Dubai. Luxury life tour. Big Episode

We'll show Dubai in all its magnificence, we'll tell you about all the new and interesting things launched in this city for the last couple of years, and of course, some exclusive stories. Well, no more teasers, let's watch Big Episode from Dubai. Over the past several decades, Dubai has increased in size and area several times. It grows up to the skyline like a bamboo grove, doing it so fast that Google Maps can't keep up with the pace to add new places. Now, Dubai looks like a large continuous construction site where work goes without stopping on day and night. These guys work like hell. Statistically, every fifth lift crane in the world is located here in Dubai. So just in case you're a crane operator, I believe I've just found a job for you. You get a feeling that the local authorities just don't know what the word impossible means. See, this is the Dubai Water Canal. Two and a half years ago, this canal didn't even exist. The site was full of some buildings and traffic junctions. But all these constructions were very quickly demolished, the canal was dug, the ferry was launched on it, and now it is an additional way to get around the city. Now it all looks like this. A bit later, we'll see how it all looks at night. Believe me, it's worth seeing. Over the past 20 years, 1,344 high-rise buildings have been built here. Of course, it's fewer than in Hong Kong and fewer than in New York. But just wait for it. In Dubai, real estate property price is steadily growing. Apartments here were bought by Madonna, Roger Federer, the Beckham family, and Michael Schumacher. I'll show you his villa later. Yeah, I was driving my car in Dubai. I was just stopped in the traffic light, and the car next to me was, inside the car was Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Well, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie also own real estate here. However, apartments don't come cheap here. The price for a three-bedroom apartment starts from half a million dollars. Nowadays, Dubai is a super-modern, technological, and expensive city. But it wasn't always the case. This is the main street in Dubai. It looked this way 27 years ago. And this is how it looks now. We all know the reason why Dubai turned from this into this very well. It's oil. In the 1960s, oil deposits were found here. By the way, they were not very large if compared to neighboring Abu Dhabi. Western investors came to the country and started to build oil wells here. And the dwellers of a small port city with a population of 20,000 people, who cooked food on fire, and lived mostly in tents, figuratively switched camels for cars. The construction and development of Dubai started. It all happened largely due to this man, Shaikh Zayed. Of course, without oil, we'd hardly ever seen Dubai the way we see it now. But the local government's merit is not just in the successful coping with Western budgets. Let's play a really simple game. You'll have to guess the number shown on this card. The question will be simple as well. How do you think, what percentage oil production takes in Dubai's economy? Think about it. I'm pretty sure that 99% of you will never guess the right answer. Because oil production in Dubai's economy takes only 5%. And the production is decreasing each year. In 5 to 10 years, it will be less than 1%. But tourism, almost 20%. It's really hard to believe, but now tourism and aviation bring Dubai many times more money than oil production. In this very sense, Dubai is much like a young man who inherited a large fortune. However, he didn't blow it off, but successfully invested it and now gets good dividends from all this. Now, this city is one of the richest and most dynamically developing cities on the planet. Striving to be the first in everything, you can actually shoot films about Dubai every few months. This is exactly how much time the municipal government needs to build and launch several large-scale facilities and grandiosely announce them to the whole world. Here, everybody is fond of everything with the word most. Start bending your fingers. The longest fully automated underground railroad in the world operates here. It actually operates without drivers. The underground network is about 75 kilometers long. In 2018, the tallest hotel in the world was set up in Dubai. The Jivora Hotel is 356 meters high. The previous height record belonged to the JW Marriott Hotel Dubai. The tallest exclusively residential building is located here. Here, it's still under construction. The previous record holder is close by. It's Princess Tower. Also, here is the second-largest mall in the world located. It has an area of over a million square meters, fitting in 1,200 stores. And as you probably guessed, it's not just Zara and H&M. The building also has an aquarium with the largest acrylic glass in the world. It's 33 meters wide. Even though Dubai is located in the epicenter of the climatic furnace and the summer temperature may jump to 50 degrees Celsius above zero, the world's largest flower park was planted. Just think about it, 45 million flowers is located here. The last picture couldn't have come at a better time because Emirates Airlines Dubai has been recognized as the world's best air carrier for four consecutive years. It owns the world's largest fleet with the world's largest passenger aircrafts, Airbus A380. And Dubai Airport, being the base for the company, is the third-busiest airport in the world and one of the central hubs in the Middle East. Next, the largest man-made island is located in Dubai, and we'll get to it later as well. And finally, the tallest building in the world at the moment, this steeple in the distance, is also in Dubai. And we'll also visit it. Naturally, that's not all. Dubai goes on investing huge money in the construction of many new facilities. Let's turn the page and see the list of building projects being erected in Dubai in December 2018. The world's tallest panoramic wheel is being built here. It'll be 210 meters high. It's at the final construction stage now. This building, shaped like a crescent, is the Museum of the Future, which is planned to open in 2019. Its construction cost is about $200 million. And finally, this is already funny, but another world's tallest architectural structure is being built here, Creek Tower. This tower with a restaurant and an observation deck on top will become more than 100 meters taller than the Burj Khalifa. They promise to build it in just three years. And you know, for some reason, I believe them. In addition to building record holders, Dubai attracts many visitors with its inconceivable unnatural wealth and sparkling luxury. The underground trains, for example, have special cars for gold card holders. People madly adore gold here. And one of the most famous local attractions is the gold market. You can find a lot of expensive jewelry here, Rolex watches. This particular model costs $30,000. And now, this is the largest gold ring in the world. It weighs 58 kilograms. It even has a plate confirming the record. Another sign of wealth in Dubai is, of course, the fact that everyone here adores cars. It's hard to believe now, but in 1968, Dubai had only 13 registered cars. Now, the situation has changed a bit. Dubai, with its population of 2.5 million people, has more than 150,000 registered cars. And it's also important to say what kind of cars they are. Dubai can compete with any city in the world by the number of elite car industry products. Supercars are bought here very often. Consequently, the number of brand car dealers goes beyond all conceivable and inconceivable bounds. You don't have to order and wait for something. You come to a car dealer, buy a Ferrari, a Porsche, or even a Bugatti, and get Honda as a change. If you think that only men drive cars here, that's not true. There are also little pink Jeeps and BMWs, and even Hummers for Barbies. However, the most incredible thing is not that. Vanity license plates are more expensive than the most luxurious cars in Dubai. This Bentley Bentayga has the license plate worth several million dollars roughly. The plate with 003 in Abu Dhabi has recently been sold for 7.5 million dirhams. That's $2 million. The most expensive license plate I've ever heard about has only one figure on it, and it was sold for 45 million dirhams, more than $12 million. Now it's time to talk about hotels. You can find hotels here to suit all tastes, but not all wallets. Dubai's hotels are considered to be the second most expensive in the world after Geneva's. The most famous hotel is one of Dubai's symbols, Burj Al Arab. Well, I'll interrupt this boasting festival for a while, because I need to drone to show you this hotel. And my friends Alex and Lena, who live in Dubai, have it. Since it's very, very, very difficult to fly anywhere in this place, Alex borrowed me his drone. So now we will try to take off and show you what Burj Al Arab is like. So we're getting up, and here it is, Burj Al Arab, better known as The Sail. The one and only 7-star hotel in the world. At least its owners call it this way. It doesn't seem very large from the air, but the building is 321 meters high. It has the tallest atrium lobby in the world. The owner used 1,800 square meters of 24-karat leaf gold to decorate the hotel's interior. That would be enough to cover 46,000 Mona Lisas. At the back, you can see a terrace with swimming pools. However, guests can get there at an extra charge, even though you'll have to pay at least $1,000 per night to rent a room. Another luxury hotel is the Imani Hotel, which is located in Burj Khalifa, and designed personally by Giorgio Armani. There are only two of them in the world, one in Dubai and the other one in Milan. And finally, Atlantis, a 5-star hotel located on the man-made island called The Palm. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, there were seven times more fireworks used than at the Beijing Olympics. It's very difficult to get to its territory if you're not a hotel guest, but believe me, everything is to the highest standard there. Generally, there are more than 30 hotels, residences, separate marina, and of course, villas, more than 4,500 villas on The Palm. It looks very impressive from above, but if you come a little bit lower, you can see that the buildings stand rather close by each other, and there's practically no space between the houses. The real estate developer who built this island eventually increased the number of houses to compensate for high expenses. Some villa owners were not very pleased with this idea. Now let's talk about the man-made islands. This is the Palm Jumeirah, we've just had a look at it. It's populated almost to its full capacity. But there's another Palm Island, Jebel Ali, which is still under construction. The most interesting project among the artificial islands is the World Archipelago. It has 240 islands in the shape of a world map. Each island is called by a country, a state, or a city. Here we have Australia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and more. There are also Rostov and Yekaterinburg. These islands and the Siberia island were bought by Russian real estate developers. To have a look at the archipelago, I went to one of the most expensive private hotels in Dubai, Bulgari. It also has a yacht club and its own marina. The facility level is very well illustrated by the automotive industry products, beautifully parked here. This is Abdurahman. He represents the Heart of Europe company. They own several islands of the archipelago of the world. We took all the Arabian islands. Arabian? European islands. Oh, European islands. Yeah, yeah. Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, St. Petersburg. We have St. Petersburg, Venice, and the main Europe island. St. Petersburg as well. Yeah, yeah. The archipelago looks like the archipelago. So, security took a picture of my camera, and we are at the first floating villa. This thing will hold seven people. And if necessary, it can be taken away and turned into a swimming pool. Jacuzzi with a transparent floor. It's a wrap. You are lying here, and someone from below sees your flat ass. Well, you know, like a cat on a glass. So, Abdurahman, this one is Switzerland? No, Sweden. Sweden, Sweden. And this? Do you know the name? It's a Lebanon island. It's Lebanon. It doesn't belong to us. And this? The name is exactly for all the islands. Actually, using the map, we've managed to find out that Austria and Germany are situated close by. But let's get back to the floating villa. This is a floating seahorse, and this is a room underwater. It's just a hit. You're lying with a girl and just staring at this. And a good question is who is actually staring at whom? You at the fish, or fish at you? The customer will choose what type of fish he wants to see in front of his seahorse. So he goes to the coral nursery, and he chooses the type of fish, and we bring the coral, like you see, and it's all attached to the seahorse from down here. Once we had a shooting in a similar hotel in Zanzibar, but here everything is made in a more modern manner, fancier, and this hotel is much more comfortable. And you can choose the fish. That's just mind-blowing. Is this villa for sale? Yeah, it's for sale. It's not for rent, but after we sell it, we're going to rent it for the other people, for the customers. Like, for example, if you bought this villa, we will take it from you, and we're going to rent it for you. Yeah, it's pure investment. We're talking about 16 million dirhams. 16 million dirhams? Yeah. And the best thing here, it gives you 8% rental guarantee for 12 years. 8%? Yeah, guarantee. Looks like I'm standing somewhere right in the middle of the jungle. Well, not Amazonia, but somewhere in Mauritius. It's all natural. These are real natural palms. I mean, they all grew up here, but 10 years ago, there was nothing here. All this was brought here, planted, and now it's the real jungle. And I'm going to show it to you. Sweden Bellas. This is a Sweden island, as I mentioned before. It's a huge house. We're talking about 25,000 square feet. Five floors, seven bedrooms. You have a private beach, private pool. Your own private beach here. It's a private beach? Yeah, it's a private beach. Also, if the customer wants to make it private, with more privacy, we can extend the trees to the beach inside, so you have his own private beach. So guys, a funny phrase, darling, I just bought Sweden, can easily become true. So the villa is a five-storied building with zillions of bedrooms, children's rooms. It has an elevator, of course. All upholstered furniture was manufactured by Bentley. You can see expensive utensils, custom-made bathtubs, jacuzzis, a gym, and a sauna, of course. We're actually in Sweden. This is a snow room. Snow room? We can see a large party lounge with sunscreens and a roof terrace. From this place, you can see the islands, which are being built close by. This, for example, is Michael Schumacher's, and just a stunning view of Dubai. A tricky part of this ball of cherries is that you live on an island. You have that ordinary island life with birds chirping, palm trees growing, you know, things like that. But at the same time, you are 15 minutes away from Dubai, with its nightlife in full swing, multiple bars and restaurants. That's if you live in Bali Well, all that's left for me to do now is to mark that such a large villa will cost you 75 to 90 million dirhams, and that's around 20 million dollars. After all seen, I had to urgently cool down my greed a bit, and so I went down, or actually up, into the tube railroad. Before we conquer this tower, let me tell you a bit about it. We can see this skyscraper from almost any point of Dubai, and when the weather is good, it can be seen even from a 95 kilometers distance. The Burj Khalifa is 828 meters high. It is so high that the Eiffel Tower seems to be a five-storied block of apartments in comparison with it. The Burj Khalifa has the highest elevator in the world, going up for 140 floors at a breathtaking speed of 10 meters per second. In fact, it's a real engineering marvel Just imagine what water pressure should be in the pipes to push the water up here and get it, say, into a toilet at the viewing deck located at 500 meter height. During my TV career, I've been to more than 10 observation decks on skyscrapers in different corners of the world. After everything I saw, I can tell you that the observation decks on a skyscraper is just a waste of money. But since the building behind me is the tallest building in the world, and the observation deck on Burj Khalifa is the highest in the world, I have to go up there. At least for you to see, there is no need for this. I've bought the most expensive ticket for $150 to get to the 148th floor. For this money, I get access to the Sky Lounge with all sorts of goodies. And what is most important, I get the opportunity not to wait and enter the elevator in good faith. This is one of the fastest elevators in the world. It will take us from here to 145 in 77 seconds. If all houses had such elevators, I think they would save a few weeks of life for us. Well, this is what the observation deck looks like at 555 meter height in the tallest building in the world. It's very cool to stand on the tallest building in the world, but unfortunately, it won't remain the tallest for long. Yes, in Saudi Arabia, the construction of Jeddah Tower is in full swing, and it will be taller than the Burj Khalifa. In fact, it will be more than one kilometer tall. Now let's talk about Dubai at night. It's actually a separate aggregate state of the city, and Dubai is very good in this sense. Well, first of all, everything is perfectly lit with illuminations. This is how they illuminate the bridge on the canal, which I've already shown you at the beginning of this video. In the evenings, pleasure boats also pass here, and they pass right underneath this bridge. Just have a look how beautifully and technologically engineers wriggled out in this situation. Dubai hosts lots of open-air parties, but the most important hullabaloo takes place at the central evening show of course, the Dubai Fountains Show. This event is huge, spectacular, and what is most important, it's free. Not to waste your time, I offer you to view the fast-forward version. Few people know about it, but Dubai has another fountain show, and in this case, its main trick is the projection onto the water. And then something happened, something that you can call the fountain show number three. The water opened up, the LEDs lit, the smoke was released, some streams started flowing, and everything came to a quick end. Just a city of shows. But not just the city of shows, it's also a city of views. The night view of Dubai is actually the very thing you can already come here for. It's best to watch the city from above. That's why I decided to ask the locals where it would be best to shoot some city night time-lapse. It's widely thought that you can capture the best night view of Dubai from this terrace in this hotel. So let's check it out. Here's the terrace, and that's what the night city view looks like from it. I believe it's probably one of the best terraces in Dubai for several reasons. First of all, it's opened. I've already checked several other rooftops and they all are closed, and that's not so cool. Secondly, the prices here are actually fair. You can have a dinner, drink, or glass of wine and enjoy the most soulful night view of Dubai. Before we talk about Dubai's tourist aspect, here's a fly in the ointment. Firstly, there are quite a lot of bans in Dubai. This includes kisses in public, alcohol, video shooting, and at times, even photography. I was stopped by the police three times and they asked me to take away my camera. What's more, I was on the beach and I wasn't capturing people, just to see. This primarily happens due to censorship rules, which actually exist here. It's better not to butt in here with the camera. It's better to capture everything with a mobile phone and the official body has just confirmed that censorship does exist in Emirates. In general, what about stories which are concealed? Absolutely, yes. It's like you're trying to find some news, recent, like bad news, and you can't find it. And why do you think they are doing this? Well, because the government defines this city as safe, the city of happiness. But it's safe. It is safe, of course, but accidents do happen, fires happen, and in order to not intimidate people that something may eventually happen to them here, they hide this information. Alex, where are we going? We're going to a new polo resort. It was set up just two years ago. It was built right in the sand, but the landscaped area is simply amazing. Let's deviate a bit. Dubai is considered to be one of the hottest cities in the world. It's very exhausting to stay outside in summer. That's why even bus stops are equipped with air conditioning systems. So if something grows here, it must always be watered. Now have a look at that! A private polo complex built just amidst the sands. It belongs to one of the richest families in Dubai, the Habtor family. Their wealth is estimated at about $44 billion. They've built not just a single polo field here, but as many as three. Well, let's take a closer look at all of this. Horses, a large scoreboard, an ambulance, photographers, expensive cars, and rich guests. Finally, I got to the event where people were wearing Ralph Lauren polo shirts for a reason. Actually, polo is an expensive sport. They unofficially call it the sport of kings. Everything is serious here. There's even a commentary box with a commentator. There are a lot of nuances here. Beautiful leather boots, white trousers, horses. They are definitely of a specific breed. And what's that over there? That's a hotel which was specially built on this location so that guests could come and watch the game from their balconies. For you to understand the level, the team has got its own hookah maker who travels with it all around the world. Also, you can change horses here because the more horses you have, the greater your winning chances are. As for the game, it's certainly very beautiful and very dynamic. If you're interested, our team has won. But generally, in my opinion, the most important victory is this lawn, which grows just in the middle of the desert. We are in the middle of the desert and you don't expect to find here any bodies of water. But here it is. It's mid-December now and this place was open to public just about a week ago. It's time now to show you why Dubai is good from the tourist point of view and what interesting landmarks have opened up here over the last year or two. Firstly, the Dubai Frame was opened here. That huge frame over there, which is presented as the largest frame of the world. That's logical. We're still in Dubai. It's really huge. Enormous. 150 meters tall. In mid-October 2018, a new beach called Lemur appeared here as well. Some tourists have already taken a fancy to it. The beach turned out to be very modern. Some places look like Miami and some look like Los Angeles. Another new area in Dubai is Al Sif. The most important perk of this area is that I personally develop a feeling I'm somewhere in London because there are very lookalike skyscrapers in front of me. And the general style is absolutely European here. Let's speak clear. Certainly, Dubai copies many of the world's architectural landmarks. Here's Big Ben. Almost a perfect copy. A new hotel, which is just being built with a ship on its roof. Surprisingly resembles Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. All this is done mainly due to the city's cosmopolitanism, but also because Dubai virtually has no architectural history of its own. However, it can definitely be created now and the Dubai people are successfully doing it. Al Sif area has an authentic port town built as a reminder from what actually Dubai once grew up. I would like to tell you that people here try their best in many things. What I mean is that even a sign showing the place for prayer is scrapped to look like antique. You don't have the feeling that this is all created by designers. It feels like this is a true old Arabic city. Well, it turned out to be convincing. I believe it. And finally, Dubai's fashionable district, Marina. One of the coolest yacht marinas in the world, which they promise to make the largest soon. And the next patch for skyscrapers, although there are already more than 200 of them here. Marina is like a standalone city, as if the laws of the rest of Dubai don't work here. Girls wear rather short dresses and everything is calm and looks sporty. In other words, it's good here. Well, to be honest, Dubai Marina looks like not Dubai at all. You have a feeling like you are somewhere in Miami or in Hawaii. Absolute American comfort. No one bustles about here. And what is the most interesting, you won't see many locals here. Perhaps as everywhere else in Dubai, but here they are dressed and behave in such a manner that they are no different from Americans and Europeans. But let's go back to Marina because we can see some interesting attractions there. First of all, a 500 meter zip line is located here. You can get down along it from a height of 170 meters. It all looks like this nearby. And you can jump with parachutes right above Marina. A tandem jump starts from $460. And if you think the customers are few here, just have a look. These guys even have their own runway in the area. So I have a plane in 10 hours. It's my last sunset in Dubai. I came to the terrace opposite my hotel as it has now become my favorite. This is one of the few places where they sell beer. Now I'm ready to share with you all my thoughts about my Dubai trip. The first thing to know is why people come here and why it's worth coming here at all. Well, it's warm. The sea is close. They have a lot of things with the most sign. And it's really safe. Dubai is one of the safest cities in the world right now. As for Dubai itself, when I posted some photos in my Instagram and said that I'm here now in Dubai, many followers commented like this. Yes, the city is cool, but it has no soul. And it's true, there are no historical areas here. No old cozy lanes or something. Because this city, I think it's like 30-40 years old. At this very moment, the history of Dubai is being written. And later, they will write about it in historical books. Probably, Dubai is already among the, I don't know, 10 most powerful cities in the world. The scopes of construction works here are simply incredible. But the most interesting thing in Dubai happening not even so much to the city, but to the people of Dubai. 40 years ago, they were fishermen and pearl hunters. And suddenly, they became rich. They all switched to Mercedes. They feel themselves like big guns. And looks like they will face a serious assimilation process in the next few years. The sheikh children already speak English, not Arabic, among themselves at home. And the whole Dubai is actually very cosmopolitan. All borders are very much blurred. And yes, of course, Dubai people are still wearing traditional clothes. They observe Ramadan. But it seems to me that Dubai people want more and more to look like European. It would be very interesting for me to look in Dubai's future. But what is really cool is that the future comes here not in 5 or 10 years. It actually comes here each consecutive year. So the most peculiar attraction of the city is that you can visit it every year. And every year, so many new landmarks will nudge you to come here again and again.