There’s simply no place like Dubai, the oasis on the Arab Peninsula that after striking oil in the 1970s built itself almost overnight. There’s also perhaps no starker contrast than going from the African bush where we’d just been to the glitz and glam of this Middle East city. Dubai has been on a feverish growth pace for more than a decade. Hotels shoot up in weeks, not years, and sometimes sit empty for much longer until the tourists arrive.

The reason we came: We wondered about Dubai’s growth. Can it sustain such feverish expansion? For now the answer seems to be yes. Tourism is up 10 percent this year compared to last year, translating to 7.9 million visitors to Dubai