Old vs. New Dubai

Dubai is surprisingly cosmopolitan and has a non-Arab majority comprised of people from India, Pakistan, the Philippines and China, among others.  This was news to me!

The Dubai Metro rail system conveniently and smoothly connects you to the airport, various neighborhoods, and MALLS within the city.  MALLS!!!  If you love shopping (in person, not online like me), you MUST visit Dubai.  I visited the Dubai Mall (the largest one here according to Wikitravel) and became hopelessly lost trying to find one of 2 WH Smith bookstores (my airbnb host Hassan thankfully IM'd me about the Kinokuniya bookstore and I snagged the last copy of Lonely Planet India--yahoo!!).  The mall directory:

View from a Metro station showing *only* some of the high-rises in Dubai:

Brent, back in San Francisco, would love BART to employ the following signs and have passengers actually comply (which certainly didn't always happen here, though more so than in SF):

Old Dubai, near so-called Dubai Creek, was an interesting area with souks (the gold souk being a popular tourist attraction) and a hodgepodge of small shops and restaurants.  I ate some tasty & inexpensive fish biriyani at a little restaurant run by a man originally from Kerala, India.  

A funny (to me) sign posted next to the rooftop swimming pool at the place I was staying...I particularly liked the last 2 rules:

I'm in Mumbai now, and I've noticed more admonitions against public spitting starting from Dubai.  :-) 

My Bluetooth keyboard, which I loved using, had enough keys officially "die" to warrant hunting down the nearest post office to mail it back to the U.S. (for travel insurance purposes).  The entire task starting from hunting down the place and walking there (and getting lost several times) to exiting the building took just shy of 3 hours(!).  It appears globally consistent that postal services are exceedingly inefficient and generally served with dour expressions.  :-*