The Yorkie Bars are on me!

So much for the big clean up at Bur Dubai's notorious York Hotel a couple of years ago - it's clearly back to its full, swinging glory:

"Nowhere is more sickeningly emblematic of the country's seedy new underbelly than the bar at the downtown York International Hotel - a squalid cauldron that should shame any civilised society, let alone one so devoutly Islamic. As the overhead TVs show bloody, noholds barred fighting contests, and music throbs deafeningly, a veritable United Nations of prostitutes - Chinese, Ethiopian, Russian, Nigerian - barter their services."

Well, at least it's more evidence of Dubai's wonderful multiculturalism. Sex in every ethnic flavour.


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Bur Dubai Island

Forget The Palm: the world's biggest artificial island hasn't even been built yet, but is already home to hundred of thousands of people. Introducing Bur Dubai Island, several crowded inner-city suburbs about to be encircled by the world's largest seawater moat. A glamourous residential prospect indeed.

Half a dozen major roads and myriad smaller roads will be severed by the Dubai Creek extension, not a particularly pleasant prospect for traffic despite promises of bridge building. Safa Park appears safe, going by Gulf News' map, but Jumeirah Beach Park might not be so lucky. The Co-op - so beloved of Emiratis doing their weekly shopping with all the family at 3am on a school night - also seems to be in the clear, despite persistent rumours of its imminent demolition.

The biggest feature of the Creek extension will be Business Bay, which will also hold a Guinness World Record for being the world's least bay-like bay. It is neither a body of water nor even part of the coastline. "Business Moat" would be a more appropriate name. Its aim is to be "similar in nature to Manhattan or Ginza, which are the business centres for cities like New York and Tokyo" and it will also feature "fascinating canals". Fascinating as in what, gondolas towed by giant hammour?

Looming over everything like a huge pointed lighthouse will be the beautiful Deathspire, set to get a Guinness World Record for being the world's tallest tower for the shortest amount of time.

And Dubai it will once again be unrecognisable from how it is today, just as it is currently unrecognisable from five years ago.

High life, low life

TV Terry is back in the sandlands, on a themed high life:low life holiday.

The high life includes some alpine excercise on the snowy slopes of Ski Dubai, where Terry excels at the reverse snow-plough - the quickest way to do the splits on skis. Other lofty attractions include the 50-storey glass lifts at Emirates Towers, a balloon ride high up over the Creek, and brunch at the very peak of the Burj Al Arab with its panoramic views of The Palm.

The low life involves a safari in the narrow alleyways and dive bars of the Golden Sands area, taking in Bur Dubai's increasingly endangered nocturnal wildlife, potholing in Cyclones and whatever what-was-the-Arif-Castle is now, and tunnelling through the shady souqs in hope of excavating some cheap souvenirs.

All the way up, and all the way down.

Getting shirty

It's those damn bachelors again! Not content with offending "families" by their single status, they're now putting on a strip show:

Families living close to their building complained to Gulf News that the bachelors have made it impossible for them to sit on their balconies. They also maintain that some bachelors make lewd comments at women who are standing on nearby balconies.

"They stand on their balcony semi-clad and ogle at women," said a resident who did not want to be named.

Back in the dusty depths of Bur Dubai, long before confinement in Cell Block G, a community of bachelors lived opposite in a kind of shanty building down a narrow lane. There were masses of them living in this shack-like structure, with its corrugated iron roof and general jumbled appearance. Often they wore lunghis or loin cloths with a shirt. Their air conditioning would have been limited and primitive, if they even had it at all.

They never ever stared at or harassed anyone. If spoken to, they were polite and respectful. They lived crammed into their tiny, grim building while brand new concrete "family" blocks sprung up all around. They were far nicer than the "families" that would often glare in a hostile manner. The bachelors were there first. They will not be there last. But where they will go is anyone's guess.

Glorious Golden Sands

A visitor inadvertently mistakes the latest edition of the Ramadan doormat as a newspaper, and brings the execrable rag into Cell Block G. This week's exciting "exclusive" is so exclusive that it was recounted a week previously by Lola LebCan, already eighth hand, to half of Dubai.

The scene: Golden Sands 6, in the very unlovely concrete jungle of Mankhool, Bur Dubai. The players: one angry and embarrassed dishdash, two Russian ladies of the night, and one conerned concierge gently inisting the other three make their party elsewhere. Action: one fatal stabbing of the concierge by the dishdash. This tragedy is not mere theatre, but film - captured entirely on Golden Sands' CCTV cameras.

Very sad, but also strange, as according to Official Expat History (=rumour, obvious untruth and conspiracy theory) the (unofficial) decision to tolerate prostitution a few years back supposely resulted in a 97% drop in all crime.

An acquaintance hack has booked to stay at Golden Sands for next month's Air Show. I will suggest he packs his war zone kit.

Farewell, Little Bombay

Goodbye to your dust and dirt, the crowded alleyways, the slum buildings, the litter piled thick in the streets, the increasingly pot-holed, unmetalled road with viciously exposed iron draincovers waiting to rip through car tyres.

Goodbye to the flocks of saris never bothering to move out of the way of moving vehicles, the bicycles driving straight into oncoming traffic, the babies screaming for hours down echoing hallways, the mega-decibel hacking and spitting outside my bedroom window, the leaning on car horns pre-dawn and post-midnight for minutes at a time.

I will miss the feral cats. Civilised by comparison.

The Mystery of the Missing Merchants

Where have all the VCD pirate peddlars gone? Has the municipality been rounding them up in a fit of civic fervour? None were to be seen in Satwa, up any of the alleyways around Regal tailors, none were in Bur Dubai, outside Shoe City, near Choitrams.

Given how long it takes films to reach the cinema here, it's only fair that one can enjoy a 10 dirham shaky, sound-distorted preview of the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Last year, Lord of the Rings 2 and Harry Potter 1 were available in these nomadic souks long before they hit the silver screen. But their sequels and the shady sellers are nowhere to be found.