Weirdly, I think these two photographs summed up a...

Weirdly, I think these two photographs summed up a lot about the UAE, perhaps more specifically Dubai.

Not sure if you can read it… but the billboard in the center says “A LUXURY CAR WITH EVERY LUXURY APARTMENT”. The United Arab Emirates – Dubai in particular – went through such a growth spurt right before the economy collapsed that they now have scores of high rise apartment buildings with perhaps 20% occupancy.

And I’m not talking “a few buildings”. I’m talking the large majority of them. Take a look at the second picture: take a look at how many cranes there are, and how many there have been, if you asked around, for the last couple of years. They’re practically begging you to live there in these decadent apartment buildings, offering you cars or various accoutrements to entice you to live there. This country is still very, very rich yet has the money management skills of Courtney Love in a boutique heroin store.

I had a cocktail in Dubai that cost about $35 (Full disclosure: I had three of them). Was it a great cocktail? You bet your ass it was. But it wasn’t filling. And that’s indicative of how quite a few of us on the trip ultimately viewed Dubai.

Strangely, the best meal we had – this lamb dish with rice and bread and hummus – was way, way out in the desert and probably cost per person a third of the cost of one of those drinks. And was more filling. And people were laughing. There wasn’t much laughing in Dubai. Just a lot of wealth on display. Money doesn’t make you happy. Just looking at the skyline in Dubai will tell you that.