Dubai. The concrete jungle, smack in the middle of the desert. Everything about this place is/feels manufactured. Everything! Well… besides the sand and the sweltering heat. It's like a giant theme park where they've borrowed bits and pieces from just about every developed country in the world, and replicated it out there in the desert on a grand, and obscenely extravagant scale. The place has always felt inauthentic and contrived, to me. Like a giant stage where performers are doing their damnedest best to put on a show, but every now and then you catch a glimpse of what's going on backstage and it leaves you aghast. After my first few visits, I resigned to staying put in my hotel, away from the theatrics of it all and out of the baking heat. I cannot, for the life of me, understand what the fuss is about this place. There is little to be seen in terms of indigenous culture, as the place has been westernised to within an inch of its life. Most of the Emiratis hardly interact with foreigners. Aside from the desert safari and the Frying Pan food tours, that let you explore the less glitzy parts of the city in the Souks (markets), there's really not much else to hold your interest.