By the end of October, I had to eventually leave Shanghai and return to Munich.

…

I was going to have some fun on the way though, so I sneaked out of the airport during my stopover in Dubai…

…and went for a little joyride in the early morning hours.

Did you notice the building on the left in the picture above?

It’s the Burj al Arab.

I was going to go in and have a 7-star cup of coffee for a gazillion dollars (or maybe an uncountabillion), but there was no way past the main gate:

So I went to the beach.

Oh, the beach…

There I was, my fingers floating through the Persian Gulf, everything darkness and silence. I could hear the ocean giggling.

Happiness.

…

There were others hanging out on the beach as well:

One thing that struck me was that the people around here seemed to be way more relaxed than I had thought:

No wonder, they were dwelling in big fat expensive villas on artificial islands – that were shaped like palm trees.

Palm islands!

My cabbie Joe from India told me that there was a large foreign community in Dubai (mostly British), and the one thing everyone seemed to care mostly about was construction:

The ones who were actually constructing those skyscrapers and heaping up those islands were from India, Pakistan and the Philippines though:

“We get treated very well around here” Joe said and smiled, “unlike the migrant workers in other Arabic countries.”

…

Currently, everyone was busy constructing the Burj Dubai:

…the tallest building in history.

This was what I had come here for in the first place, and I found it absolutely worth it, because it was just magnificent:

I circled around the building in a photographing frenzy, until I noticed that there was one thing I liked even better than the building itself.

…there is a myth going around the migrant workers of Dubai…

“You see, it was very hard for the government to find someone who was willing to operate a crane on top of that building” Joe told me, “but then a guy from the Phillipines agreed to do it.”

I looked up at the peak of the Burj Dubai 800 meters above:

“That guy must be crazy” I said.

“Well, you know, they say he is getting a villa for this” Joe laughed, “a villa on one of the palm islands!”

Soundtrack: 央金兰泽 (Yangjin Lanze) – “遇上你是我的缘” （”Yushang Ni Shi Wo De Yuan”)