"I'm at Palm Jumeirah, nigga ask for me": Dubai, Persian Gulf, the new vacation hot spots?

Four years ago there was nothing here but unbroken sea. Now there's Palm Jumeirah; £1,000,000 luxury mansions - sitting on a palm-shaped, man-made island.

The first of Dubai's many ongoing mega-projects has literally changed the shape of the United Arab Emirates, re-contouring its coast with a new island mass that has altered sea currents and marred the once unbroken sea view from Dubai's natural beach.

The entire coastal development, led by Dubai government-owned Nakheel, includes 3 massive palm-shaped islands along with a cluster of 300 islets built in the shape of a world map. All are built mostly of bright sand dredged up from the seabed and quarried rock. I've always wondered what it would be like to work at a quarry.

{I'll take that yellow one}

Still under construction are the Palm Jumeirah's 32 hotels, monorail, water theme park, and the Trump International Hotel (of course) and residence tower. The developments are central to Dubai's property boom. Properties on the Palm Jumeirah, the first to be opened, have skyrocketed in value after being sold and resold before even being built.

The luxurious islands are part of a government plan to attract tourists to the Persian Gulf and lure foreign cash into the tax-free economy. Ummm, yeeeaaah about that Persian Gulf vacation...

Not all the residents of the Palm Jumeirah are mega-rich. One section serves as a labour camp for the thousands of construction workers who toil in the baking sun. They will gradually be moved out as the project nears completion in the next 3 to 4 years.

Here's an entire bloated article about this ish