It is close to midnight in Dubai, the girl friends and I were all back at our five-star hotel dressing up, ready to check out the local clubs and have a good night of partying. Woah easy there tiger! The barrage of questions was surprising, but we answered them dutifully, and finally, seemingly satisfied, the guard left us alone.
We assumed at first it was just diligent night security at work, and would not have brought up the incident to the group had similar things not kept happening that night; we four girls and our guy friend were not allowed entry into the club as a group unless we spent a minimum bombshell sum, but when we split up into two separate groups at the next place we had no problems; if we so much as paused for a breath while crossing the hotel lobby, hotel security was right there asking questions immediately about our motives — even as I made my way up to the room alone at 2am, with my keycard in plain sight, I was not let off the hook and asked repeatedly where I was going and who my room was registered to.
While the Eastern European sort of blonde-hair blue-eyes look was quite common, the Chinese and other Asian prostitutes were also a rising figure in the nightlife scene. That was something new to me. In retrospect, it is worth a chuckle. A lot of things made more sense after that revelation though — why the security clamped down on women in the lobbies, the refusal of entry at the first club…. I was quite happy to be back up in the room, taking a bath to try and get the smell of cigarette smoke out of my hair.
Crossposted from Go! Girl Guides , where I was a contributing blogger. Sure, having your own drinks behind closed doors in a desert villa is one thing, but going out to a club in a technically Islamic country… I had my reservations. I was half-convinced we would get thrown in jail for stepping into a club and touching alcohol in public. As you explore Dubai, you get the feeling of a city that has borrowed a lot of its culture, perhaps a little excessively so. So we headed to a neighbouring club just around the corner, and split up in our entry strategy to get into the club.
Sidebar: this particular club we visited was pretty unusual, and very happening. The DJ spun a pretty awesome mix of music, so all in all, a fairly good time was had. My ears were ringing, a burly dude was barking questions at me, and it was 2am in the morning early for clubbing, I know , I was not a happy camper at all.
