The plane descended from a chilly minus 65 c over mile upon mile of sand and mountains. The English pilot chuckled as he explained the outside temperature in Dubai was "only 40c". It felt like we had walked into the blast from one of the many nearby jet engines as we left the plane. How anyone could work outside in those temperatures I don't know but there were quite a few doing just that. After an overnight flight from Manchester and very little sleep, Dubai airport shimmered like some desert hallucination, a vast shopping mall masquerading as an airport terminal. In a climate like this you need a big air conditioned space and that's exactly what you get.

From the exterior the terminal was a vast metallic windowless structure shaped like the top half of a wing (or maybe a sand dune) only the planes parked at regular intervals along its length gave away the fact that it was the terminal but the chilled interior was something else. It appeared to be about a mile long, a vast shiny plastic chrome shopping experience. Warm exteriors and cool interiors, all very unfamiliar to an Englishman.

In Europe its easy to believe that the whole world is more or less "western" but once you reach Dubai this psychological certainty begins to wobble. For a start the standard American-European conversation about the weather isn't worth having when the sun beats down remorselessly 360+ days a year! But also the lack of greenery is deeply disturbing to your average tree loving Anglo Saxon. Dubai has no trees or none that I could see.. but it has a lot of hot sand. What do dogs do ? Mind you I didn't see any dogs either.

But Dubai is spending those oil dollars recreating itself as the air serviced shopping mall of the east. It's "style" is "Disney meets Yasser Arafat for a McDonalds in the middle of the desert". A funny yellow carton character with spiky green hair is waving at the children who are having their photos taken in full Arab regalia on a "flying" carpet who in turn are being watched by a group white robed pilgrims waiting for their plane to Iran, its tempting to believe you are hallucinating through lack of sleep.

The building is so long they have a fleet of golf carts transporting men in smart suits to their departure gates. I reckon even Tiger Woods would need five shots to par this concourse, and guess what they have another terminal under construction.

Every race imaginable are snapping up the bargains on their way to wherever, most especially

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