There will be test runs conducted on a 4 kilometre section of the elevated track near Jebel Ali, checking all the management systems as well as the trains themselves.

There’s a main power station for the Metro, in Jebel Ali, and that’s reported to be completed. The Depot in Jebel Ali which will be large enough to accommodate 44 trains is said to be more than half completed. A train will consist of five carriages with a maximum load of 645 passengers.

The elevated section of track running alongside Sheikh Zayed Road is a bit of a mystery to me. It isn’t straight nor is it level, as it snakes around, over or under interchanges. In parts it looks almost like a fairground toller-coaster as it goes up and down and I wonder how fast the trains will be able to travel.

Stations on the elevated section are in various stages of completion. The RTA says they are being built in an oval shape with roofs design based on seashells, a reference to Dubai’s fishing and pearling heritage.

Here’s one of the stations near Dubai Marina last week:

There will be test runs conducted on a 4 kilometre section of the elevated track near Jebel Ali, checking all the management systems as well as the trains themselves.

There’s a main power station for the Metro, in Jebel Ali, and that’s reported to be completed. The Depot in Jebel Ali which will be large enough to accommodate 44 trains is said to be more than half completed. A train will consist of five carriages with a maximum load of 645 passengers.

The elevated section of track running alongside Sheikh Zayed Road is a bit of a mystery to me. It isn’t straight nor is it level, as it snakes around, over or under interchanges. In parts it looks almost like a fairground toller-coaster as it goes up and down and I wonder how fast the trains will be able to travel.

Stations on the elevated section are in various stages of completion. The RTA says they are being built in an oval shape with roofs design based on seashells, a reference to Dubai’s fishing and pearling heritage.

Here’s one of the stations near Dubai Marina last week:

The British Radio 1 disc jockey Grooverider (real name Raymond Bingham) had 2.16 grams of cannabis in his pocket when he arrived to do a show in Dubai.

The excuses of ” It was a small amount. Back home I would not even get prosecuted.” and “he was unaware of the laws” were quite rightly ignored by the court.

The minimum sentence of four years jail was handed down.

I’ve talked about it before on Metblog – there has been extensive media coverage, the internet and blogosphere has plenty of information, the British Foreign Office (and many other countries’) Travel Information warn of the laws.

Yet people still come here carrying drugs.

The onus is on visitors to any country to check the laws before they arrive. Particularly those stupid enough to be drug users.

The story is reported in the Times of London.

It’s surfaced again because there’s a web campaign under way for the release of German citizen and UK resident Cat Le-Huy, who was detained under the laws. The campaign says that he is not guilty and was falsely imprisoned, the medication he was carrying was not banned and the ‘marijuana’ he was accused of carrying was in fact specks of dirt. Several bloggers have joined in, while the main site pushing the issue seems to be thetruthaboutdubai.com.

According to these sites, Le-Huy was detained on suspicion that the (legal) Melatonin bottle found in his bag contained other pills. They say that tests conducted by the authorities indicated that the bottle did not contain any other substances and the Melatonin was cleared, that Le-Huy’s urine sample also tested negative for any drug use that the German Embassy expected that Le-Huy would be released at this time, but authorities have called on an option to extend his detainment in order to investigate the specks of dirt that they found.

Because I have no way of telling the truth of Le-Huy’s case I won’t comment on it. Except to say that if he is indeed innocent then he should be released immediately with at the very least a fulsome apology and some sort of compensation.

I must point out though that there are some tabloid-style hysterics on the site though that are misleading for travellers in general, and that’s dangerous.

They also make ridiculous demands of the tourism authority.

I’ll go into both later.

The main point this issue raises, as I did back in November, is that as travellers the onus is on us to make ourselves aware of laws that may affect us – wherever we’re going. That applies in particular to people such as myself who have to take medication with them.

What about Japan? Did you know, for example, that codeine is illegal in Japan? So are any medications containing stimulants, such as pseudoephedrine – which means that many OTC cold-cures and anti-histamines are illegal. Prescription medications are restricted to a one-month supply, larger amounts may be seized, and you could be charged with intent to sell illegal substances.

Tourist-friendly countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia have the death penalty for drug trafficking. Westerners, among others, have been executed and many others are serving very long jail sentences.

It’s naive in the extreme to assume that every country has laws the same as your own. Believing that could land you in big, big trouble in many countries around the world.

In one of my earlier postings I pointed out that: “A Canadian brought in a tiny amount of marijuana, 0.66 grams for personal use.He fired his layer, pleaded guilty and asked the court for a ‘fast verdict’, saying he would pay a fine and leave.

He has been sentenced to four years in jail followed by deportation.”

The lesson is simple. Whether you’re visiting Dubai or anywhere else, make sure you know the rules!

Inaccuracies

The inaccurate, misleading ‘information’ on the website damages the credibility of their campaign to protest Le-Huy’s innocence. His interests would be better served if they stuck with the truth because in any context using inaccurate information throws doubts on the accuracy of anything else that’s said.

The writer says that the Dubai tourist board campaign “provide a false image in regards to Dubai’s safety for Western travelers due to its hidden policies…the government-created DTMC website, which advertises itself as an all-in-one tourist resource, fails to mention any of the new, strict laws that ensnare Western travelers in Dubai’s prisons daily.”

* Travellers, western or otherwise, are not jailed on a daily basis as the writer outrageously claims.

* The drug laws are not new, they’ve been in place for over two years.

* These are not hidden policies, they are the published laws of the land and are there for anyone who cares to look.

* Dubai’s safety for tourists is not a false image. It is one of the world’s safest cities which 7 million tourists visited last year. A tiny, tiny fraction ran into trouble with the law.

What’s a tourist authority for?

And I must comment on the ridiculous demand that a tourism authority’s advertising should ‘mention any of the strict laws’ of the country.

All tourist boards have responsibility for only one thing – to attract tourists. They do not, any of them, list laws that tourists may fall foul of. Nor should they be expected to. They do not warn tourists of the dangers they may face, and it’s ridiculous to think they should.

Would you expect the South African tourist authority to warn in its advertising that it’s known as the world crime capital?

I don’t see neworleansonline.com telling tourists that their fair city is the murder capital of America, and I wouldn’t expect it to.

I also don’t like the racist implication on the website that: “The website, http://www.thetruthaboutdubai.com, will highlight cases of detainment and imprisonment of Western tourists. “

Why specifically ‘western’ tourists?

They also say that: “The Committee seeks to educate travelers about the dangers of traveling to Dubai and hopes to work with Dubai officials to make the new laws more widely-publicized to prevent such unfortunate situations from occurring in the future, and to secure the deportation of current prisoners who fell victim to these under-publicized laws.”

New? Under-publicised?

If you take a few seconds to google ‘dubai drug laws’ you’ll get over 11,000 pages of information and ‘dubai banned drugs’ gets you over 1,500 pages.

The laws are clearly flagged in various countries’ travel sites, for example the UK,
US State Dept. and the Australian Government.

So, to sum up:

If Cat Le-Huy is innocent, he should not be in jail.

Inaccurate information on the website is not helping anybody.

Don’t expect tourism authorities to list the laws of their country.

Check the laws regarding medicines in any country you plan to visit. You are responsible for this, no-one else is.

The information is already out there, all you have to do is look.

The world’s longest arch bridge will be built across the Creek, with work due to start in March and completion expected in 2012.

It will be quite a landmark:

This will be the sixth bridge across the Creek, which runs through the centre of the old original city of Dubai, and is located towards the original end of the Creek (it’s being extended) near Festival City.

It will have 12 traffic lanes able to carry 20,000 vehicles an hour in each direction, will also carry a line of Dubai’s new Metro rail system, the Green Line, and will have a Metro station. It will also have an abra station, thus linking it with the Creek’s water transport.

The new bridge will be a total of 1.6 kilometres long with the arch being 607 metres long and 205 metres high.

The project also includes Creek Island, on which Dubai’s Opera House will be built and a massive road access system, with 12 kilometres of new roads and 22 intersections in the surrounding area.

Total cost is reported as AED3 billion (US$815 million).

Here’s how it looked from space back in April 2007:

Four kilometres off the coast of Dubai it’s a huge development, 9km x 6 km, and consists of 300 individual islands behind a breakwater that is 27 km long. Nakheel say that it adds 232 kilometres of new coastline – prime beachfron real estate.

The most eye-catching element will be an astonishing five star hotel shaped like a wheel.

The development, called Dubai Promenade, is located between Dubai Marina and Palm Jumeirah and it will ne a combination of residential, retail and commercial space with a 60-berth marina.

Dubai Promenade will extend over coastal land, the beach and onto a man-made peninsular, which is where the hotel will be sited.

Nakheel say that reclamation is due to be completed in the first quarter of 2008 with around 750,000 tonnes of rock being placed and 650,000 cubic metres of sand reclaimed.

Construction is due begin in mid-2008 and on completion, the development will accommodate approximately 10,000 residents in more than 2,000 residential units.

There’s a website if you’d like more information. www.dubaipromenade.ae

It will be a 75km long waterway flowing into the desert from Dubai Waterfront, which includes the massive Palm Jebel Ali island, and back out to the Gulf near Palm Jumeirah, the first and smallest of the palm-shaped islands. They say the canal, costing US$11 billion, will be the largest and most complex civil engineering project ever undertaken in the Middle East.

Gulf News graphic

The canal will run through the new Dubai Industrial City and other multi-billion dollar developments will be built along the new waterfront, including a mixed-use project which Limitless is planning as part of the master development. That will be a US$50 billion waterfront development of 20,000 hectares along 33 km of the inland section of the waterway, near the new Al Maktoum International Airport. It will be a business, residential and leisure complex serving around one million people.

The work now under way is preliminary and doesn’t include actual excavation, which is planned to start in about three months time.

The canal will be six metres deep, up to 150 metres wide and is expected to be completed in three years.

It’s the tourist season of course, the weather being perfect now and the ideal get-away from the freezing cold of northern Europe and North America.

But in addition to that we’re in the middle of the events season. We’ve had the huge Dubai Air Show, the Big 5 construction exhibition, powerboat championship at Mina Seyahi and many other events happening together or one right after the other.

Now we have the Fourth Dubai International Film Festival, with stars from Hollywood, Bollywood and elsewhere plus hundreds of producers, directors and all the other back-room people who make movies possible.

There’s plenty on that, with photos of the stars, at the Gulf News website. Here are some links:

Clooney, Sharon Stone

Ready to roll

Festive preparations