Three day odyssey to Kenya - Dubai

Dubai:
Forget about the furnace weather, the desert landscape and the fact that I didn’t even get to go to the middle of the city, Dubai is probably one of my favorite cities in terms of its incredibly diverse socio-ethnic composition. Notwithsanding the futuristic skyscrapers (even the airport itself is in the shape of an spaceship), the city is truly at the crossroad of Asia, Africa and Europe and the demographics of its population plus the economic activities of the city truly reflects this old world global melting pot. While New York is considered a global melting pot, I think it’s all the more intriguing to find this Asian melting pot (literally and figuratively) sprouting out of middle of no-man’s desert land in the supposedly culturally repressive middle east. The city has become the center of commerce for the middle eastern region and literally sitting on hot oil, Dubai attracts immigrants from all over the world for investments and physcially constructing its futuristic looking skyline.
Basically all flights from Asia, South Asia, the Middle East to Africa, and a majority of flights from Europe to Africa go through Dubai. The airport is thus gigantic with rows after rows of stores..mostly operated by Thai and Malay immigrants.

Our plane from London to Dubai passed through Turkey and then diverted to the Eastern border of Iraq with Iran (I’m not sure if it’s because passenger planes are not allowed to fly over portions of Iraqi airspace), then due southeast passing through Kuwait and the Persian Gulf. All throughout this journey, all you could see was a vast expanse of hazy/yellow horizon. As our plane started descending, I could see navy ships slowly making their way up the turquoise colored Persian Gulf – presumably in the direction of Iraq/Kuwait. The green colored sea suggests that the Persian Gulf is so full of algae because of the incredibly warm waters – close to 90 degrees. As we landed in Dubai, all you could see was a yellow sandy landscape - even all the houses were colored in yellow/tan. You could clearly see the futuristic skyscrapers lined up against the Persian Gulf shore together with unbelievably wide highways with barely any cars using them. When we arrived it was 8:00AM and it was around 90F. When we departed Dubai at 2:00pm it was 43C or around 112F. – fairly typical of Dubai in June.