Ships of the desert

Back again after a sabbatical caused by a protracted hangover and depression brought on by moving so far into the desert that I expect to meet Beau Geste staggering over a dune any day now.

Anyway, back to the ships of the desert. Today's tale relates not to our humped backed, even-toed, ungulate friends (camels to you and I) but the ocean going variety that have been constructed at the head of the creek for many years, possibly hundreds though no-one appears to know for sure.

It was reported in Emirates Today that the dhow builders are being thrown off their traditional spots and relocated to a yard in Jebel Ali that is landlocked.

"The shipbuilders say that they will be located in a land-locked area which will cause them problems. Salah bin Toak, a UAE shipbuilder who runs Bin Toak Yacht Manufacturing and Maintenance, said: “Shipbuilders do not want compensation when they are moved to Jebel Ali.

They want a location overlooking the sea to move their final product to the market.” Bin Toak said the plot that was provided in Jebel Ali would be more suitable for ship maintenance and not for building dhows, yachts, fishing boats and cargo ships.

“Dhows are traditional Arab wooden ships, and the weight of the wood is considerable. There are no facilities for us to carry and transport these heavy ships. It will cost us an extra half a million dirhams to move them,” he said."

Now putting aside the unfairness of the eviction because frankly it's a commercial world, it appears that Dubai is yet again set on destroying something that could help this place retain its character. After the folly of the Bastika demolitions years ago I might have thought they would have learned a lesson but it appears not.

Instead of building plastic and concrete dinosaurs (literally) why not relocate the boat builders to a location where they can reach the sea and people can come and watch. They may seem part of the messy old Dubai that doesn't move at a million miles an hour but that in reality is one of the things that tourists hanker after and can hardly find here.

Yes there is some culture and history in Dubai but precious little is on view.

So here, when you have a living and breathing museum that represents what Dubai started out as, building replicas of medieval sailing ships, why is the natural, and apparently only, answer to bulldoze them out of their livelihoods and deprive Dubai of a resource that, sensibly promoted, could be a fantastic tourist attraction?

None of this would matter if Dubai wasn't hanging its hat on 12 Million tourists coming through the place by 2010. Sure people will come and stay in the 5 star hotels but to keep the room rates high the destination has to provide some culture and history. Already Dubai is going off the boil in Europe, becoming too common and frankly a little chav in places.

Now it's not that there aren't enough chavs in the world to pack the place, but is Dubai going to be ready for them and all they represent, and more crucially, how little they will want to pay.

And don't think there isn't an alternative for the upmarket tourists, there is already a big buzz in the UK and France about the quieter, more cultural, beautiful neighbour to the South East.

Oman.

A lot of press has been generated over the last few months for example a couple of Sunday times articles here and an excellent 5 page spread in the Times colour supplement here

So while Dubai is stuffing low value theme park goers into her hotels Oman will be skimming the high value, low impact, upmarket travellers and laughing all the way to the bank.