Top 10 Things to Do in Dubai | Cross the Creek First

Cross the creek

Almost every disappointed Dubai visitor made the same mistake.

They stayed in the new city, saw a tower and a mall and a manufactured beach, decided the place had no soul, and went home.

They never crossed the creek.

Dubai Creek is the saltwater inlet the whole city started on, and the two banks hold the version of this place that existed before the oil and still exists now. Half this list is over there, and it is the half that explains the place. Ask us about a Dubai stopover.

The ten

1. The abra across the creek

A wooden ferry, a few minutes across the water, for a fare that is essentially symbolic.

It is the best few minutes in Dubai and it costs a rounding error. Do it in both directions, at different times of day.

2. The dhow wharfage on the Deira side

Wooden dhows tie up along the creek and load washing machines, tyres and air conditioners for Iran and East Africa, exactly as they have for a century.

Nobody is performing for you. It is a working port doing what it has always done, in the middle of a city that pretends it was built yesterday.

3. The Gold and Spice Souks

The Gold Souk does a genuinely startling volume of business and the Spice Souk next to it smells the way you hoped it would.

Haggle, expect to, and take nothing at the first price.

4. Al Fahidi at dusk

A warren of restored coral-and-gypsum houses with wind towers, which are pre-electric air conditioning and which actually work: stand under one on a hot day and feel it.

There is a coffee museum. There is a place where you sit on the floor and eat with locals. It takes an hour and it is the closest Dubai comes to being old.

5. A desert trip, chosen carefully

The best thing here that costs money, and the gap between a good one and a bad one is enormous.

The bad one: a convoy of identical four-wheel drives, forty minutes to the nearest dunes, twenty minutes of being thrown around, a camel photograph, a buffet under lights, a coach park's worth of people.

The good one: further out, ideally into a conservation reserve, smaller vehicle, fewer people. The dune bashing is optional and plenty would rather skip it. What you are paying for arrives after dark, when the engines stop: silence of a kind that does not exist in a city, and a sky with genuinely too many stars in it. Compare small-group desert trips on Viator.

6. The Burj Khalifa, once, at sunset

Book a timed slot well in advance, because those sell first and the walk-up option is whatever is left.

It is very tall, the view is genuinely extraordinary, and you will not be alone. Once is right. Find Burj Khalifa tickets on Klook.

7. The Dubai Fountain, from the lake edge

Free, every half hour in the evening, at the base of the tower, and better than it has any right to be.

Watch it from the lake edge. Do not pay for a restaurant table with a view of a thing you can see from the pavement.

8. The Museum of the Future

The one that surprises people. A genuinely well-made building, and the exhibitions inside are better than the concept suggests.

Book ahead. It sells out.

9. Kite Beach

Public, free, and a normal, pleasant, unpretentious afternoon, which is not a phrase people associate with Dubai.

10. Al Seef, along the creek

A modern reconstruction of an old district, which sounds terrible and works better than expected, mostly because it is on the water and it connects the two halves of this list.

The heat decides which list you get

Worth being blunt about, because it changes everything above.

November to March: everything on this list works. The desert is comfortable, the creek is a pleasure, the beach is the point.

June to September: genuinely severe heat. Not "warm for Australians", which is the assumption that catches us out. The kind of heat where outdoor life reorganises itself around dawn and midnight.

In those months this list shrinks to the indoor half, and the honest advice is that a summer Dubai trip is a stopover with a pool rather than a sightseeing week. Our Dubai travel guide is candid about the trade: the fares and hotels fall a long way, and if your trip is mostly indoors that is real value rather than a compromise.

What we tell clients to skip

The malls, mostly. You have flown fourteen hours to look at shops you have at home. The exception is genuine: if the weather has driven you indoors, the Dubai Mall will absorb an afternoon painlessly and there is an aquarium in it.

The big convoy desert safari. A coach park with a camel attached. Pay a little more for the small one.

A restaurant table booked for the fountain view. It is free from the pavement.

Five days. Dubai is close to ideal at three and thin beyond five, and we would rather say so than sell you a week. That is exactly why it works so well as a stopover: two or three nights on a through fare to Europe frequently costs little or nothing extra, as our Dubai layover guide explains.

The practical bits

The metro is excellent and nobody uses it. Clean, cheap, air-conditioned, along the main spine of the new city. Visitors default to taxis and then complain about the traffic, which is self-inflicted.

Distances are enormous. Dubai is long rather than dense and nothing is as close as the map suggests.

Dress is more relaxed than people fear and less relaxed than Bali. In souks, malls, older neighbourhoods and anywhere religious, shoulders and knees covered is the respectful default and costs nothing.

Ramadan changes the city: daytime eating and drinking in public is restricted, hours shift, and the evenings become extraordinary. Fascinating if you know what you are walking into.

Book the room from the night before if you are landing at dawn, which most Australian flights do. It is the cheapest fix to the most common complaint about this city.

Booking notes

Prices shown by our partners are live and in your choice of currency, most activities confirm instantly, and free cancellation windows are stated on each listing. Book ahead for the Burj Khalifa, the Museum of the Future and a decent small desert trip. The creek, the souks, the abras, the fountain and the beaches need nothing at all, and they are the best of it.

Our flights to Dubai page covers the corridor. Get a free Dubai quote.