As some of you are aware I recently went on my annual holiday with the family to Dubai, and you if you are aware of this you would more than likely also be aware how much we loved not only the resort (The Palm Atlantis is an amazing family resort - http://www.atlantisthepalm.com/) but how much we fell in love with the country.

Originally I was going to blog about our journey / experiences soon after we returned, but instead of getting caught up in the romance of the holiday, I thought I would instead get back into normality and then blog about Dubai.

The shortest summary I could give is that Dubai is that it is a wonderful place, the people, the culture, the hotels, my family and I fell in love with it. We were luckily enough to stay in the amazing Palm Atlantis hotel, its arguably the best family luxury hotel around, it offers a range of adult entertainment (if you like shopping stay @ the palm) to swimming with Dolphins. Its not cheap, but its worth every penny.

As for main street Dubai, we found the people incredibly friendly and the most child orientated society we have came across. Often I feel we misunderstand the middle east, often being led to believe that their culture is seriously oppressive and unfair to women, I can say that this is not the case. There are differences between how men and women are treated. Women obviously have to remain more covered up then us chaps and finances are looked after by the men, on the other hand women are served before men in a que and are expected to be provide any of their needs. Like all societies there are also edge cases and extremes, but there is a lot in the UK we could learn from the society in the UAE.

I certainly have a different view of the middle-east since going to Dubai, it is a country I and the family could go and happily live in.