Wow, did you just stay in the hotel? There is so very much to do in Dubai, especially these days as it is built up massively. There is lots of golf, wadi-bashing, water sports, guided desert excursions, Camel racing, they have a new Formula One track, underwater hotels, man-made island communities, awesome food, and what I like best is to rent a 4-WD and go exploring on my own in the desert. BEY is surely fun, but what can you do there that you can't in Dubai?

Richard, LH flies down there if you want Star Alliance. Or I think you can earn UA miles on EK, but not EQM's. Search the different hotel forums for loads of posts on Dubai hotels. There are a lot of very nice and exotic hotels there.

Just to name a few:

1. skiing
2. wine tasting at the vinerys
3. exploring greek, roman, osman, crusader heritage sites
4. enjoy lots of "contacts" with the friendly lebanese people
5. Visit the places where Jesus has been
6. See the biblic trees, "The Cedars"
7. NOT meeting too many western tourists
8. Buying Hisbollah-Souvenirs from their merchandising shop in Baalbek
9. Do the same like 8. but from Forces libanaise
10. Watch and stare lebanese women with the highest stilettos, tightest mini-skirts and best nose/boob jobs you can imagine

But anyhow..if you like deserts excursions, well than UAE should be ok... I am just not that much of the desert fan, nor formula one or camel racing

What is this?

searching for men called 'wadi' and then punching them on the nose, it is a sport with a huge following in the Gulf region, lots of newspaper coverage, championships, the lot.

But you'll get a better answer with Google.

Jimmy, you seem to be comparing Dubai with the whole country of Lebanon. I was just talking about the Dubai Emirate which is quite small, yet includes some desert; versus Beirut.

As for western visitors, Dubai visitors are mainly made up of Russians, Brits and French. Very few Americans. Are you saying BEY doesn't have a lot of Russian, British and French tourists?

And there are a lot of beautiful women to look at in Dubai, dressed in a similar fashion. They just aren't nationals.

I see you've seen the traffic going to & from the hotel bars. A perpetual fashion show, right?

My gosh, the Russian hookers alone...

But there are also a lot of nice bikinis at the beach and hotel swimming pools.

And please do not forget the local girls with there mix of gulf and indian beauty,wow.
Been to Bey a lot of times the men are show-offs the women are arrogant they only speak French even if you talk to them in Arabic the shops are rip-offs and i did not mention the taxis.
Dubai is heaven compared to Bey

I didn't see any...

I liked the wadi bashing, where you drive through the desert at a foolishly high rate of speed and roller coaster through the dunes....otehr fun things to do:

--Get bespoke shirts made....Prince Tailors, on the Deira side..just down from the Intercontinental..$13.00/shirt
--Visit the fish/produce souk early in the AM and the spice souk after.
--Street food....lots of Indian influence
--The gold souk
--Lucky's, just outside of town, for pretty cool antique woodcarvings
--The museum/Heritage village
--Brunch at the Burj al-Arab...the restaurant on the top floor.....

We also caught the Dubai Derby horse race and the carpet sale at the convention center, but this is April....

Stimpy:
No , just very little numbers of english or french tourists in Lebanon. Most tourists are arabs, including from the emirates. And of course i compare whole lebanon to dubai, in beirut no place is farer than 1.5 h.

Smart51: Well i made much different experiences with the men and women in Beirut. maybe your looks and/or wallet and/or ethnicity didn't fit lebanese taste.. LOL
And taxi driving? never had prob lems with it.... maybe because they love us germans

Whatever, if we all had the same taste our supermarkets would be much much smaller

I spent four days in Dubai last March en route to Kabul (talk about a world of difference between the two cities, but I digress...)

I was very happy to have visited it, but to tell you the truth, found it to be a little depressing. While I did enjoy crossing the creek in the small boats and wandering around the souks, I found it odd that most tourists simply stayed put in their resorts around Jumeirah and made little effort to seek out the 'real' Dubai. In fact, at Madinat Jumeirah you can stay at a brand new resort whose centerpiece is a shopping mall replica of a typical Deira-style Dubai souk, which would be analogous to a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip sporting a 'Downtown Las Vegas' theme. I guess tourists who stay there do not wish the 'inconvenience' of confronting Dubai -- so why did they visit in the first place?

Don't get me wrong ; if you're in that part of the world, by all means check it out. It's growing at such a quick pace that upon following visits, you might not even recognize it!

Keep in mind, however, that apart from the very cheap taxis, everything is pretty expensive. I was with a group of eight graduate students and finding an affordable but non-dirtbag hotel was challenging. We ended up at the Four Points by Sheraton in Bur Dubai which was adequate but whose lobby morphed nightly into a parade of prostitutes, which I guess is a feature of the city. Traffic is a major problem with the transportation infrastructure not keeping up with building construction. Change money in the souks downtown for some great rates.

Couldn't figure it out.

John Galt seems to have explained it above.

When I enter "wadi bashing" in Google I get loads of links.

And the obvious answer for anyone reading this thread is to visit both DXB and BEY to see for yourself. We are frequent flyers after all, right?

This is a bit over the top. Had no problems getting a room at the five-star Moevenpick for AED 500. That may not be a tiny amount of money, but it's no more than what a regular three-star hotel in London or Rome would charge.
And Sixt were happy to rent me (as a 23 year old) a full-spec C180 for AED 280 (BTW these prices were final after all charges). You'd be lucky to get a full-spec Corolla for this kind of money in Europe.