Here is how the Desert Palm Resort describes itself:
Chic luxury emerges from a dramatic desert landscape.
Contrast. The vast sandscapes of the Arabian landscape versus the lush surrounds of green in an extensive polo property. The conventional opulence of Dubai luxury hotels versus signature Per Aquum chic subtly merged with the elegant forms of local architecture and design.
Set amidst green fields and palm trees, Desert Palm offers sensually designed accommodation – Arabia touched with the avant-garde…SOURCE
Well this is true, if avant-garde means the close proximity to Dubai’s smelliest spot. The Al Aweer sewage plant sits in close proximity. The National recently described the sewage plant this way:
Sewage tanker drivers admitted yesterday that some of them were dumping waste water illegally around Dubai to avoid queues of up to 18 hours at the city’s only treatment plant.
The problem of illegal dumping was highlighted at the weekend when the beach next to the Dubai Offshore Sailing Club was closed because of sewage contamination. Dubai Municipality warned bathers not to use the beach for health reasons and promised swift action against the offending sewage operators.
However, tanker drivers told The National the problem would continue until the capacity of Al Aweer treatment plant was raised.
“It’s a nightmare for us doing this job. No one can blame a driver for getting frustrated and dumping the waste illegally,” said Omar Khan, who had spent 10 hours at the plant yesterday queuing to discharge his load.
The treatment plant sees nearly 10,000 sewage tankers lining up to empty their waste each day. With just over 40 sewage discharge pumps, drivers say they have to wait between 10 to 18 hours to dispose of one load.
“The line is getting longer with each passing day,” said Ayaz Mohammed, another driver. “The stations operate 24 hours a day but it is still not sufficient to meet the demand of the city.”
The drivers collect sewage water from labour camps in Sonapur, Al Quoz, Jebel Ali, Al Rashidiya and also from other locations in the city.
Desperate to empty their tankers, the drivers sometimes try to overtake each other as they 
jockey for position in line. This can lead to street fights and even serious accidents.
“These big truck try to overtake each other and in the process hit each other and have often almost run over people,” said another driver. Traffic fines of Dh500 (US$136) to Dh1,000 have not stopped them recklessly racing up to the plant. “It’s a dangerous place to be at night as people just violate rules to get to the stations,” he said.
Drivers said that those queuing up at night often got so tired of waiting they simply disposed of the waste at the side of the road and left.
“In the night, many just open the taps and let the waste flow on the road or the parking areas. This is why there is a strong stench in this area all the time,” a driver said…SOURCE
Traveling through the area tonight, the stench was so bad (in a sealed, air-conditioned car with environmental filtering) that I nearly vomited. Not ewww it smells, but the smell that signals totally losing your lunch.
God bless the owners of the resort. I feel for them. I have only one thing to offer our readers, caveat emptor.
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Posted 1 year, 8 months ago at 10:16 pm. View Comments
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Driving from the airport, as we pass skyscrapers growing from the sand, huge hoardings depicting Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed, and his two sons, a stream of limousines and SUVs and swarms of migrant workers toiling in the heat, we muse on how nothing about this man-made citadel of commercialism feels quite real. Truth and fantasy in Dubai, I find, often merge.
“Here is New Dubai,” our guide had said on my previous visit, as he showed us round the Burj al Arab. The beauty of that landmark hotel’s billowing sail-shaped exterior was dramatically offset by the terrifying garishness of its Gaudí-meets-Goldfinger interior. “And here is Old Dubai.” We were now at Madinat Jumeirah, at the time still under construction as a hotel and souq-style shopping complex. “Old Dubai?” I asked, “but it’s brand new.” Our guide quickly dismissed this inconvenient fact: “It is built in the Old Arabian style. It is Old Dubai.”
Madinat Jumeirah is a reconstruction, but the Dhow Wharfage on Dubai Creek, and adjoining Bastakia, with its wind-tower houses, tiny alleys and Arabic restaurants, is not. Here I lingered, where hundreds of colourful, wooden dhows still load and unload their cargo, presenting an incongruous and moving sight in the middle of the gleaming glass-and-metal city.
There are many dazzling destination hotels from which to choose. But if, like me, you prefer low-key hideaways to showy resorts with glitter-ball camel sculptures and 24-hour access to sushi, there has been, until now, a dearth. I’ve returned to investigate Dubai’s new boutique hotel, Desert Palm, and private guesthouse, La Maison d’Hôtes, each with a mere two dozen or so bedrooms. And because I’m as intrigued as everyone else, I’ve also booked to stay at Dubai’s latest phenomenon, Atlantis, The Palm, Sol Kerzner’s 1,539-room, £950 million resort on the man-made island of Palm Jumeirah.
At first sight, Desert Palm, which opened in March, is puzzling. Heading toward the desert, we turn off the highway and enter a gated villa complex, with high, blank walls and leafy avenues. Once past its discreet entrance, the hotel reveals its charms: with just 24 rooms but the amenities of a far bigger establishment, it’s as close as you’ll come in Dubai to a hideaway resort.
It has Dubai-style roots. The estate belongs to Ali Albwardy, the leading patron of polo in the region, and the low-rise hotel overlooks one of the four startlingly green, constantly watered polo fields where you can watch chukkas being played in the cooler months. The city makes a stunning backdrop, with the Burj al Arab plumb in the centre.
Sister hotel to Huvafen Fushi in the Maldives, Desert Palm’s design is modern colonial, with a beautifully coloured all-day bistro and deli overlooking a long and languorous stretch of infinity pool; a restaurant specialising in grilled beef and well-priced wines; and an expansive, deeply spoiling spa called Lime. Bedrooms are either in the hotel, with fine views, or in adjoining villas with their own pools. There’s a real sense of peace here, compared to other Dubai hotels, and we are upgraded to one of these.
We spend the next two days collapsed in blissful wicker “eggs” by one or other of the pools at our disposal, or on equally soothing beanbags floating on the water. Pretend that the constant hum of traffic is the distant breaking of waves on a golden shore, and we could be somewhere seriously dreamy.
But we’re not. On day three we penetrate the city for the first time. Mile upon mile of shopping malls, housing developments and roadworks give way to “The Strip”, the skyscraper-packed stretch of Sheikh Zayed Road that encapsulates Dubai’s meteoric rise…
Our final stop is Atlantis, The Palm, reached by a tunnel under the sea or (soon) by monorail for foot passengers. Desert Palm and Maison d’Hôtes seem a world away. Am I a guest in a hotel? Or an extra in a Hollywood blockbuster?
In creating Atlantis, with its undersea theme, including a colossal aquarium that recreates a lagoon amid replica ruins of the Lost City of Atlantis, hotel and property magnate Sol Kerzner had one avowed intention, the same one as producers of blockbusters: to “blow people away”.
And he does. Atlantis, the ultimate fantasy hotel, delivers by the bucketload. Actually, this production is Atlantis 2, the even more thrilling sequel to the first Atlantis, in the Bahamas. Love it or loathe it, one can only marvel at the high standards throughout this dusty pink, crustacea-encrusted pleasure palace on Palm Jumeirah Island, from the quality of the marine-themed decorative finish and the excellence of the food in the 17 restaurants (Nobu and self-service Saffron stand out) to the attentiveness of the 3,500 staff and the serenity of the spa.
The explosive, gaudy kitsch of Dale Chihuly’s writhing glass sculpture in the pillared lobby is a little much, even here, but mercifully things do calm down. The Ambassador Lagoon is mesmerising, and the spacious bedrooms are devoid of Dubai excess and very well executed. The many encircling salt and freshwater pools and terraces, plus state-of-the-art children’s clubs, the water adventure park Aquaventure and the Lost Chambers are free to guests, while for an extra fee they can swim with dolphins in Dolphin Bay.
The Lost Chambers? Follow the signs from the lobby and you’ll find them, and another guide, just like at the one at Madinat Jumeirah, distorting reality. While building the hotel, she gravely tells us, the Lost City of Atlantis was by chance uncovered and these gloomy chambers “under the sea” are some of its remains. We find ourselves nodding appreciatively as she proudly shows us such priceless artefacts as the king’s throne and the soldiers’ armour, and points out a shoal of piranhas, visible through glass windows, swimming among the ruins.
Take the kids; ignore the view; lie low on Fridays and Saturdays when it gets horribly overcrowded. You won’t have a dull moment.
Old Dubai, New Dubai…what, though, is the Real Dubai? The answer is simple really: it’s whatever you want it to be…SOURCE
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