{"id":84,"date":"2011-02-23T19:50:54","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T02:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/blog\/?p=84"},"modified":"2017-01-18T09:33:01","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T16:33:01","slug":"letter-from-a-mirage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/?p=84","title":{"rendered":"A letter from a mirage"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_88\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-88\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/lenkatraveler-dubai-6.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-88 size-full\" title=\"lenkatraveler-dubai-6\" src=\"http:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/lenkatraveler-dubai-6.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/lenkatraveler-dubai-6.jpg 800w, https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/lenkatraveler-dubai-6-300x198.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-88\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Desert Safari in Dubai<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The mirage has taken just a few years to transform itself from a fishing village to a futuristic metropolitan monster&#8230; sort of Las Vegas on steroids. It now boasts a jungle of skyscrapers with condos and offices, the tallest building in the world, the largest shopping mall, the most expensive hotels in the world, amazing transportation system, and so on. Everything is big, sparkling and new&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>However, one can\u2019t escape a feeling that the mirage is still a mirage. Firstly, there are barely any local people, but an army of hired hands from all over the world. Then, it has no fresh water supplies and must crank up a huge desalinization plant to satisfy the need of its glitzy hotels, golf courses and indoor skiing resort. Not everything is well with the bloated real estate either &#8211; there are huge \u201cTo Let\u201d signs displayed in almost every building.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, I didn\u2019t find Dubai very attractive. It just doesn\u2019t feel real, doesn\u2019t have any special flavor that would make me want to return here.<\/p>\n<p>Keep on traveling,<br \/>\nLenka\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:info@lenkatraveler.com?subject=Comments%20via%20www.lenkatraveler.com\">info@lenkatraveler.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The mirage has taken just a few years to transform itself from a fishing village to a futuristic metropolitan monster&#8230; sort of Las Vegas on steroids. It now boasts a jungle of skyscrapers with condos and offices, the tallest building&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":730,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}