Chris Saul's Blog

Saturday January 24, 2009

Value returns?

When it came to eating out at 'decent' restaurants, Dubai never used to be cheap for us, but it did used to be good value.

That value all but disappeared over the last couple of years, with restaurants doubling their prices and charging frankly outrageous amounts for often mediocre food. Goodness knows who was eating there. We certainly weren't - however good a meal is, there's a limit to how much I'll enjoy it if I'm footing the bill. $100 for a small steak registers far too high on my value-for-money-ometer.

Things are changing though. Time Out is now full of special offers - dine before a certain time and get 50% off the bill, two for one deals, etc, etc. Most of these deals mean the price you pay for a meal goes down from ridiculous to simply expensive, but it's a step in the right direction. I predict prices dropping much lower over the coming months. With lots of well paid construction and real estate jobs having been lost, coupled with British tourists getting 5Dhs to the Pound instead of previous years' 7.3Dhs, bookings are going to be down this year.

Let's hope I'm still around to enjoy the return to normality!

Land Rover Experience Sand Driving

Land Rover have a nice video advertising their sand driving expeditions with Land Rover Experience. The video's taken in Oman, as far as I can work out.

Frankly I'm astonished that the Range Rover manages so well. Our sand driving in a (borrowed) Range Rover earlier this year was very disappointing. Smashing a Range Rover around in the dunes the way they do in the video must mean the car spends most of its life being repaired, as Range Rovers seem to fall to pieces at the first sight of a bump, in my unhappy experience.

Still, I'd love another chance to take someone else's Rangie out in the sand. Providing it managed more than ten minutes without breaking down, it'd be immense fun to race around in.