Our first impressions of Abu Dhabi after living here for a month

It's almost been a month since we arrived in Abu Dhabi. Of course that's still not too long, but long enough to get a feel of the place and some first impressions. So far we're enjoying life here very much, the constant beach weather and the fact that everyone is so friendly is amazing! We're finding our way around the city, discovering new things every weekend.

Here we've put together a list of some weird and interesting things we've seen and experienced here, hope you enjoy reading through it!

• Taxi, taxi, taxi… you’ll never walk anywhere, if you need to go somewhere, you’ll be in a car. There are very few walkways, and the distances are too big, the weather too hot so people drive all the time. We don’t have a car yet, so we’re taking taxis everywhere, which is ok because they are quite cheap and very easy to find. A weird side note on this: taxis are cheaper than Uber. Have you ever seen that anywhere else?

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• The feeling of living in a hotel. Here in Ab Dhabi you’ll either live in a villa, or a (probably quite newly built) apartment building, and the design of those is very hotel-style. All the apartment buildings have a gym, an infinity swimming pool and some of them (like ours) a private beach area.

Our beach:

The bathrooms look like in a hotel and most apartments have big, whole wall windows.

Our bathroom:

• People staring at you (this only applies to women). The locals usually don’t, but there are many-many Asians and those will look at western women quite intently. A word of advice: don’t stare back and wear clothes that cover your shoulders and knees, they might stare less intently.

Me dressed semi-decently:

• Not having to lock your apartment, your car, being able to leave your purse in the shopping trolley while you do your shopping, leave your phone on the sunbed while you go off into the sea… here’s one of the safest places on Earth. At the beginning I felt weird not having to lock the door, but now I’m starting to forget I’ve ever had to do that. Leave your wallet in the taxi, and the driver will come running after you to give it back. People here just don’t steal. We heard you can walk on the streets alone at night without fear, nothing will happen.

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• People calling you ‘Madame’ (Sir for men). We had this before in the Philippines where all the locals call you Madame and Sir. The same thing happens here, people who provide any type of service will call you that. Weird, and we don’t really know what to call them back (madame, sir??) but we’re getting used to it now.

Some of the skyscrapers here:

• Someone doing your dishes and cleaning your apartment. Not all the places have that, but some serviced apartments will have a cleaner come in every day to clean. We have a shy guy called Ravi who cleans every day.

• No alcohol. If you’re going out to a restaurant, be prepared not to have a glass of wine with your dinner. Can you imagine an Italian restaurant without wine? It’s like McDonald’s without burgers! But they do it here and it seems to be working… There are bars and clubs where they serve alcohol, but there isn’t an awful lot of them. They don’t sell alcohol at regular supermarkets either, you need to go to a special (concealed) alcohol shop. There are maybe two of those in Abu Dhabi.

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• Pork is expensive. For us it doesn’t matter, because we don’t like pork anyway, except for the occasional salami or sausage. So if you like those or some bacon for breakfast, you’ll need to pay the price.

A Non-Muslim section of a shop:

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• Construction sites everywhere! Abu Dhabi is like a big building site. There are constructions everywhere you look. New apartment buildings, shopping centres are being sprung up almost overnight. Due to this there are so many roadworks, roads are closed down randomly and new ones built. Don’t expect to go to work the same way tomorrow, as the road might not be there anymore.

The view from our window:

• 6 day working week. I think it’s just part of the culture here that most people work 6 days out of 7. Even if you work in an office, and you think you’ll be working 5 days a week, there will be weeks when you have to go in on Saturday because someone else is working and they need your help. If you make friends, you’ll probably only see them once a -week (if you’re lucky) because the rest of the days they’ll be working.

• The weekend here is Friday and Saturday, Friday being a day off for (almost) everyone, they way Sunday is a day off in other parts of the world. So if you think about it really, in the UAE Thursday is Friday and Friday is Sunday. It’s difficult to get used to it and we have to keep looking at our phone’s calendar to see what day it is, but the week does go quicker, your last working day being Thursday.

• Airplanes flying right over your head. Ok, you won’t have this everywhere you stay in Abu Dhabi, but our apartment is right at the airport runway and for some reason most planes leave from 2 to 3am here! So earplugs all the way…
  In truth, you won’t escape the noise staying in most areas of Abu Dhabi, constructions are going on constantly and traffic is also non-stop.

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• Over-employment. Labour is so cheap here that residential buildings employ people just to circle around in the parking lots on their bikes all day to make sure everything is ok. At shopping centres there are people whose job is to help you find a free parking spot, other employees will pack your bags for you at the till. IT companies have waiting staff who will keep serving you with coffee and soft drink all day when you're working. We found this very strange and have never seen this before anywhere else.