UAE Community Blog: Truely a hidden gem

26 February, 2008

Truely a hidden gem

I stumbled across this website a few days back and I thought that I should share it with you all.

http://www.dubaiasitusedtobe.com/

This is for all those people who truly understand the what we localexpats mean when we say Dubai is nothing like it used to be. It is by far one of the most nostalgic website I have ever come across.

13 comments:

Mita said...: Thank you - I will have a leisurely look through this site though I have only been here 20 years but I miss it too; 26 February, 2008 16:58
Seabee said...: I've been looking at that site for ages, they have a link to my old Dubai photos - sorry I didn't post about it as you've done to alert others to it. Well done :-)

They have some fabulous memories on the site.; 26 February, 2008 19:56
hemlock said...: awesome :)
thanx!; 26 February, 2008 21:29
Keef said...: Lovely site.; 26 February, 2008 21:49
Alexander said...: Top stuff, LocalExpat - a wonderful find and thanks for sharing it!; 26 February, 2008 21:57
samuraisam said...: Great website; I've seen some of these photos in books before.

I found this paragraph from the site particularly funny (considering salik etc):
"Sheikh Rashid financed Al Maktoum Bridge by charging a Toll for vehicles to cross the bridge. That charge only applied when crossing from Deira to Dubai. Travelling the other way was free. Toll Tickets were sold in shops. There was a small wooden Toll Booth located at the start of the bridge on Deira side. The Toll Collector usually stood outside the Toll Booth. As Drivers approached the Booth they held a ticket out of the Driver's window. They didn't slow down! They judged the best place to let go of their Toll Ticket so the wind took it somewhere near the Collector. The Toll Collector rarely bothered to collect the ticket. Just letting the ticket fly into the wind from the car or truck was enough to let the Collector know you had bought a ticket.

The area around the Toll Booth was always littered with Toll Tickets. Drivers knew when they were approaching the bridge. The landscape and road turned blue with the littered bridge toll tickets! If anyone looked closely at these tickets, they may have seen some "tickets" were just pieces of paper! Nevertheless by around 1973 Al Maktoum Bridge was paid for and traffic no longer had to pay a toll."; 26 February, 2008 23:52
Anonymous said...: Nice photos :)
Nostalgia! :); 27 February, 2008 00:29
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 27 February, 2008 00:55
Dubai Jazz said...: Great website.
Thank you for sharing LocalExpat.; 27 February, 2008 02:17
Kyle said...: Sorry, but this website is purely sentimental, and nostalgic hogwash.

It’s ideal for those that want to delve in the past and not look ahead.

Forward progress is what this place has made. An example of that is one’s ability to debate in real-time instead of a string and two cans.

If you want to address the current generation’s lack of ethics, greed, and ambition – all masked with a religious baloney – now that’s worth a debate. But dreaming of an infrastructure that was, that’s amateurishly sentimental and childish!; 28 February, 2008 22:38
Dubai Jazz said...: Kyle, there is another good aspect to this website beside nostalgia.
It shows how fast this place has developed you know….kind of 'before' and 'after' photography…
Besides, getting sentimental is not always bad.
Check out these photos, don't you find them interesting?

American lady in Saudi Arabia 1951.
British tourists in Cairo 1900.
Iraqis smoking shisha in Baghdad 1930.
The American consulate in Cairo 1903.
Jewish wedding in Aleppo (Syria) 1914.
Agatha Christie on the top of Ur of Chaldees (Iraq) 1928.; 29 February, 2008 14:10
BuJ said...: old site but lovely stuff :)

this isn't too old , but it's lovely really.. the sad thing is that once u develop a city u cannot undevelop it, and if u ignore it it looks rundown, but if u ignore nature it looks natural!

a price we have to pay.; 01 March, 2008 04:45
Anonymous said...: ya Allah..
how our city changed..
nice website; 01 March, 2008 21:30

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