Dubai - Old and New
Jackamy
Paul & Derry Harper
Mon 9 May 2011 01:56
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Dubai - Old and New
Sunday 9th May
We all decided to do our own thing today so
Paul and I headed for the Bastakia Quarter in Old Dubai.
In the early 1900's Dubai's ruler Sheikh
Saeed Bin Maktoum offered Persian merchants free land next to Dubai Creek as
encouragement to bring their trade from Persia to the newly built Customs Free
Port. The area takes it's name from the town of Bastakia in Southern
Iran.
When the merchants moved to Dubai
they bought their families and builders with them. The builders constructed
coral rock and mud houses incorporating unique wind-towers, a feature of
buildings in their homeland. These wind-towers trapped and redirected the
prevailing breezes into the interior of these courtyard houses for cooling
during the summer.
  Inside the
courtyards.
  The Bastakia Quarter is
now a conservation area.
  Trading houses on the Dubai
Creek.
 Abra (traditional wooden
boat)
Dubai Creek is bustling all day
long with crowded abras and colourful working dhows bound for Iran and other
Gulf ports.
  Crossing the creek on an abra
to Deira to explore the Souqs.
 The Spice Souq.
  Hundreds of stores in the Gold
Souq selling every type of jewellery imaginable including Indian wedding
necklaces.
We then went from 'Old Dubai to
'New Dubai' the Burj Khalifa, the world's newest tallest building at 823 metres
high with 163 floors. It opened in January 2010 six year's after excavation
began, 13,000 workers worked day and night, putting up a new floor every three
days.
 Burj Khalifa with the
'Dubai Fountain' in the middle of the lake and the 'Dubai Mall' to the
right.
Next to the Burj Khalifa is the
Dubai Mall the worlds largest shopping centre with 1200 stores an Olympic-sized
'Dubai Ice Rink' and 'Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo'. The aquarium is one of
the largest tanks in the world at 51mtrs x 20 mtrs x 11mtrs.
  Dubai Aquarium from inside the
Dubai Mall, the viewing panel is 32.8 metres wide x 8.3 metres high...Learn to
dive in the aquarium.
 Burj Khalifa at night
dwarfing the buildings beside it.
  The 'Dubai Fountain' in the
middle of a vast artificial lake...The water dances to music and surges as high
as 150 metres.
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