown their current home. To say we were devastated is an understatement, both Alain and I loved the place. I begged Mr Ali, but his wife begged more and in February of this year we packed our things and said a found farewell.

As plans were afoot for us to leave Dubai, we moved into temporary accommodation, and our things went into storage. This is where things go rapidly downhill.... Whilst the apartment we moved into at Dubai Marina "the heart of new Dubai" as the blurb says, is nice; the smell is not! The water pipes of the apartment above are in our ceiling, and they leak! They obviously have been for some time as the ceiling is sodden. Now the air conditioning unit is up there too, so you turn that on and the unique smell of damp concrete and plaster fills the air. Since we moved in on Feb 6th we've had a least a dozen engineers here to fix the problem and we're still waiting. I wish there was scratch and sniff bloggs - I'd love to share with you the smell of our home.

Well that's homes in Dubai to date.... We're leaving our apartment hell May 9th, so watch out for home number four....... By the way if you're interested in Nat's blog; http://natinchina.blogspot.com/