Garuda Indonesia Colours Magazine February 2019 | Page 108

106
Travel | Dubai
Downtown captures
Dubai at its most
photogenic.
1
Dubai’s romance is best witnessed on a morning seaplane ride.
First, the Cessna’s engines are gunned up The Creek. Fifty years
ago, this waterway was the city itself, hosting wooden dhows that
imported coconuts from India, returning with frankincense. Now,
luxurious lunch cruises add ardour to the exotic scene.
The 45-minute seaplane flight is
a sequence of superlatives. With a lusty
roar, the aircraft rises from The Creek
over The World, the planet’s largest
artificial archipelago. Then, the pilot
banks left towards the Burj Al Arab: this
tower cost a cool US$1bn to build in the
1990s, but offers Dubai priceless PR as
one of the tallest, most luxurious hotels
in the world. If passengers are lucky,
they can see patrons dining at Pierchic,
a glamorous seafront restaurant
at the resort’s ocean tip.
Next up is The Palm, the world’s
largest artificial island. To prove the
city’s dynamism, the seaplane dips
over the Emerald Palace Kempinski,
W Dubai: The Palm and the Ain Dubai
Ferris wheel – the latter, standing at a
jaw-dropping 210m, being the highest
in the world and set to open in 2019.
All three are destinations for doters
and dreamers.
It can be hard to make sense of a destination
that develops so constantly. Even Emiratis
joke that their drive home changes daily,
as new skytrains, towers and elevated highways
lend a Blade Runner flavour to this city of just
over three million. Ironically, the best place
to take stock of modern Dubai is in La Mer,
an impossibly intimate seafront neighbourhood
that opened during spring 2018. Here 100
alfresco cabins host Peruvian pop-ups, Turkish
desserts and Brazilian tapas – making the
area a shining star in a city that hosts nearly
200 different nationalities. As many visitors
come to Dubai to pop the big question,
engagement rings can be purchased nearby
(try Damas Jewelry on Jumeirah Beach
Road). The brand-new complex also hosts
waterparks and public beaches, plus sand
sculptures of love hearts on the dunes.
The Downtown area is 10 minutes away
by taxi – yet several centuries removed.
It’s a futuristic skyscape where fountains
dance 50 storeys high, as palms rise up into
the Arabian night. A new development adds
to the romance: the Fountain Boardwalk is
a 300m-long floating platform that stretches
into Downtown’s manmade lake, mere
metres from the high-power fountains.
A more traditional activity is to hire an
ancient abra rowboat for a cruise across the
pool. However, it would take a brave suitor
to declare “I love you” on board – the scene
is regularly overlooked by 10,000 sightseers.
Proposals are perhaps better delivered
from the cloud-grazing heights of the
828m-tall tower that dwarfs Downtown.
The Burj Khalifa is the world’s most lofty,
most glittering and most romantic building.
Indeed, staff working on the 124 th storey
viewing platform, At the Top, witness more