S5, E52: Dubai Travel Tips From a Longtime Resident and a Native Emirati Chef

In this episode of Unpacked, host Aislyn Greene hands the mic to travel writer Nicola Chilton for a two-part introduction to Dubai. Nicola, who has lived in Dubai for over a decade, traces the city’s path from a fishing and pearling village to a metropolis built in a few decades, and shares where a first-time visitor should stay. Then Nicola sits down with Emirati chef Sahar Al Awadhi, the first Emirati chef at the Jumeirah Burj Al Arab and soon-to-open owner of the restaurant Abra at the Etihad Museum, to talk about the history of Dubai Creek, the neighborhoods of Bur Dubai and Deira, and the Emirati cuisine she’s bringing back to the table.

Topics discussed in this episode

• How Dubai grew from a fishing and pearling village into a modern metropolis built mostly in the past few decades
• Where a first-time visitor should base themselves, and why Dubai’s public beaches make it more affordable than people expect
• A “poolside safari” at the desert resort Al Maha, and a different side of Dubai in the mountain town of Hatta
• The history of Dubai Creek, Bur Dubai, and Deira, and why Al Shindagha was the city’s original neighborhood
• How chef Sahar Al Awadhi became the first Emirati chef at the Jumeirah Burj Al Arab, and the Emirati cuisine she’s serving at her new restaurant, Abra
  

Frequently asked questions

How did Dubai become a modern city?

Dubai began as a fishing and pearling village with a strategic trading location between Asia, Europe, and Arabia. The UAE was founded in 1971, and most of the skyline associated with modern Dubai today has been built in just the past few decades.

Where should a first-time visitor stay in Dubai?

Travel writer Nicola Chilton recommends Jumeirah Beach for a first visit, for its hotels, restaurants, easy access to the rest of the city, and free public beaches.

What is Al Maha?

Al Maha is a luxury desert resort inside the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, about an hour from the city, known for gazelles and Arabian oryx that wander up to guests’ plunge pools.

Who is Sahar Al Awadhi?

Sahar Al Awadhi is an Emirati chef and the first Emirati chef to work at the Jumeirah Burj Al Arab. She is opening an Emirati restaurant called Abra at Dubai’s Etihad Museum.

What is Al Shindagha?

Al Shindagha is a historic waterfront district on Dubai Creek where Dubai’s first ruler, Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum, had his house. The restored neighborhood is now home to several heritage museums.

People, places, and resources in this episode

• “The Perfect 4 Days in Dubai, According to Locals”—read Nicola’s Afar story
• Burj Khalifa
• Jumeirah Burj Al Arab
• Al Maha, a Luxury Collection Desert Resort & Spa
• Museum of the Future
• Etihad Museum
• Al Shindagha Historic District
• Karak Inc.
• Emirates
• flydubai

Full transcript

Aislyn Greene: I’m Aislyn Greene and this is Unpacked, and today we are in Dubai. Kind of. I’m actually at my desk in California, but I have a very special guest with us today, the travel writer Nicola Chilton, who is at a Dubai studio, which is fitting because together we’re going to explore this glamorous, ambitious, multicultural metropolis. In this episode, Nicola is going to set up the Dubai of today for us, its history, its present and what it’s like on the ground right now, as well as all the things that have kept her here all these years. And then starting next week, she’ll be hosting episodes, sitting down with the chefs, artists, architects, and more who are shaping Dubai today. And it’s all going to happen at the very studio she’s calling in from today. So that means that you can actually watch or listen to all of these episodes on YouTube. Nicola, welcome. How are you doing today?

Nicola Chilton: Thank you so much. I’m very excited to welcome you to Dubai.

Aislyn: You know, when people think of Dubai, it’s likely that they picture the modern skyline, the ultra tall landmarks, and the clusters of man made islands right off the shore. But until about 1966, Dubai was a fishing village. So can you explain a little bit about how Dubai came to be?

Nicola: Yeah. So Dubai was a fishing village. It was also a center of pearling. The pearl trade was very big here. And trade in general was big here because it has a very strategic location between Asia, Europe, Arabia. So there was a lot of trade happening, a lot of people coming through. But what people don’t really know is that there have been civilizations here for a really long time. So I live in a neighborhood called Jumeirah, and in my neighborhood, there’s the ruins of a 1,000-year-old caravanserai. And you can stand at these ruins and you see the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, right behind them. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition. And this was a place where traders would come and rest and restock. And it’s right there in the middle of the city. And it’s one of these almost like secrets hiding in plain sight.

Aislyn: What about this kind of the modern Dubai of today, the Dubai that you spend so much time reporting on for Afar?

Nicola: So this really is a young city. Dubai is just one of the seven Emirates that makes up the United Arab Emirates, the UAE. And as a country, it was founded in 1971. So the Dubai that you see today has mostly modern Dubai has really been built in the past few decades. One of the most interesting parts of the city is Dubai Creek. And this is where the Dubai as we know it today really grew up as a trading settlement was a very important waterway. If you go there now, you still get a little taste of what it must have been like a few decades ago. There are these little wooden boats called abras that crisscross. It’s one of the best bargains in town. You pay the driver one dirham coin, which is.

Aislyn: Like, oh my.

Nicola: Gosh. Less than 30 cents. It’s an amazing journey. Just hop around on the water there. So there are places where you can still get a feel for that. But what most people think of as Dubai really is the the Burj Khalifa. It’s a lot of skyscrapers. So I’m hoping we can show a few more sides of Dubai that go beyond that through the conversations we’ll be having in these episodes.

Aislyn: So that brings me to my next question, which is how did you come to Dubai?

Nicola: Full disclosure, I was transferred to Dubai. I’d been living in Asia for a really long time, and I moved here from Bangkok, and I’d been to Dubai a couple of times for work, and honestly, I just didn’t get it. So I was transferred here and had to make it home. So I very quickly started to try and find things that weren’t the stereotypes. I guess I too had believed I’d bought into these preconceived ideas about what Dubai was, that it was just a land of shopping malls and highways and nothing else. Of course it’s not true. Nowhere can be just that, right? And one of the first things I did was I went to Dubai Creek, and I took one of those boats, and I went to a little cafe and I went to an art gallery, and I realized that there was a lot more substance to this city and that I was going to find it.

Aislyn: Yeah. How have you seen the city change over the last 11 years?

Nicola: This is a city that changes rapidly. It’s a city built on ambition. It’s built on imagination. It’s built on confidence. So I’ve seen things like physical things change, like new highways, new bridges. A canal was built that all of the physical changes are really noticeable. But what I have really come to appreciate is that I think there’s been a cultural shift. Just to give you one example, in terms of food and beverage and restaurants, when I first came here, if you wanted to go for fine dining for a good dinner, your choices tended to be Dubai outposts of celebrity chef restaurants, or big brand names or things that you would know from somewhere else in the world. That’s really changed in the decade that I’ve been here. And now we have a lot of homegrown concepts. We have a lot of really creative people doing creative things, interesting people doing interesting things. And that, I think, is one of the reasons that I’m still here, because there’s just this amazing community of people doing fantastic things.

Aislyn: Well, we’re going to hear a little bit about that in a bit, but for now, you know, I do feel like we need to address the fact that back in the spring, the UAE successfully intercepted incoming missile threats from Iran. And I know it was an unsettling time. We talked shortly after that, but one of the things that you mentioned to me at that time was that there was such a sense of loyalty in Dubai in response to the UAE’s sophisticated defense system. So can you tell me a little bit more about what you saw in terms of people coming together?

Nicola: Yeah, I mean, it was definitely an unsettling time. But I think what what was really noticeable was the loyalty that people feel for this place. People who people really came together as a community. In a way. It was a little bit like a Covid era feeling where everybody’s like, okay, we’re all in this together. Let’s come together as a community and support each other. And that for me was really noticeable. I come from the UK where we’re we have a tendency to be extremely cynical about things. But when you when, when you saw people here rallying together, realizing what the country was doing in terms of safety and security and stability. I think it gave us confidence as well.

Aislyn: I know you’ve had a lot of people coming to visit in recent months. Can you tell me a little bit about what that experience has been like? And you travel outside of the city quite frequently. So yeah. What’s that been like for you?

Nicola: Yeah, I travel in and out all the time. So I think one of the things that people heard a lot about was flight cancellations. And I know that people were worried about connecting through Dubai. The Dubai airline Emirates is, is an incredible airline that’s basically synonymous with the destination. Right? Without Emirates, there wouldn’t be Dubai, without Dubai, there wouldn’t be Emirates. It’s like this beautiful symbiotic relationship. Emirates is running an almost complete schedule now. I flew in on Sunday night on flydubai from Nepal, got to the airport. It was packed. Everybody coming back from the summer vacations, people coming back in time for school year starting. It was very busy, which was great to see.

Aislyn: I love that and it’s so helpful to help. I think travelers go beyond the headlines because often that’s what you see. So that is a great segue into where should a first time traveler base themselves in Dubai? Because I know you have thoughts about that.

Nicola: I do have thoughts about that. I have a few thoughts. I would say if it’s your first time in Dubai, you want to be on the beach, you want to be in Jumeirah Beach specifically. Jumeirah beach has a lot of the best hotels in town, excellent restaurants, easy access to everywhere. Dubai is not a massive city. It’s kind of long and thin. So if you’re around the Jumeirah Beach area, you’ve got great hotels, great restaurants. There are public beaches as well, which is a really nice thing because people think that Dubai is prohibitively expensive. We have great public beaches. Anybody can go take your towel, put it down on the sand. You’ve got an amazing beach day experience.

Aislyn: So one of the things that I’ve always wanted to do, and I think you actually wrote about it for Afar, is spend some time in the desert outside of Dubai, because it sounds like there’s some really incredible hotel experiences out there. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Nicola: So this is a place where you can stay a couple of nights at the beach, then move to the desert. It’s only about an hour’s drive away. It’s it’s not a huge trek. We have some great desert resorts. One of the most famous, perhaps, is Al Maha, which is a luxury collection. It’s located in the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve. So when you stay there. I was just there a couple of weeks ago. When you stay there, you’ll be in your plunge pool and little gazelles come wandering up and just hang out poolside and just watch you. It’s incredible. And there’s also a population of Arabian oryx, which are these beautiful white animals with very, very long, sharp, elegant horns and they were brought back from extinction in the wild through breeding programs and conservation programs. And it’s one of the conservation world’s great success stories. And you’ll see them from your tented suites at Al Maha. You just see them wandering around in the desert below. It’s spectacular.

Aislyn: Yeah, it sounds like being on safari basically like you could. Yeah, you.

Nicola: You don’t need to get out of your pool to do it.

Aislyn: Even better. Poolside safari. I love that.

Nicola: Yeah. People think that Dubai is is quite superficial, but I always say that there are many Dubai’s right. There’s the Dubai that perhaps we think of with like the bling and and the glamour and everything. And. Yeah. And that’s a major reason that some people come here because it’s exciting. Right? We have amazing restaurants and beach clubs and rooftop bars and, and all the superlatives. We have the world’s tallest building and the world’s deepest dive pool. And all of these things that make it kind of exciting. But you can go and chill in the desert for a couple of days. This morning I was out in Hatta, which is an exclave of Dubai, about an hour and a half’s drive from here. And it’s the mountains. It’s part of the Hajar Mountain range. You have these steep Rocky mountains where you could go hiking and mountain biking and kayaking, and it’s the side of Dubai that is not really well known outside of here. Residents, we all go there in winter, we go hiking there. But, uh, it’s a great place to go to see a completely different side of the country.

Aislyn: As an avid hiker myself, I would love to come and, you know, go for a hike during the day and then have a fantastic cocktail on a rooftop bar at night. So where do you think this living, breathing city goes from here? Like, what do you expect in the next 5 years given its growth and ambition?

Nicola: We’re talking about having flying taxis coming now. Anywhere else in the world, you’d be like, yeah, yeah, whatever. But in Dubai, that’s just a matter of time. This will happen, right? There is nothing stopping the imagination. We have this beautiful museum called the Museum of the Future, which opened a handful of years ago, and it’s this incredible metal torus shaped building covered in Arabic calligraphy. It’s extraordinary. You see it when you drive down Sheikh Zayed Road. It’s one of the first things that you see once you approach the city from the airport.

Aislyn: That museum has been on my list since it opened. And when we spoke, you mentioned that there’s this fantastic quote in calligraphy on the exterior that says the future belongs to those who can imagine it, design it, and execute it. It isn’t something you await, but rather create. Do I have that right?

Nicola: Yeah. You do. That was a quote from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. So he’s His Highness, the ruler of Dubai. And I just think it sums up the essence of this city entirely. If you look at everything that’s been built here in 50 years, and I look at everything that’s been created in the 11 years that I’ve been here, it’s built on imagination and ambition and confidence. There are few places in the world that that have that and where they can just make it happen. And that’s one of the things that makes the city so exciting.

Aislyn: So this interview actually marks a handover. You’re going to be our host for the next three episodes. You mentioned some of the people you’re going to speak to. Can you give us a little hint about what’s to come and what you’re most excited about?

Nicola: I’m excited about all of it because these are some of my favorite people in Dubai. Um, I’m excited about the conversations we’ll have revealing these different sides of Dubai that, uh, perhaps our listeners haven’t heard of before. We’re going to have some fun conversations.

Aislyn: We sure are. And you’re actually going to get a little taste of that today because after the break, Nicola is diving deeper into the history of Dubai with a very special guest.

Nicola: As I shared with Aislyn before the break, I’ve lived here in Dubai for over a decade now, but for the second part of the episode, I wanted to bring on a guest who was born and raised here, who can speak about how the history and the past of Dubai influences its incredibly dynamic, present and future. Sahar Al Awadhi is something of a pioneer in Dubai culinary scene. An Emirati chef who worked at the iconic Jumeirah Burj Al Arab and who is about to open her own restaurant, Abra. So welcome, Sahar, thank you so much for joining us. It’s such a pleasure to have you.

Sahar Al Awadhi: Thanks for having me.

Nicola: You are born and raised in Dubai. I’ve heard you describe this as the best city on earth.

Sahar: There might be a little bit of bias there, but I feel like what I’ve witnessed over the course of my life and the growth of Dubai and how it just keeps it just keeps outdoing itself and how we’ve kind of managed to like, become one of the most desirable global cities to live in, to visit, to work in. It’s really exciting to be part of that growth.

Nicola: Can we talk a little bit about where Dubai came from? A bit about the history of the place?

Sahar: I kind of look at Dubai a lot like Switzerland, and how Switzerland is kind of broken down into like German Switzerland and then French Switzerland and then Italian Switzerland. And so Dubai itself, or I would say the UAE itself, I feel like kind of acts that way as well, where it has neighboring countries that it took a little bit of influence from and kind of made it its own. There’s different cultures that go throughout the UAE. It’s not just a cookie cutter, one size fits all, kind of like, you know, this is the food of the UAE.

Nicola: Some of our listeners may not realize that there are seven Emirates that make up the country. Dubai is just one of them.

Sahar: Exactly. And you have Abu Dhabi in the South. You have Ras Al Khaimah all the way in the north. Both of them can lie vary in terms of like what they eat, in the way that they prepare food and the way that they go about their daily lives. It all makes a difference.

Nicola: One of the things that when I have visitors coming, I always take them to do is to get on one of the abras, the little the little wooden boats that have been crossing that stretch of water for decades. What. When you have visitors from out of town, where do you take them to get a feel for the Dubai that came before and that actually is still here. It’s still present today.

Sahar: Yeah, definitely the creek. Definitely about Dubai and not just about Dubai side. The Deira side as well.

Nicola: So Bur Dubai is on one side and Deira is on the other side.

Sahar: Bur Dubai is the Al Fahidi side.

Nicola: The west side. Yeah.

Sahar: So the west coast and the east coast. Uh, so definitely the Dubai side where Al Fahidi is where Shindagha is. Shindagha is now developed into like an amazing museum where you can actually see the history and artifacts of the UAE. So that’s, that’s a nice, that’s a nice place to take people who are visiting Dubai.

Nicola: So Al Shindagha is a neighborhood.

Sahar: Shindagha is actually considered a neighborhood, but it’s a historic district where the first ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum, had his house there. And so everybody else had their houses around that neighborhood as well. It’s right on the creek. All of those houses have been maintained and restored and turned into a museum. So each house kind of houses a different thing. You have like a jewelry house and you have one for textiles. You see a lot of like residents also, especially when the the sun starts going down. Residents love going there. Walking across the creek, you see birds flying everywhere. There’s abras on the water. It’s it’s beautiful. And then like just walking down a couple of minutes from there. Al Fahidi district, another amazing neighborhood that’s historic, that’s been preserved and maintained as well. A couple of hotels there, a couple of restaurants there so you can get a feel of the food as well. I love that whole area. And then obviously taking the Abra to the Deira side, because that’s the OG side. That’s the original side of Dubai. So initially residents of Dubai lived on the Deira side. I think there might have been some sort of accident and that’s why people migrated to the Bur Dubai side. Bur Dubai actually literally means the desert of Dubai. And so it was across the water. They migrated there. And so the city started growing like that.

Nicola: So there’s a lot of history, a lot that that isn’t necessarily what people associate with Dubai, but it’s actually really accessible. And you can go and feel it and smell it and touch it and taste it. Yeah. So you mentioned Emirati cuisine. I know this is something that’s very close to your heart. Yeah. You were the first Emirati chef at the Jumeirah Burj Al Arab.

Sahar: I believe so, yeah. Yeah. I mean.

Nicola: What an amazing achievement. The iconic hotel. Yeah. And you’re about to open your own restaurant, which we’ll come back to in a second. But I would love to to speak a bit about Emirati cuisine, because I feel it’s possibly the most underrepresented cuisine in Dubai right now.

Sahar: I agree.

Nicola: I’d love to know why you think that is. Yeah. And how the these centuries of trade and exchange have influenced Emirati cuisine.

Sahar: Because people who ate Emirati food were Emiratis and they ate it at home. Being in the hospitality industry wasn’t a very common profession to be in. And that’s changed a lot over the course of the last 10 years, I would say.

Nicola: Were you the first chef in your family?

Sahar: Uh, yes.

Nicola: Wow.

Sahar: Yeah.

Nicola: Tell me how how that happened.

Sahar: I loved cooking, I love seeing my mom cook. I loved helping her. I loved cooking myself. And I don’t think it ever occurred to anybody that you could become a chef. But with the introduction of Food Network and Fatafeat and all of the access to all of these amazing channels that were showing us what chefs were actually doing, I think it it kind of triggered something in me where I’m like, well, why can’t I do it?

Nicola: Amazing. So what are the the fundamentals of Emirati cuisine?

Sahar: Uh, greens, a lot of greens and a lot of proteins and a lot of spices. Those are the three main components of most Emirati dishes. Now that’s traditional cuisine. What we’ve been seeing in the last 5 years is a big boom in the agricultural industry. And because we have all of these ingredients now growing in the UAE that previously weren’t growing. I look at Emirati cuisine as an evolving cuisine, and the way that I cook is an evolution of Emirati cuisine, with the incorporation of things that are now growing on our soil, uh, which historically happened as well. And so now that we have ingredients growing here, they should be incorporated into cuisine and we should be seeing the evolution of cuisine, which is essentially what I do.

Nicola: So from the historical perspective of Emirati cuisine. Grains and spices were not naturally growing here, even in antiquity, right? Yeah. So is this all a result of this history of trade and exchange?

Sahar: Yeah, 100 percent. I mean, most importantly, through the creek, I think spices traveled throughout the world through obviously the spice route. And we talk about the major countries that were heavily influenced by that. But along the way, along that route, obviously there were smaller countries and smaller areas that were affected as well. And I think the UAE was definitely one of them. We picked up things along the way on people’s journeys, and it kind of became part of the cuisine and one of the essential ingredients of cuisine.

Nicola: Tell us a little bit about Abra. We spoke about Abra a moment ago. Those boats on the creek. But you are about to open your own restaurant called Abra, correct?

Sahar: Abra literally means to cross and so it takes you across the creek from one side to the other, from Deira to Dubai, and vice versa. And so what it represents for us is the crossing from traditional Emirati cuisine into new Emirati cuisine. Again, you’re spot on. I love that whole area. I love the creek. I love both sides of the creek. And so I think because it was so integral to the formation of Dubai and where a lot of influence came in, it was really important. It just made sense to me that like, that was what the restaurant represented. In a nutshell. Yeah.

Nicola: And your location is very interesting, especially for people who want to gain more of an understanding of how the UAE as a country was formed. Because you’re located in the Etihad Museum.

Sahar: Yes.

Nicola: Tell us a bit about that museum.

Sahar: So the great thing is we’re not far from Shindagha and all of that whole historic district, which I love. The other thing that I love about Etihad Museum is like 10, 15 minutes. To your left is the historic district and 10, 15 minutes to your right is New Dubai. And so I feel like where we are also represents UAE and Dubai very well. And that there’s there’s always an intersection of the old and new that you can’t have Dubai without the old. You can’t have Dubai without the new.

Nicola: And the Etihad Museum itself is focused on the union of the Emirates that formed the United Arab Emirates in 1971. Right?

Sahar: Correct. So it’s where actually the union houses. And that’s where the union was signed by all the leaders of the Emirates. It’s a really emotional place for Emiratis, I think.

Nicola: I think this goes back to what you were saying in the beginning about how you feel being born and having grown up here, that you’re part of this evolution in this growth.

Sahar: I feel a huge sense of honor and pride that I’m able to open an Emirati restaurant at Etihad Museum, where the Union House is. And because I always say this because it’s where the UAE was born. Everything that we represent in the restaurant has to be made in the UAE. We work a lot with entrepreneurs and producers that are locally based, things that are locally made to kind of honor that promise as well.

Nicola: If you were to take a visitor to one place to get a taste of the Dubai that you grew up in, where would you take someone?

Sahar: I guess I appreciate it as I grew up, that I maybe took for granted when I was younger was more the Karama and Dubai side. And specifically I have a huge inclination towards Indian food. And so there’s some really, really, really amazing places in those areas. That will give you an idea of the fabric of Dubai or one of the the threads that make the fabric of Dubai.

Nicola: one of the best deals in Dubai is when you drive along the Jumeirah Beach Road and you pull up at one of the canteens and you beep the horn and open the window and you order your karak tea.

Sahar: Yes.

Nicola: It’s karak. It’s—

Sahar: Cultural.

Nicola: It’s a spiced milk tea, basically.

Sahar: Basically it’s a it’s a spiced milk tea. It’s one of. I think it’s one of the things that we adopted from India and kind of made it our own cultural phenomenon. Like, uh, it’s, it’s amazing. You’re right. You drive around you, you honk. It’s one dirham, two dirhams sometimes.

Nicola: Now if there’s saffron, it’s a bit more.

Sahar: It’s a bit more. So yeah, it’s a spice tea. You kind of drive around drinking it. Um, my brother and I had a place called Karak Inc., and we had customers that used to come every morning with their flasks, fill up with karak and go to work and take the flask to work.

Nicola: So it’s an entire day’s caffeine in one flask. Exactly.

Sahar: Exactly.

Nicola: I think this is taking me on to my next question that I know you feel very passionately about. People have often liked to say that Dubai is just a new city that doesn’t have an authentic soul. Yeah. How would you, as an Emirati woman, respond to that?

Sahar: I think you probably haven’t dived deep enough into Dubai. Uh, it’s a very superficial comment. Yes, Dubai is an ever growing city. It’s developed a lot in the last, I would say, what, 20, 25 years at an exponential rate. But just because we were trying to catch up to everyone in the last 20, 25 years. It doesn’t mean that we didn’t come from anything, or it doesn’t mean that Dubai didn’t come from anything. My dad’s store was, I think, in the 1960s.

Nicola: The denim store?

Sahar: Yeah. Before the union even happened. And so that’s still the soul of Dubai. And many other stores in that whole community. So there definitely was a city. It has a soul. I think you just haven’t really delved deep enough. You haven’t asked the right questions. You haven’t met the right people. Maybe you’re stuck in a bubble. It’ll help to burst that bubble and get out of that and kind of dig a little deeper.

Nicola: And I think you’ve given some beautiful examples of places that visitors can go to to really get a sense of this authentic Dubai.

Sahar: Yeah. And they’re completely accessible. They’re not, you know, they’re not exclusive to any kind of nationality. They’re on your regular route like you’re down Jumeirah Road, going towards wherever you’re going to get a matcha instead of getting your matcha. Get your karak.

Nicola: It’s a great suggestion. Sahar, it’s been such a pleasure having you on Unpacked. Thank you so much.

Sahar: Thank you so much for having me.

Nicola: This brings us to the end of episode one of Unpacked in Dubai. You can read more stories about Dubai in our show notes, and you can also tune in on YouTube and watch the rest of the episodes in this series. We have a lot more exciting conversations with great Dubai people coming up. I’m Nicola Chilton, this is Unpacked. See you in the next episode.