Tag Archives: shopping in Dubai

Dubai Shopping Festival: Are you feeling lucky?

Posted on by
Yes, that is a Lamborghini pictured. Only in Dubai!

Yes, that is a Lamborghini pictured. Only in Dubai!

Everywhere I turn in Dubai at the moment, there’s someone offering me the chance to win a prize – be it an iPhone, Mercedes Benz, Jeep Wrangler, or 200,000dhs cash (yes, please!). It seems there are raffles and there are mega raffles, like the Dubai Shopping Festival’s daily ‘life-changing’ prize – an Infiniti Qx70. And Jumbo Electronics’ gold give-away (either 10 grams of gold every day, or 500 grams weekly).

It’s all part of the month-long shopping festival, and it does cause plenty of excitement. At work today, my friend turned round and, with light shining behind her eyes, said, “Ooh, in half an hour it’s the next Visa Impossible Deal.” (For cardholders, up to 80 per cent off electronics, travel, entertainment, luxury goods and cars, until 1 Feb.) It was an iPhone today, and no we didn’t win. “Never mind, we’ll try again tomorrow!” we agreed, while peering at the thumbnail photo online of the winner to see if he looked worthy.

Filling up with gas on the way home, I idled away the 15 minutes it took queuing (yes, the UAE might be sitting on 98 billion barrels of oil, but refuelling your car can take a while) by watching the staff going from vehicle-to-vehicle selling mega-raffle tickets. I’ve no doubt the prize was … another car.

Do any readers actually know anyone who’s won a big-ticket prize, though?

I don’t know anyone personally, but I did take a quick look online, and read about Shahir Ebrahim, from India. He won two cars, and at first, hung up the phone twice. “Please don’t play games with me,” he told the caller; it was only when his phone rang for a third time that he realised he really was a winner. He sold the cars, then got married and travelled to Asia for a holiday.

There’s also Faisal Khurshid, from Pakistan, who spent the 350,000dhs he won on his wife and kids, and bought a one-bedroom flat in Silicon Oasis. “I never imagined that I would ever own a property in Dubai,” he said of his purchase.

Ah, those stories are rather lovely. Definitely worthy!

Silent Sunday: The January sales

Posted on by
You know the Dubai Shopping Festival has started when … you come across a gold Lamborghini in the window of a clothes shop!

You know the Dubai Shopping Festival has started when … you come across a gold Lamborghini in the window of a clothes store!

Our little fishing village that could

Posted on by

During nearly a decade of airline life, we’ve lived in or near three different cities, and with each move, I’ve noticed a theme:

Our proximity to megamalls and Disney parks.

It’s like we’re destined to live next door to either the country’s most ginormous, cavernous shopping centre or Mickey Mouse himself.

As newlyweds, we set up home in Florida, not far from Orlando and close to more theme parks than you could shake a stick of rock at. Ironically, we didn’t have children then, but that just made park visits a hundred times easier.

Our move to Minneapolis put us in the perfect location for shopping at America’s biggest mall, The Mall of America – which actually has a theme park inside it. You could get married in the mall’s wedding chapel, browse 4.3 miles of store fronts, then ride the rollercoasters and log flume.

Beat this Dubai! A theme park in a mall, at the Mall of America

Beat this Dubai! A theme park in a mall, at the Mall of America, Minneapolis

Here in Dubai, we’re just 20 minutes away from the Dubai Mall, a vast, glitzy megamall and the world’s biggest shopping centre by area – as well as a short drive from the Mall of the Emirates (home to the famous ski slope) and an unfathomable China-themed mall called Dragon Mart, where you can buy anything from cheap toys to gaudy bathroom fittings and forklift trucks.

It’s all a far cry from my days in England when I’d pop to ‘the shops’ – aka The Peacocks Centre, an easy-to-navigate shopping complex that you could skip round, about the size of Dubai Mall’s ice rink.

Some 8.8m visitors flock to Dubai each year to enjoy not just the beach, but the sparkling array of foreign brands on sale here. So it’s perhaps not surprising that the Dubai Mall has been deemed not big enough. There are plans to add another million square feet to the retail giant and – to top this – the city also intends to build a new, bigger, even shinier megamall, called The Mall of the World.

Located in a spanking new, sprawling ‘mega-city’ – to be constructed, where else but just down the road from us. With enough room for a mind-boggling 80 million shoppers a year [I can see my mother rolling her eyes as I write!)

And just as we were digesting the news about the proposed Mohammed bin Rashid City, with its 100 hotels, park, art galleries and a Universal Studios, came the announcement that Dubai is planning another five theme parks. Assuming the projects are completed, there will be parks based on both Hollywood and Bollywood, as well as a marine park, a children’s park and a night safari.

It all rather surpasses the news from a couple of months ago that our city, which in a former life was a fishing settlement, has several flamboyant, pre-crisis style projects up its sleeve, including a replica of the Taj Mahal (only bigger) and a copy of the Egyptian pyramids containing offices and a museum.

There’s never a dull moment in Dubai, a city that thinks big – and as for that debt crisis the size of China? Things appear to be moving on, quicker than you can say ‘refrigerated beach’.

Why build the world's biggest mall once, when you can do it twice? Artists impression of the new Mohammed bin Rashid City, courtesy of thenational.ae

Why build the world’s biggest mall once, when you can do it twice? Artist’s impression of the new Mohammed bin Rashid City, courtesy of The National

24-hour Sherpa shopping

Posted on by

Dubai is known for its swanky malls and shopping festivals, and over the past three weeks it’s even been possible to indulge the habit at 3am on weekends.

Shopaholics, insomniacs and jet-lagged tourists were treated to round-the-clock shopping at several malls across the city as part of the Eid celebrations – though I hear it was mainly the food outlets that visitors flocked to in the small hours rather than the stores.

I wasn’t one of them – NOTHING, not even a night shopping deal would drag me from my bed and to the mall in the middle of the night, but we did end up at Mirdif City Centre on Saturday, where I found myself browsing the shop windows with a mixture of frustration and envy.

The stores are crammed with swathes of winter clothes – jackets, sweaters, faux furs, scarves – of the Sherpa variety.

I mean, have I missed something over the past four years in Dubai?

Like a big snow.

Cutsie winter clothes that my children will never wear in Dubai. When I popped in to look for a UV sun top, the assistant told me, “Sorry Ma’am, the season’s over.” Over! It’s only just begun!

I’d love to be able to wear this jacket, but if I did I’d feel like a boil-in-the-bag dinner. I know items like this are targeted at the tourists (despite surely not being any cheaper), but couldn’t stores like Gap, H&M and M&S modify their winter collections for Dubai? Per-leez?

And this shop window just takes the biscuit: HELLO! Do you know where we are? THE DESERT!!

Dubai logic strikes again

Posted on by

With the Dubai Summer Surprises festival well underway, we’re reminded once again that summertime in the UAE is full of, ahem, surprises. Along with Modhesh climbing a lamp post near you, there are raffles with big-ticket prizes (including Nissan Patrols, money and gold) and some fantastic summer sales all over the city, like this one:

The whole rack was marked the same, with the original price on the actual tag down as 79dhs. So Dubai!