Dubai Creek at dusk is awash with the exotic sights and sounds of Arabia. Walking through the old quarter along the creekside, I fell under the spell of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer and the merchants calling all shoppers to the souks.
I watched a crescent moon rise over a city of mosques and malls, skyscrapers and tall palms, where the past and future mingle at this ancient gateway to the Middle East.
At the Dubai Museum in the Al Fahidi Fort, I read from the Koran: "We have determined the different position of the moon throughout the month until it returns like the old and withered lower part of a date-stalk."
The museum exhibit on the lunar calendar advises that the middle of the month is the best time to travel through the desert - under the full moon in the cool of the night. I made careful notes for my own caravanserai.
Arabia has always stirred my imagination. My grandfather's eastern travels and a boyhood fascination with the adventures of Lawrence of Arabia inspired wanderlust. On the flight to Dubai I read the obituary of Wilfred Thesiger, the great British explorer who crossed the vast Arabian desert by camel - and had died on the eve of my visit.
The geopolitics of the region have developed beyond recognition since he explored the Empty Quarter with the nomadic Bedouin 60 years ago and wrote Arabian Sands.
Catching a water taxi, I mingled with the commuters heading home on a waterway that has been a lifeline of trade and commerce for 5000 years.
Jostling among a flotilla of abras, dhows and barges, rush-hour on Dubai Creek is a sight to behold. The traditional facades of the ancient buildings of the Bur Dubai quarter belong to the alluring Arabia of ornate arches and turrets, decorative screens and elaborate wooden shutters.
The containers stacked high on the quayside filled with electronic goods belong to a modern era of duty-free malls - the piled boxes of fruit and spices to the days when Dubai traded copper, pottery and pearls on the ancient route to Mesopotamia.
The narrow alleys of the gold souk and the spice souk in the Deira area on the creek-side are suffused with the aromas of Arabia. Open sacks of anise, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, turmeric, saffron, pepper, zataar (a pungent local herb like tarragon) and dried limes line the old wooden stalls - mingling with the fragrant infusions of incense, dried flowers and fruit.
We tasted fresh dates, salted pistachios and sweetmeats while one of the merchants demonstrated how to tell good from poor saffron when cooking rice.
The hustle and bustle of the souks that never sleep cast a spell. Like all great cities, Dubai's reputation as a gastronomic destination grows partly from the incredible supply of fresh ingredients at its great market - the old Deira Fish, Meat and Vegetable Market.
After buying fresh dates on the stalk, I watched the great chefs of Dubai buy the catch of the day - local fish delicacies like hammour and halwayoo from the Gulf, Omani lobster, prawns, crab and squid, and oysters, tuna, turbot and shellfish from around the world.
According to an Arabian proverb, you should never build a home higher than a palm-tree. In the Bastakiya, an old quarter of two-storey residences, courtyards and narrow alleys, the old wind towers are the tallest constructions - an early form of air-conditioning designed to trap the cool breezes from the Arabian Gulf.
Heading downtown, Dubai changes into Gotham City -a skyline of futuristic skyscrapers and high-rise hotels made of glass and steel that rise out of the flat desert like a mirage in the heat and the dust.
Dubai is a city of contrast. Since the big oil boom of the 1970s, a desert village of 5000 in the 1950s has grown from a trading outpost and pearling port into the Dallas of the Gulf. A city of 1,4 million comprising over 100 different nationalities in a multi-cultural melting-pot, Dubai is the economic power-house and playground of the United Arab Emirates.
Dozens of luxury hotels draw tourists from all over the world to Jumeirah Beach, a tourist zone of marinas, resorts, villas and islands shaped in a giant palm, adding 120 kilometres of new coastline in one of the world's biggest land reclamations.
The hospitable locals are fond of quoting the many sayings of Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, crown prince of the ruling family and de facto ruler of Dubai, one of the seven emirates.
Hamza Mustafa, a salesman for the Palm resort, explained that the islands are shaped in Arabic calligraphy that spell out one of the Sheik's sayings: "Take the wisdom of the wise man. Not everyone who rides is a jockey." (With a stable of top-flight Arabians, the Sheik is a big player on the world's horse-racing circuit.)
Wondering what the Sheik meant, I rode the elevator to the top of the Burj al Arab, the tallest hotel in the world built on a man-made island. A potent symbol of power, it is to Dubai what the Opera House is to Sydney.
The restaurant at the top juts out like a periscope over the Gulf while the underwater seafood restaurant is built around a giant aquarium.
The Sheik reportedly said of his icon hotel with gold-leaf columns, four-storey fountains and a fleet of 12 Rolls Royces: "I want an oasis of colour - the desert bleaches all the colour out."
In a city of tall legends, I also met the third tallest man in the world. At 2,25 metres, 40-year-old Abdul Jabbar is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.
After a tall margarita, a short lunch and a snapshot with the celebrity doorman at The Intercontinental, I spotted a Mercedes jeep with a "Dubai 1" plate at the Dubai World Trade Centre.
We ran into Sheik Mohammed by chance on a tour of the largest convention centre in the Middle East - another of his projects designed to put Dubai on the map as world-class business and tourist destination like London or New York.
Politely shaking hands with our visiting group of journalists, he said: "Welcome to Dubai. You are very safe. I make sure Dubai is very safe."
I returned home with my own saying of the Sheik.
No wonder Alavi, our driver, laughed when I asked him if it was safe to leave my camera in the car. "I don't even lock the car," he said, leaving the keys in the ignition to keep the air-conditioning running whenever we stopped.
They say the merchants don't lock their shops when they go to prayer. In Dubai, it's safe, very safe.
- Graham Howe was a guest of the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing of the Government of Dubai. For more information, see www.dubaitourism.co.ae/A> or e-mail [email protected] contact Dubai Tourism on 011-785-4600, e-mail: [email protected]