February 2019: Dubai Planning – Logistics

After doing a ton of research online, the overwhelming opinion seems to be to use taxis to get around the city. I’m normally not a big fan of taxis, but everyone says they are plentiful, clean, safe and inexpensive. They also (mostly) accept credit cards for payment vastly minimizing the headache of having to carry enough local currency. We’re going to use that for the majority of our time in the city.

There is a public transit system, but it isn’t all that extensive and the cost for the four of us looks to be the same cost as a taxi in many route estimates I looked up. It’s close to the hotel and may work in some situations but it won’t be the focus of our trip.

Hotel Transfer

After the first 5 nights we’d be transferring to the desert resort which was about 90 minutes away according to Google Maps. That’s a long taxi ride for sure and I wasn’t sure that was the best way to get to that hotel.

Contacting the desert resort they offered a private ride which would cost $175-200 which I was hesitant to agree to. Hotels aren’t usually a source of great deals on these types of things. I decided to hold off until we got to Dubai to figure things out. Maybe the hotel we were staying in first would have a better solution. Worst case I could always contact the resort before the end of our first 5 days to book that ride.

Cell Phones

I have a SIM card I purchased for trips we made to Europe which worked great for us. The cards were for prepaid data and the data doesn’t expire so we could use the SIM card for multiple trips. That card works in over a hundred countries around the world, but unfortunately doesn’t work in the UAE so I’d have to find an alternative.

There are two major cell phone providers and they each have plans tailored for visitors. These plans usually last for 7 days before the expire. We were going for 10 days and unfortunately you could only refill/reactivate them at the airport so that was a non-starter. It was also unclear how easy it was going to be to get the SIM card and activate it based on their websites.

In the UAE it’s required that you provide your passport details to register a SIM so they can’t send you the SIM in the mail before you arrive. You need to get it and activate it in person. Of all the plans I found, they were often very similar in price but I settled on one that was listed under Klook.com.

That website is focused on offering tours and “experiences” but for whatever reason has a listing for a UAE SIM card that offered 1.5GB of data over 15 days for a reasonable price. The website had detailed and easy to follow directions on where to get the SIM card and activate it at a specified shop in the arrivals hall at the airport. The reviews were generally excellent and the ease and confidence of those directions is what sold me on this. I wouldn’t have to “think” after getting off a long overnight flight. I ended up getting two SIM cards, one for each of the ones we use for travel.

After purchase I printed out the voucher they emailed me just to have a hard copy in case I couldn’t connect to WiFi in the airport when we landed. Better to be safe than sorry with that. While I would have liked to be able to use my existing “worldwide” SIM card or at least gotten the new one shipped to me, this seemed like the best option available.

Overall, going into this trip we didn’t have a lot of things specifically planned. We didn’t know how the time difference (9 hours ahead of Boston) or the long flight (12 hour flight arriving in the evening local time the next day) was going to affect us so we wanted to keep our options open, especially during the first few days. Other than that we were prepared!