Day D4: The Shocking Divide Between Rich and Poor

February 9, 2025

I was woken up by the call to prayers. Evidently I didn't do enough research and ended up picking an Airbnb in a noisy location close to a mosque. The Fajr prayer is the most important one of the day for Muslims, called before sunrise, which is usually around 5:30am. I slept for a few more hours after that. As luck would have it, the previous Airbnb host was still available. It's just that she blocked off all her listings on the website and was making private arrangements through Whatsapp. Had I known this earlier, her place would have been more suitable, but a refund couldn't be made now.

With so much disjointed social media, digital communications, payment apps, general apps, computer files, etc.. the complexity increases exponentially. It's nearly impossible to organize and keep track of everything, so whatever.

I was getting into a routine which was a good thing. The day would rock with a fitness class (now the 3rd one in a row), getting caught up and organized at Starbucks downstairs in the shopping mall, heading back for a nap, then another social event.

This time it was in an even more opulent luxury hotel that for whatever reason reminded me of Saddam Hussein's palaces.

It was actually fittting that the organizer of the party was from Iraq and he joked about this exact thing. The co-host was from Azerbaijan. The party was slow to start, but that has to be a cultural thing. There were two events happening at once: an Indian singles mixer and the Internations event. Both were separated initially, but we started to mix and mingle once the DJ cranked up more amplified music and the Brazilian belly dancers arrived on the scene.

Before all of this happened, I took the metro and walked a few kilometers to the hotel main entrance. Even at the front gate, staff were on my ass and this would set the precedent for the entire evening. They wanted to know why I was coming to the hotel and I had to explain the event and show the invitation etc.. Then he said, "You can go directly to the lobby". Obviously, most people would have arrived by car or taxi. A bicycle would have been turned away 100%. At least walking made it possible to get in by human powered means.

This pattern continued with at least three more staff asking me questions and "eagerly" talking to me and wanting to "help" direct me to the main rooftop area. I got a sense this vibe was too restrictive. For whatever reason, the staff were really on top of all the guests and they were most likely under the thumb of some micromanaging bosses who in turn reported to others, and so on etc... There was likely pressure to meet certain targets and it wasn't a free flowing type of hotel atmosphere like the previous one the day before. Also, judging by the opulence and decor of the place, drinks were going to cost a fortune. And they sure did.

The Iraqi host was chatting up a storm with everyone and he did his job exceptionally well. Internations event organizers don't get paid for this, and they put up with a ton of complaints all the time. He even told me, "No matter what we do, someone is going to complain about these events but we just keep going. We aim to please as many as we can." And then look at me, I'm complaining about the micromanagement from the hotel. But he was fun and upon learning that I was a math teacher, he presented this little trick: pick a number under 100, cube it, show the result, then he will inverse that (find the cube root) to get the original number. He got all my numbers correct. I was impressed since he did this while greeting arriving guests at the same time. Later I found out from YouTube how this works and where he got this method.

There was a chance to meet quite a few more people this time. The highlight included a Palestinian Canadian woman who was teaching physics at a school nearby. What are the odds of that? There were also some guys from France, the UK, several more Egyptians, someone from Morocco, another from Tunisia, a woman from Norway, and several Russians who had also been to the previous event. This was in combination with many of the Indians from the other event happening at the same time.

There wasn't, however, much time to talk because the DJ quickly turned the ambience into amplified music. Truth be told I'm not a fan when this happens. It presents a conflict of agendas: is this primarily a social event to mingle, or is this dancing like a club? This isn't to say it can't be both. The dancing was super fun and the Brazilian belly dancers and all the candles added to the fun atmosphere. It's just that it started too early, there wasn't much of a transition, and it went on for too long. We had maybe half an hour to mix and mingle, then the dancing was manufactured i.e. dictated by the hotel. They didn't take into consideration the flow of the evening. If we wanted to relax a bit after the dancing and continue the conversations (as I tried to with the woman from Norway) then there were no quiet places in which to do that. I could tell that the others weren't a fan of this either when it kept going for too long. They slowly broke away from the DJ and many of them started leaving early.

To make matters worse, the staff were moving around like vultures and constantly hounding guests to buy drinks. They would pass around menus, whip out the credit card POS terminal at lightning speed, then take away the drinks immediately after we finished. For 100 dirhams ($27) I got two drink tickets for two gin tonics, then I wanted to order a coke but it cost a whopping 40 dirhams ($11). Having thought ahead a bit, I could dump in two mini vodka bottles I got from the duty free but the chances were few and far between to do this: the staff were watching us like hawks. None of this was much fun so I ended up leaving early also. The first half hour of mingling and the initial dancing capitalized on the opportunity, then it was just diminishing returns with extended amplified music and all these staff on our ass.

The guy I met from the UK said, "Yeah this really sucks. I dropped 300 dirhams on two wine glasses with these guys. Sometimes you have to take it on the chin." He was on point, especially when the last venue let us run up a tab.

It was time to bounce. Unfortunately the metro stopped running at 11pm which was odd since I could catch it at 12:30am the previous night. This was after I bought the ticket. But the station attendant said, "We're finished for the night. You can use that ticket tomorrow if you want. For now the only option is a taxi." I asked if there were buses, he said there weren't, but he was a lying son of a bitch. There were buses running all night. So I thought of an idea: I could buy a Nol card at the subway station, throw 100 dirhams on it, then use that to take the bus back. Unfortunately it meant another long walk back to where the event was, but the bus would drop me right off at the Airbnb so it was worth it.

As luck would have it the bus rolled in right away. It only cost 5 dirhams. At first the bus was relatively empty but it started filling up and towards the end it was a total sardine can. There were predominantly Africans on the bus, along with a mix of others such as Indians and Pakistanis. At that point I realized this is part of what my friend Jen back in Thailand was talking about: there is an underbelly to Dubai with these people groups who are doing all the menial jobs that the locals, i.e. the rich elites would never do. You think the royal family is going to work the counter at McDonald's? Think again. I had only been here for a few days but could already get a sense that the Indians, Africans, and Filipinos were doing these kind of jobs to keep Dubai running and predominantly using the bus and metro to get around. Even the bus drivers were mainly Indians.

I was getting stared at frequently but figured why not make the most of it. After all, what white guy takes the bus? We aren't the rich aristocrats but we are considered higher on the privilege ladder than those in the underbelly I had just seen. So I struck up a conversation with some of the Africans and after awhile they told me about a part of the city where they mostly live and do business. They explained that I could check out this park near Union Station the next day (where the bus terminates anyway), and they sell African food, mainly from Kenya. As well they do illegal money exchange. They also said that the police frequently do raids and kick them out, and deportations are not uncommon.

This definitely piqued my curiosity and I would check it out the next day.

This was not part of the plan, but seeing all this really shocked me into how big the gap is between the rich and the poor. By absolute standards, these Africans are enjoying a pretty good life especially considering that they ride these nice buses and have businesses set up etc... But alongside that, they are serving the ultra-elites who wouldn't even blink about spending 1000 dirhams on a few drinks. A perfect example are the housekeepers who service the elites in these ultra posh hotels like the one I had just come from.

All this is enough to make your head spin but I try to approach it by talking to people from an 'everyone is equal' mindset. This is not in the sense that we really are equal as that is obviously not true. But it's more from the sense that rich or poor, we all have to meet the same basic needs anyway. We all need to eat, sleep, have shelter, meet people, and get around the city. So we might as well find something in common and talk about it. Even those driving the fanciest cars still need to use public roads and deal with traffic congestion. In many ways you can and easily get ahead of them on a bicycle.

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