Does anyone miss Dubai? (And our first video!)

Hey there gang, and welcome to another instalment of the Food + Travel Edit. This week I'm back from Spain, though I got home the long way around (via Istanbul and Kuala Lumpur), because Dubai is still essentially off-limits to travellers. It made me wonder: when DFAT finally lifts its "do not travel" designation for the United Arab Emirates, how will you feel about going back? Also this week, scroll down for tech reviews, a Japanese food how-to, and all the things I'm loving (and hating) this week in food and travel.

There’s an interesting thing that happens any time I announce I’m visiting Dubai. “Ergh,” people will say. “I hate Dubai.”

It’s not as if I’m canvassing opinions either, they’re just offered. People hate Dubai and they like to say so. This is a city that provokes strong reactions, that inspires big emotions, even from people who may not be that familiar with the place itself.

Because there’s plenty to dislike about Dubai, and you don’t have to have been there to know about it. This is the city built on petro-dollars and indentured labour, a town-planner’s version of Donald Trump’s bathroom, all style over substance, glossy attractions and world-first buildings to paper over the cracks of the gross inequality it took to build them.

The late writer AA Gill wrote a famously scathing travel story about Dubai for Vanity Fair almost 15 years ago now, in which he described the city as “Las Vegas without the showgirls, the gambling or Elvis”.

No doubt Gill would be happy, as we all should now, that Dubai is effectively off-limits to Australian travellers. Since late February this year, more than three months now, the United Arab Emirates has been rated “do not travel” by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, meaning any travel insurance policy is null and void for the time you plan to spend there. Only the hardiest traveller – or most motivated worker – is heading to Dubai right now.

So you have to ask: do we actually miss this place, a stopover favourite that usually welcomes hundreds of thousands of Australians a year? Is it a case of not knowing what you’ve got till it’s gone? Or did we always know and really don’t care?

I find Dubai confusing, a place that’s so difficult to pin down. I’m not even sure if I like it or not. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I can’t wait to leave. I understand the hatred, or at least the reasons people like to declare they despise it.

Dubai makes visitors uncomfortable because it serves up such brutal visual reminders of the way the world really works. You’re driving out to a luxury resort past busloads of low-paid workers being trucked out there to clean the place. You’re listening to your cab driver talking about working seven days a week to scrape money together to send to his wife and kids in Pakistan while you make your way to a fancy dinner.

Dubai forces every visitor to stare the inequalities of the world in the face and understand them. There’s an obvious reality at play here, the haves and have-nots, deep injustice that in the rest of your life is carefully hidden from view.

Because people love to sneer at this city while conveniently forgetting about their made-in-Bangladesh T-shirts and their slave-labour trainers. We in the west all benefit in some way from the world’s gross inequality. It’s just that in Dubai you have to look at it. Some people don’t like that.

And even if you can get your head around that, or make your peace with it somehow, this city is far from perfect. It’s incredibly hot, even in winter, making exploration on foot almost impossible. It’s a city with essentially no locals: something like 90 per cent of Dubai’s population is expatriates and foreign workers, making it very difficult for a short-term visitor to connect with or even see anything approaching genuine Emirati culture.

There’s also a sheen of peace and happiness here that covers the strict laws that visitors and migrants have to abide by if they hope to avoid finding themselves in prison.  

But still, I find things to enjoy in Dubai. There might not be Emirati culture – actually, there is, but it’s highly curated and not at all spontaneous – but there are the cultures of the many, many countries whose citizens have travelled to the UAE to make their money.

That’s most obvious in the restaurant scene. Explore the streets of a down-home neighbourhood like Deira and you find Lebanese restaurants, Iraqi kebab joints, Iranian places, Syrian sweet shops, Filipino diners, Indian takeaway joints, all run by their diaspora. The cultures of the entire Middle East and South Asia are here in Dubai, you just have to take a bit of time looking for them, and ensure you get away from the plastic glitz of places like the Palm and Downtown.

The proximity of Dubai airport to areas like Deira, which are filled with these myriad cultures, also makes the emirate an ideal stopover destination, the sort of place you could be in for just 24 hours and still get a whole lot achieved, could take in a swag of culture and not spend all that much money and then head back to the airport and be gone.

You could do all the fancy stuff if you wanted to, the three-star restaurants and the seven-star hotels with the Italian sports cars parked out the front, but you’ll have to be able to square the inequality in your mind, you will have to know that this is how the world has always worked and that you are one of the key beneficiaries.

That’s something for us to all deal with in our own ways. Mine is to make my way down to Deira, to call into a place called Kabab Erbil Iraqi Restaurant, where the welcome is warm and the food is incredible, these huge spreads of fresh-baked flatbreads and salads and soups, of spiced, char-grilled fish and herbs, cooked and served by people proud to share their cultural heritage.

If you hate that, then truly this is not the place for you.  

With Dubai currently a hard sell for many travellers, given the lack of insurance coverage there, these are my five favourite alternative stopover destinations:

• Singapore
  Surely the king of stopover destinations, with a whopping, world-class airport, great places to stay on-site, and easy access to the city. Great airline too, though shame it’s so expensive at the moment.
• Perth
  This is a sleeper hit for East Coast residents, given you can now fly direct from Perth to Rome and London. A night or two in WA to prepare for the 18-hour journey to Europe works a treat.
• Tokyo
  This isn’t the fastest way to get to Europe, but given the amazing facilities at Haneda Airport, and the proximity and affordability of getting into the city, Tokyo is well worth considering.
• Hong Kong
  Hong Kong has it all: world-class airport serviced by an excellent airline (Cathay Pacific), with plenty of connections around the world, and access to the city in 24 minutes via the Airport Express train.
• Guangzhou
  China’s new visa-free policy for Australians (and many other nationalities) makes Guangzhou an attractive stopover destination now, with cheap access via China Southern Airlines, and all the dumplings you can manage once you make it into the city.

WHAT WE’VE BEEN EATING: JAPANESE GYUDON

Check it out! It’s a video! It’s come to the attention of Jess and me that many, many people out there are not cooking enough Japanese food at home. This stuff is super easy, pretty quick, and so tasty. To steer you in the right direction, we made gyudon, a Japanese home food staple of thin-sliced beef braised in dashi, soy, sake and mirin, served over rice with a soft-boiled egg. Check it out and let us know what you think.

TECH REVIEW

I was recently sent a few travel products by Twelve South, which I tried out during my trip to Spain. Long story short: I liked them all, and found them genuinely useful, though some more than others.

The PlugBug was the most surprising, a charging port that I initially mistook for a power bank, but actually it’s a 120W wall charger that can power up four devices simultaneously – super handy. It also has a “Find My” feature, meaning you will always know where it is, though I found that less useful.

The Butterfly SE is a two-in-one charger for iPhone and Apple Watch, which again I really liked and used every day – it’s very compact and saves carrying multiple cables for several devices. And finally there’s the AirFly Pro 2, a Bluetooth transmitter than allows you to view onboard entertainment on a plane with wireless headphones. This was so handy that when I lost mine by leaving it dangling from the headphone socket on the plane after travelling for 30 hours, I went out and bought another one.

WHAT I’M LOVING THIS WEEK

• Forget the USA (if you can) and turn your attention away from Canada. During the World Cup, starting tomorrow, the country you should be dreaming about visiting is south of the border.
• The new Western Sydney International Airport finally has an opening date: Jetstar has announced its first Sydney to Melbourne flight will depart on 25 October at 11am.
• This story of Da Orazio’s “pizza sandwich” – aka a focaccia with porchetta – reminded me of a staple snack at the tuckshop of my high school in central Queensland: pizza in a bun. It was an English muffin topped with tomato paste and cheese, stuffed into a bun. And people say we don’t have culture.
• Hot tip for anyone visiting the NSW Central Coast: there’s a Metro service station on your way into Gosford that always has by far the cheapest petrol. It’s also run by an Indian family who sell fresh, hot samosas and they’re very, very good.

WHAT I’M NOT LOVING

• The Iran War that’s not really a war though obviously is a war is still dragging on, with the US and Iran exchanging attacks in the last few days. This pointless skirmish harms the entire world.
• I understand airports are worlds of their own, where you can expect to pay a premium for just about anything: but still, Istanbul Airport is a breath-taking rip-off. I (stupidly) didn’t do the conversion from lira into dollars when I was there recently and paid more than $60 for a kebab and some baklava.
• Last week in San Sebastian I saw huge queues in front of two of my favourite local bars: Bar Antonio, and Bar Nestor. I’ll have more to say about this in the coming weeks (including my own role), but is this over-popularity really good for the world?