Dubai from the balcony

You know it's the tallest in the world and you can see it from everywhere around (if there isn't a heat haze or a sandstorm in the way) but it can be difficult to get there. Between Julia's balcony and the Burj there are desert, building sites and some of the most dangerous and unfriendly roads on the planet in your way. Up close, Dubai is wonderful, beautiful, excessive, but strangely unobtainable. Perhaps this is the Dubai dream and what people come for. On the streets however, it is the people that make the place what it is; the Phillipinos who seem to do all the manual work, the Indians who drive the taxis, the ex Pats who fill the positions of industry and education and the Emirates who Inherit it all. We leave tomorrow and it will be hard to say goodbye to a favourite daughter, but knowing more about Dubai and how she fits in to the equation will make it easier. So will knowing that she will be coming home for a holiday in under two weeks time.