It’s 4:30 am on Sunday, November 24, 2024, and my alarm clock is blaring in a Dubai hotel room.
After a month or so of training, the day is finally here: I’m taking part in the 5k portion of the Dubai Run, the world’s largest road race that had over 275,000 participants this past year.
With so many participants and the need to finish the massive event before 10 am local time, we head down via taxi to the starting line on the Sheikh Zayed Road, a massive highway that runs through Dubai’s downtown.
There are thousands of people heading in all directions as you’d expect of an event at this capacity, capped off by added security due to the appearance of Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai.
Known as “Fazza” to the locals, Hamdan bin Mohammed and an accompanying entourage of about 30 or so run past us to get the run underway, and what seems like all of Dubai is suddenly running down the middle of the city’s most famous street.
While the Dubai Run is a once-a-year event, it’s a hectic day that’s a microcosm of life in a hectic city, and the run is a cap on seven days unlike any I’d experienced in my life.
Late last fall, I spent a week in the United Arab Emirates and checked out all sorts of things that the country’s most-visited location had to offer with a group of around 20 others from around the world.
Having only ever travelled to North America and Europe, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from my first visit to the Middle East.
After a 14-hour Emirates flight direct from Toronto, I was fresh off the plane and into Dubai. I’d heard bits and pieces about the city and the country as a whole, but mostly in a rather abstract sense, while only knowing a few people who’d made the trip before.
Here are a few highlights of what I experienced on my trip to the UAE:
What to expect upon arrival
With a city population of about 3.6 million and a metropolitan area of just under six million, it was a place where you could definitely feel its size, but not to an overwhelming level.
Visiting late in the year, the temperature hovered between 25 and 30 degrees Celsius during my trip, a far cry from the 40-plus mark that hits the desert city in the hottest months from June to August.
I learned pretty quickly if you want to do something active in Dubai, it might be smartest to wake up early to do so, as the mid-afternoon sun can still hit pretty strong at just about any time of year, even in the supposed winter months. While outdoor activities are aplenty, they’re usually with some shade pretty close by.
There’s no shortage of things to do in town, with one visitor describing the city to me as “Disneyland mixed with Vegas mixed with La La Land.”
The Canadian in me mostly felt inclined to check out the full-size hockey rink in the middle of Dubai Mall, where a public skate was happening. It was my first real stop on the trip, and I learned pretty quickly there wasn’t going to be too much of a culture shock.
The skating rink in Dubai Mall
Just about everyone I told back home about this part of the trip made the same joke: why didn’t you just travel to the rink in the West Edmonton Mall?
But despite some clear differences, and even though I was on the other side of the world, there were so many reminders of home.
I started taking pictures of the first few athletes I saw in advertisements in stores — Damian Lillard, Luka Doncic, Harry Kane, and Kylian Mbappe stood out in my first few minutes at the mall — before I realized my camera roll would have hundreds of photos of ads, with the shopping centre full of North American and European brands and personalities in their marketing.
Whether it was Lids, Foot Locker, Nike, Adidas, or Under Armour, Western branding and stores were everywhere around the mall.
With English available next to Arabic on just about every sign or service you’d need, it was clear there wasn’t going to be much of a communication barrier. Within a few minutes at the mall and noticing Pizza Hut, Tim Hortons, KFC, and McDonald’s, it mostly felt like any other large urban centre, with people from all over the world perusing the various stores and restaurants.
The question I got most about my trip was what the people were like.
And the answer was it was a lot like my hometown of Toronto, with a mix of cultures present just about everywhere you went. According to 2023 numbers, Dubai’s government estimates that just 292,000 residents are Emirati, while 3.3 million hail from elsewhere.
It was far more likely to meet someone who’d moved to Dubai than a true local, with the vast majority of the population hailing from elsewhere in the world. And with more than 40,000 Canadians in the country, you can bet my brain perked up a little whenever I saw the maple leaf floating around.
Dubai is home to many world records
Our 5k run wasn’t the only record-setting endeavour on our trip.
One thing stuck out more than most that I realized quickly upon landing: it feels like almost everything’s gunning for a world record in Dubai.
There’s the obvious set of skyscrapers, with 18 above 300 metres in height, more than any other city in the world.
But many records might not be as immediately apparent.
On my way back from the airport, I noticed a curious building, shaped like a tall rectangle but with an empty middle.
“World’s largest picture frame,” my driver said, where I first learned of the Dubai Frame, a 150-metre observatory and museum, which connects the old parts of the city with the new.
We pulled into the hotel I was staying at, Siro One Za’abeel, located on the upper floors of the longest cantilevered building, which is a fancy way of saying it’s two separate towers with a five-storey bridge connecting them in the middle.
I accessed a visit to the observation deck at the Burj Khalifa — the world’s tallest building, as you probably know — through Dubai Mall, and checked out the Dubai Aquarium on the same visit, which coincidentally holds the world’s biggest OLED screen display.
Whether it was intentional or not, we just kept running into record-setting things one way or another on our trip around town and in the surrounding area.
A view of the Palm Jumeirah from Aura Skypool.
We held a yoga session at the Aura Skypool — the world’s highest 360° infinity pool — overlooking the iconic Palm Jumeirah, and our cycling trip at the Al Qudra cycling track about an hour outside of downtown just happened to be the world’s longest.
The Hatta sign in the Hajar Mountains.
Even our seven-kilometre hike in a mountain range — two hours outside of downtown, but still within the larger Emirate of Dubai — saw us stop at the tallest landmark sign in the world, with the “HATTA” block letters based on the iconic Hollywood sign. At 19.28 metres, the Hatta sign out-measures its American counterpart standing at 13.7 metres.
While most of the trip involved group activities, my final day in Dubai was mostly solo, except for a local tour guide taking me around. And though it was far from the intention, I was able to go for a ride on the X-Line Dubai — a one-kilometre zipline across downtown that is the world’s largest in an urban centre.
Ain Dubai from the top of Dubai X-Line
While we never took it for a spin, we passed by the Ain Dubai — the world’s largest Ferris wheel — on several occasions.
When we wandered through the markets in Old Dubai, we came across the Najmat Taiba, the world’s heaviest gold ring, weighing in at 64 kg on display at the Deira Gold Souk.
So if you’re looking for a place to set a Guinness World Record — or simply take in the sights and sounds of a few others — it might be worth a trip to Dubai.
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The author of this story was hosted by the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism