The Roving Balys
Dubai Travel Guide 2024 – Things To Know Before You Go
Planning a trip to Dubai UAE in 2024? Watch our travel vlog for our Dubai Travel Guide to discover things you should know before visiting: travel tips on things to do in Dubai, where to stay in Dubai, Dubai transport options & must-see attractions to make your holiday adventure unforgettable.
From the towering Burj Khalifa and luxury shopping at Dubai Mall to exploring the cultural heritage of Al Seef in Old Dubai, we’ve got everything you need to know.
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Discover Dubai with The Roving Balys! 🌟
Join us as we explore the glitz and glamour of Dubai! From the iconic skyline to unforgettable experiences, this adventure has it all.
Plan Your Adventure
✨ Big Bus Tour Dubai: See Dubai’s top attractions with ease! The Big Bus Tour is a fantastic way to explore the city at your own pace while soaking in the sights. Book your tickets here: https://bigbustours.tp.st/ss3K3bfU (We may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you.)
🌇 Top of the Rock with Viator: Don’t miss the best views of the city! Whether you’re admiring the stunning Burj Khalifa or other Dubai landmarks, this experience is one to remember. Book your tickets here: https://viator.tp.st/CotWpwHF (Thank you for supporting our channel!)
🏨 Where We Stayed: We stayed at the luxurious Swissôtel Al Murooj Dubai. Located right across from the Dubai Mall, it was the perfect blend of comfort and convenience. Highly recommend it for your stay in Dubai! Book here: https://booking.tp.st/Ax8b8bZv (Booking through this link supports our channel at no extra cost to you.)
Watch Part 1 of our Dubai Adventure: https://youtu.be/FxarO9zY_i4
Watch Part 2 of our Dubai Adventure: https://youtu.be/NKddzbgn15Y
Watch Part 2 of our Dubai Adventure: https://youtu.be/L1vIa88C6G0
#DubaiReview #DubaiTravelTips #DubaiTravelGuide #Dubai2024 #ThingsToDoDubai #DubaiMall #DowntownDubai #BurjKhalifa #dubaivlog #ExploreDubai #DubaiTravelVlog #dubaiholidays #dubai #dubaivacation #travelvlog #SwissotelAlMuroojDubai #5StarHotelDubai #DubaiLuxuryStay #TravelDubai #TheRovingBalys #MidlifeTravel #DubaiAdventures
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
00:45 – The Basics
05:58 – Local Customs
07:39 – Transport
14:04 – Where To Stay
19:39 – Verdict
My Music:
https://www.epidemicsound.com
Photo Credits:
Image by schliff from Pixabay
Photo by Atikah Akhtar on Unsplash
Photo by Abid Bin Nazar from Pexels
🌍 Hi, we’re Lydia & Chris, the Roving Balys! 🌍
As an empty nest couple from Newcastle, Australia, we’ve traveled the world together for 30 years. We started this travel vlog to share our travel tales and showcase our beautiful region. We met traveling around Europe in 1995 and have since visited 50+ countries. We love discovering new places, meeting people, and trying local cuisines (including gluten-free options).
Our journey has evolved from backpacking to family travel, and now back to couple adventures. With the kids doing their own thing, we’re ready to dust off our backpacks (now suitcases) and start new adventures. So grab a cup of coffee and come roving with us!
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are you planning a trip to the vibrant city of Dubai or have you already booked your flights if so then you’re in the right place in this video we’ll provide you with all the essential information and travel tips to make your holiday Unforgettable make sure to watch before you go so you don’t miss out on these must know tips for your visit to one of the most exciting destinations in the world [Music] hi guys welcome to the roving Bellys thank you for joining us for our review of our recent 3-day stopover in Dubai it can get very very hot in Dubai it can we were in to buy in late spring and it was about 38° C which is 100° F so very warm it’s probably a good time to go though the shoulder season definitely a good time to go or winter yeah summer I think would be very very warm and quite unbearable I would say unless you’re in the air conditioning somewhere or by the water yeah speaking with locals who were saying that it was 50° and higher in summer so it would be murder yeah unbearable for me 90% of the population of Dubai is expats so a lot of them would go home home in the middle of summer when there’s less tourists there but then it is cheaper time to go accommodation is cheap because they can’t fill the rooms yeah it’s not somewhere I would go at that time of year but you know each to their own so we didn’t need to pre-book the Visa before we arrived in Dubai no you just went through customs and they stamped your passport with a 30-day visitors Visa made it easy yep the local currency in Dubai is called the Durham so 100 Durham will get you about 41 or 42 Australian dollar uh or about $27 I think it’s actually pegged to the US dollar so it doesn’t change we didn’t take any cash out when we were there we were only there for a few days so we chose to use our credit card credit cards were taken everywhere visa and MasterCard and even American Express in a lot of places so we didn’t really need cash in saying that it’s always useful to have some cash with you just as a backup you know maybe $100 worth just to get by if you need if you need it or your card doesn’t work or something happens it’s just a good backup or a taxi driver’s credit card machine isn’t working yeah it’s handy to just have a little a backup plan we were pleasantly surprised to see that most people spoke English so that made it a lot easier for us to converse with people Arabic is the local language being an Middle Eastern country but English is spoken everywhere and all the signs and the menus are all in English as well as Arabic so that makes it easy to travel around super easy so normally when we travel we just use our local phone plan because it does have an international roaming function to it unfortunately it didn’t work in Dubai so we were going to get a local SIM card there but we found that we didn’t need that because there was Wi-Fi everywhere so we were able to contact friends and family back home and do what we needed to do just through Wi-Fi as we’re only there for a short amount of time if we were there for longer we would definitely consider getting an eim or a local SIM card but because we were there for a short time we certainly got through with the Wi-Fi yeah there was free Wi-Fi in all the restaurants and the malls and everywhere you go really we couldn’t get lost we just stop into a shop look at our Google Maps and that’s a good tip actually if if you are lost and you sort of need to find your way around somewhere always go into a local hotel use their Wi-Fi and you can sort of find your way around again or download the map and screenshot it and you’re you’re good to go again so that that is something I had to do at some point in our travels Dubai is a multicultural Melting Pot for food and the different Cuisines you can pretty much get everything there I there was n’t anything that I didn’t see that you could get there so if you feel like some type of cuisine in particular I’m sure you’d be able to find it in Dubai oh absolutely there was a big Indian influence we ate quite a lot of Indian food there and Iranian and Lebanese food was very popular but if you wanted a hamburger or pizza you could certainly find that you don’t have to look too far especially in areas like the Dubai Marina and the jbr they do also have a food delivery system it’s called deliveroo you can download their app before you arrive in Dubai and they will deliver it to your hotel they won’t come up to your room but you can meet them in the foyer if you prefer to just stay in your hotel and and not go out and about cuz you’re tired that’s also an option for you too it’s very safe in Dubai Dubai is one of the safest places in the world so there’s no need to worry about getting mugged or high crime rates it’s a very safe place to travel to yeah I think there’s basically no violent crime at all is if there’s anything little petty crime but that’s very rare and one thing that’s fabulous if you’re a solo female traveler is they do have female only taxis which I thought was a great idea so that’s something to bear in mind too if it’s a concern and you just want that little bit of extra peace of mind then yeah jump in an all female taxi with a female driver yeah in Islam drinking alcohol is prohibited so we weren’t really sure whether we’d be able to have a drink when we were in Dubai but the hotels and restaurant certain restaurants are often licensed so you are able to have a drink there if you so desire yes particularly places like uh dub Marina where there’s a lot of expats and bit of a party place but drinking outside in public is a no no U being drunk in public is definitely a no no so you just have to be a bit more aware of the local Customs another thing about Islamic countries is that it’s accustom to dress conservatively so covering your shoulders if you’re a lady covering your knees is a good way to present yourself in saying that it is a highly touristy area and you do see people getting around in shorter sleev shirts and singlet tops and shorter shorts especially in those touristy areas I think if you were to go outside of the touristy areas it would be more important to make sure that you’re covered respectfully yeah and if you were visiting a mosque or something like that you would need to cover your shoulders and wear longer pants so there’s no real tipping culture in Dubai not like in America anyway it’s probably similar to to Australia so if you feel like you’ve had a good service at a restaurant or a taxi service then you might throw them a little bit of a tip but it’s not really uh a big culture of tipping there arriving into Dubai airport is quite the experience I’ve never had to walk so far in an airport in my life it’s one of it’s the biggest airport I’ve ever been to I don’t think I’ve ever been in a space that large I don’t know how the roof stayed up so it was so big and you think because you’re arriving early in the morning like we arrived at 5:00 in the morning or something that everything would be closed and but everything was open every single shop it was incredible but it is a very very very big airport so wear comfortable walking shoes I did not have my comfortable walking shoes on and I regretted that an interesting thing they had prams that you could grab as you got off your plane unfortunately not big enough I may have gotten one otherwise yeah but certainly if you had a family with small kids they wouldn’t after a long flight want to be walking 20 to 30 minutes to get to the Customs area so I don’t think it’s the largest airport terminal at least not anymore um but they are undergoing big Renovations and they’re going to increase it fivefold the size of the terminal when it’ll definitely be the largest airport terminal in the world then and then I think I may end up buying one of of those ride on suitcases that we tried out in the Virgin mega store because that would certainly save your feet if you could sit on that and ride right down to your gate brilliant idea yeah as far as taxis go in Dubai when you come out of the airport there are hundreds of taxis you definitely do not need to pre-book a transfer because that it’s like a well oiled machine I’ve never seen anything like it in my life you come out you’re straight there they you know move you on to the next taxi and off you go and they’re all legitimate taxis and they’ve all got their meters on and it cost us about 65 diam to get to downtown Dubai which was about a 30 minute trip I guess something like that so that’s about 27 Australian dollars the Metro also goes all the way to the airport as well so if you want a cheap alternative then you can always catch the metro for only a few but because we were there so early in the morning it was much easier for us to get the taxi and splurge on that and the taxis were everywhere oh yeah you didn’t you didn’t have to look too far on the way back to the airport at the end of our trip uh we left from our hotel in the marina and that cost about 100 diam to get there which is about 42 Australian dollar or 27 us so the hotels do have their own transfers as well and they will be a little bit more than the local taxis but they do provide a very comfortable car and they do have a little bit better service I would say there’s quite a few ways to get around Dubai uh probably the cheapest way is the Dubai Metro and we caught that it was only six diam to travel two zones and it was nice comfortable air conditioned Carriage very busy though was at the time that we went the only issue is that there’s only two lines uh on the Metro in Dubai so may be a bit of working to do from where the Metro stop is to where the attraction or the place that you want to visit so the Metro is probably not the best solution if you’re traveling to a hotel and your hotel’s not right next to a metro stop because lugging your baggage in that heat yeah that wouldn’t be much fun no I think my preference was definitely a taxi another way to travel is by bus and particularly The Hop On Hop off bus and there was two bus companies and we chose Big Bus Tours and that was really good especially if you’re short on time yeah they’re great and they have headphones for different languages so you can listen to all the commentary in your own language and you can like they say hop on and hop off where you want to so we did a one day tour the best Valu is a two-day ticket and if we had more time we would have done two days there was two lines one went up to the marina and the palm area and the other went to the Old Town of Dubai we did one in the morning and one in the afternoon and we only had one hop off if you wanted to do more than two or three hop offs definitely you would need two days for sure I would recommend if you’ve got the time definitely buy the 2day without a doubt but if you want to see all of Dubai in a day could you can do both lines and you’ve got the your headphones with the the the tour information comment the commentary so it’s just like a tour and you’ll see everything in the day you are doing it in one day though start off early go leave with the first tour because there a lot to say and do the Dubai Mall is the base for the tours when we did hop off it was at ski Dubai which was an experience that was good fun we had lots of fun [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] so you can ride on an Abra which takes you from one side of the creek to the other and it’s only one Duram so that’s like probably the cheapest thing in Dubai but you can also hire them like privately for about 120 Duram for an hour and you can do tours around the the creek and whatnot so you know if you like your boting then that might be an option there’s four main suburbs that people usually stay at uh when they come to Dubai as a tourist the cheapest area to stay in Dubai is the Oldtown around Dubai Creek either side of the creek it’s not your classic skyscraper Dubai that you see in all the tourist shots but it’s a really interesting area and a cheap place to stay and also cheap places to eat and close to the airport if you’re only sort of staying in Dubai for a day it would be a good place to stay yeah it would be I mean Dubai started up as a fishing and pearling Village and it’s only been since the mid-60s when they discovered oil that International Trade picked up and it became a wealthy City this Old Town of Dubai gives you a good impression of what it used to be like if you want to buy uh souvenirs here’s a tip buy them at the old Dubai it’s much cheaper to get them there than it is in the malls definitely we chose to stay in the downtown Dubai area and also the Dubai Marina area yeah the downtown area was our favorite it was a great location for the mall for restaurants and the B Khalifa and the Hop On Hop Off buses we found for our first visit there it was a really good location we enjoyed that spot there’s a variety of different accommodation choices there from expensive five star places to some more Boutique Apartments but it’s certainly more expensive than the old Dubai we stayed at the Swiss hotel which is right near Dubai Mall it was a fabulous location for one Dubai Mall and two for the Hop On Hop Off buses cuz it was literally across the road there was a lot to do there in around that downtown area for free the Dubai Mall the fountain show Dubai Mall oh my goodness we walked all day we got lost and we still didn’t see all of the mall it’s the biggest mall I’ve ever been to in my life but apparently it’s not the world’s biggest mall which surprised me it’s one of the biggest one of the biggest it’s it’s in the top five and I think it’s got every single shop that you can imagine that you’ve seen in America Australia UK you know all the big names are there and we did get lost though and then we realized where we we were was way way way away from where we started so then we had to find all our way back again so it’s a massive Mall definitely part of the fun it was part of the fun and definitely worth checking out it’s a great free activity actually Dubai is not the cheapest country but if you want to do some free stuff the shopping malls are definitely a good place to go window shopping they’re air conditioned uh there’s an amazing aquarium there there’s lots of lovely coffee shops and little cake shops lots of restaurants and then there’s the Dubai Mountain show just outside and that’s another nice free activity so there plenty to do in a mall the shopping is taxfree for tourists as well if you spend over a certain amount so if you spend over 250 Dam you can claim the vat back when you leave as long as you remember to do so at the airport we forgot we also bought tickets to go up and climb the B Califa we got the VIP tickets that took us up a few extra floors which I think was worthwhile not not for the view necessarily because it wasn’t that much of a difference but definitely for the crowds and it is a lot more expensive the VIP tour so if you were on a budget don’t stretch yourself where we found the benefit was that we did go at Sunset and there were massive crowds and the biggest benefit of that was when we were coming down the lift we got straight on to the lift whereas other people would have been waiting at least an hour Dubai Marina is the most popular area to stay for expats and tourists from the West so you’ve got two parts to it you’ve got the Mariner area around a canal then you’ve got the the beach area which is the jira beach residence or jbr area and that’s you can walk along the boardwalk there along the beach it’s really nice yeah and it was a lot more popular I think for younger people seemed to be a lot more younger people in that area but we did notice the increase in costs of food and restaurants there compared to to downtown so that’s something to consider as well it was very noticeable it was quite a lot more expensive than downtown Dubai definitely but it was a lot more pedestrian friendly it was a nice they call it the walk you walk around the Mariner area and the beach and it was lovely lots of restaurants and cafes bars along the beach like you said it was more the beach party vibe there the young people having fun pal Jamira is the reclaimed land in the shape of a palm tree and there’s a lot of high-end luxury hotel accommodation there like the Atlantis which is an iconic structure right at the end of the Palm you’ve also got the Burge Al Arab there which is a luxury resort it’s about $2,000 a night and so if you’ve got that much money then Splurge but we didn’t so we didn’t stay there maybe one day it’s an urban myth that it’s the only sevenstar hotel in the world um I think somebody said that at one stage but really they only go up to five star so it’s it’s a myth but it’s nice myth to have there’s just so many things to do in buy and you we didn’t have enough time to do all the things we wanted to do so we’ll definitely be back we’re definitely going to go back for sure I want to go up the frame you you can go all the way to the top of that I want to visit Museum of the future and that looks amazing um Atlantis Atlantis yes water slide park there we actually went to the water slide park in the original Atlantis and the Bahamas uh with the kids way back 10 years ago or so it’s a great place to visit and a great place to stop over if you’re going over to Europe or other places it is especially coming from Australia I think it was about 13 or 14 hour flight to Dubai so it’s a good place to break up your flight and then travel the rest of the way if you’re going all the way to Europe yeah we’ve always found that we pull up a lot better if we do break up our trip rather than going all the way there it just knocks you around a lot more whereas doing it this way we certainly climatized a lot better we had a great trip great time great experience Ultra Modern it’s like stepping onto another planet like the modern Planet I’ve never seen so many new Big Shiny the biggest the best the shiniest the largest the tallest incredible and the people the people of Dubai are lovely y they’re all very friendly they’re willing to help Yep they’re welcome welcome to Dubai you know so it’s a a great stopover definitely recommend going to Dubai absolutely put it on your list but anyway thanks for joining us today we hope you enjoyed this video we hope you found it informative if you liked what you saw please hit like And subscribe below means a lot to us and it shows us that we’re putting out information that you’re interested in watching as well in the meantime have a wonderful day whatever you’re doing in wherever you are in the world and thanks again bye-bye bye-bye
#Dubai #Travel #Guide
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Dubai looks like an amazing holiday destination. Thank you for the guide. I'll have to start organising a trip
So many fab tips! 👏🏼👏🏼
Excellent and very informative video. Thank you. I would like some information about trolley bag you were on and I would like to enquire if they have those available golf carts to transport elder people within the airport
Such an informative video thank you. One question, can you drink the tap water in Dubai or is bottled water necessary? Thanks!
I hope to start living the dream life that I desire soon and forever ❤
I read on “booking” that you need to provide a marriage certificate at check-in. Is this true?
Loved all the information u gave I hv been five times and love Dubai . The most important thing for me is that u hv so much to see and do 🙂
Thank you for sharing your adventure in Dubai I.m flying to Dubai for Christmas.
Thank you for this video. I'm going there next month and so exited. I've watched few videos about Dubai and I felt this vide is very helpful.
Thank you for sharing. We will be visiting there soon!