Dubai

Less than sixty years ago, Dubai was a modest fishing and pearling settlement on the Persian Gulf, its economy built around dhow trading boats and a pearl industry that collapsed once Japan developed cultured pearls in the early 20th century. Oil was discovered in 1966, but Dubai's reserves were always smaller than those of neighboring Abu Dhabi, and the city's leadership made an early, deliberate bet on diversifying into trade, finance, real estate, and tourism rather than depending on oil revenue long-term.

That bet produced the Burj Khalifa, completed in 2010 and standing 828 meters tall, currently the tallest building in the world by a wide margin. Its observation decks on levels 124 and 125 look out over the rest of the city's skyline, itself dense with skyscrapers that mostly didn't exist before the 2000s, a genuinely unusual sight for a city this young.

Palm Jumeirah, an artificial archipelago shaped like a palm tree and built from dredged sand and rock, extends the city's coastline and is visible clearly from satellite images, one of the most recognizable pieces of large-scale land reclamation anywhere in the world. It now holds hotels, private residences, and beach clubs along its fronds, alongside Dubai's ongoing efforts to keep expanding its coastal footprint.

Dubai Mall, one of the largest shopping and entertainment complexes in the world, houses an aquarium and underwater zoo, an Olympic-size ice rink, and hundreds of stores alongside the base of the Burj Khalifa, timed so that the mall's Dubai Fountain show outside runs choreographed water displays set to music every half hour in the evening, free to watch from the surrounding promenade.

Beyond the skyline, desert safaris remain one of Dubai's most popular excursions, combining dune bashing in 4x4 vehicles with traditional Bedouin-style camps offering dinner, henna, and sometimes falconry displays, a direct contrast with the ultra-modern city just a short drive away and a reminder of the landscape Dubai actually sits on.