Extended Stays in Dubai: How To Live Like A Local

Categories: Adventure Vacations, Dubai, Featured, Good To Know

Living Like A Local in Dubai: Essential Extended Stay Tips

Dubai’s bright skyline has wowed many millions of tourists to Dubai, but there is something really special about seeing the amazing city of Dubai not just as a tourist, but as a resident who is able to experience the vitality of a city in the moment. It doesn’t matter if you are relocating for work, seeking a digital nomadic experience, or just want a longer escape to the Arabian desert, experiencing Dubai (and realizing it is more than you imagined) requires understanding how to operate and orient yourself once you leave the hotel lobby. Here are our essential tips for living like a local in Dubai during your extended stay.

Dubai is an interesting contradiction, a city where historic Bedouin hospitality meets innovative tech and future thinking, a land with calls to prayer heard between skyscrapers, a place where more than 200 nationalities are intertwined to create a cosmopolitan environment not found anywhere else on the planet. Beyond the luxury malls and record breaking visitor attraction lies a genuine city with urban codes, rhythms, and secrets that only those who eventually make Dubai their home really come to know.

This guide is meant to vacate the guidebook clichés and help you understand the practical knowledge you will need to fully integrate into expat life in Dubai, from the unwritten social codes to your favorite nooks and crannies of your community to the harsh realities of desert life.

Understanding Dubai’s Neighborhood Personalities

Your neighborhood choice will greatly influence your overall Dubai experience as the neighborhoods and districts in Dubai have very unique attributes. For example, Dubai Marina is the place to be for young professionals and socializers because of the ultra-cool waterfront promenades and the high-rise lifestyle. Similarly, Jumeirah Beach Residence is another combination of a coastal lifestyle mixed with a metropolitan urban presence and amenities. All of this makes for a very dynamic atmosphere but does come with a premium on price and attraction to tourists.

If seeking authenticity with affordability, neighborhoods like Al Barsha and Motor City are quality places to live in Dubai and offer better value for money. These neighborhoods represent where Dubai’s people work—the engineers, teachers, and mid-level executives, all of whom are relevant to the day to day operations of the city. Here, there will be neighborhood cafes, more affordable supermarkets, and a lifestyle much more detached from conspicuous consumption.

Old Dubai neighborhoods like Deira and Bur Dubai bring a completely different experience altogether. These historical neighborhoods have conserved the trading traditions of the city and feature souks, dhows on the creek, and neighborhoods that have called Dubai home for generations, instead of just years. You will experience richer community-based cultural experiences, even if the amenities are a little less than cutting edge.

Be mindful of how far you commute each day. Traffic in Dubai can be unbearably slow, and that Instagram-friendly apartment with a commute to match loses its glamour when you’re stuck gridlocked for three hours. The closer you live to the Metro station, the better your quality of life will be. Just be cognizant of the fact that Sheikh Zayed Road, while the main road through the city, becomes a parking lot during rush hour.

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Mastering the Administrative Essentials in the UAE

The bureaucratic aspect to extended stays in Dubai requires patience and pre-planning. Your residency visa is the cornerstone to everything else, without this you cannot open bank accounts, sign tenancy contracts, or secure a local driving license, though employer sponsored visas is still the most common route to remain, freelancer permits and investor visas have also created opportunities for entrepreneurs or remote working.

Your Emirates ID card at this stage will be your most valuable document, needed to conduct most official transactions. Immediately apply for this once the residency visa is approved as it will take weeks to be processed. This biometric card will become your new identity for most transactions within the UAE and you will use it all the time, at banks, government offices or when picking up packages.

The ability to open a local bank account changes once your residency visa is issued and the UAE method of daily life will become a little simpler. International transfer of funds, utility payments and salary deposit can all be done through a UAE bank account. Most banks in the UAE require a few documents and the required document is a salary certificate and/or employment letter.

The basic account is a simple type of account that does not require proof of employment. Popular banks with large ATM networks importing with some English support are Emirates NBD, ADCB, and Mashreq. Having the convenience of driving in Dubai is liberating – but requires some adjustments. If you’re fortunate to have a license from one of the acceptable countries, you can simply exchange that license for a Dubai license.

If not, you’ll have to take the full driving license route; this entails taking a theory test, meeting the requirement for training hours and finally going for road practical. The entire process – depending on how many attempts you need – costs somewhere from 3,000 dirhams to 10,000 dirhams. Many residents opt exceptionally well to use Dubai’s surprisingly efficient Metro system, take a ride with Careem or Uber, or take a bus, as the bus system is slowly increasing in reliability, before committing to owning a car.

Navigating the Social Landscape in Dubai

In Dubai, a diverse social fabric combines countless cultural threads to create unwritten norms that long-term residents must learn to navigate. Those long-term residents act as cultural translators for many new residents, particularly around the Islamic influence on daily life, which exists in both subtle and obvious ways.

For example, while bikinis are perfectly acceptable while at the beach, in public spaces it is courteous to dress modestly; individuals should have respectively covered shoulders and knees when in malls, governmental offices, and traditional areas. During the month of Ramadan, it is illegal to eat, drink, or smoke in public during daylight hours, and violations of this law can lead to fines.

The weekend is Friday-Saturday with regular work and school on Sunday. This takes some getting used to, particularly if you want to maintain relationships with people in the world who have Sunday weekend. Your social plans for Friday will most likely not match up with your friends or family other than your spouse and children. And scheduling calls for work with people in different countries generally turns into an exercise in calendar Tetris.

The social scene in Dubai is built up through communities of interest instead of the more traditional bonds of community based on who lives nearby. In many cases people in Dubai form expat communities based on nationalities, hobbies, and professional approaches. Facebook groups and Meetup events are often the best points of entry, whether looking to find hiking buddies, book clubs, or a professional network.

Dubai rewards those willing to engage and form connections versus waiting for communities to organically develop or form. Tipping culture exists in the middle of the tipping scale. Growing numbers of restaurants add service charges, making the additional tip more of an optional choice.

For exemplary service, a tip of between 10-15% might be expected. Taxi drivers do not expect tipping. A nice round up is considered polite. Delivery drivers and building maintenance staff appreciate small tips, especially around the holidays.

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Cracking the Cost of Living Code in Dubai

There are elements of truth and fiction regarding the expense of living in Dubai. Certainly, luxury items can be exorbitant, but everyday living expenses can be quite shocking in their reason; if you know where to look. Housing represents the bulk of any budget, often taking up 30-40% of one’s income.

Generally, landlords require yearly rent payments in one of two forms: either in one check or in four post-dated checks (one check for every quarter). This can require massive amounts of capital paid up front, as you should plan on the first year being the first payment plus a security deposit plus agency fees, which amounts to somewhere between 30,000-60,000 dirhams before you even purchase a single detail of furniture.

Negotiating is customary for all aspects of life; never accept the first rent number offered, especially when renewing leases. Grocery costs vary enormously based on buying patterns and preferences. Different chains will charge varying amounts for similar items, and while chains, like Spinneys and Waitrose, typically charge premium prices for imported goods, chains like Carrefour and Lulu provide far better value.

The Friday markets in both Deira and Karama, for example, can sell fresh fruits and veggies at an even fraction of the prices in the malls. Restaurant and cafe costs can vary significantly depending on eating habits and location. Most of the time, they can run anywhere from a meal of shawarma for 15 dirhams to a fine dining experience for over 500 dirham. While it can be one of the most affordable major cities in the world for cheap eats, there are also luxurious culinary experiences available without limit.

Utilities continue to be reasonably priced and subsidized by the government, budgets will average 500-1000 dirhams a month for utilities in a typical apartment, which costs will rise significantly during the summer months while air conditioning runs round-the-clock. Beginning in 2014, mobile and internet costs have significantly decreased as Etisalat and du have begun competing against one another.

One reason many new visitors leave thinking they will have more disposable income than they really will have is the notion of no income tax. Remember that “gross” is just an initial quote to note they are not subject to withholding, but while there is no withholding for health & pension, you are not contributing to anything for state pensions or public medical benefits.

Private health insurance is required for residency, and would range anywhere from 5,000 – 15,000 annually depending on the coverage. Shipping money back to family, visiting family members, and retirement savings will require diligent planning as you have to take more action to set the money aside, as opposed to many other countries that deduct your contribution automatically.

Building Your Local Dubai Knowledge Arsenal

Living like a local is about discovering Dubai that no tourist sees. The majority of Dubai’s best food, which is often talked about in hushed tones as worthy of your time and money, can be found in the back streets of Karama, and in aging buildings of Satwa, Pakistani restaurants with the best biryani, Filipino cafeteria-like establishments serving neighborhood comfort foods, and Ethiopian names with huge platters of sharing food from injera to create instant community.

Timing and experience is maybe the biggest factor. In summer, Dubai is transformed into a furnace when temperatures, especially in July-August, exceed 45 degrees celsius daily, where locals acclimatized to this by passing between two air-conditioned places, shifting outdoor activities to the early morning or late evening, and living with a slower pace.

Many residents simply escape Dubai altogether to take full advantage of holiday allowances during the hottest months. November-March is the sweet spot, where the weather is as perfect as it gets, and outdoor lifestyle choices can go on indefinitely. Desert camping, beach time, outdoor concerts, and outdoor dining, all have huge appeal during this time.

This is when Dubai shines, with all parks filled to the brim with countless families in the evenings, weekend brunches stretching for hours, and a livable city rather than just surviving. Shopping is so much broader than just the well-known malls. The Friday Market in Ras Al Khor is a secondhand market with a mix of furniture and electronics. Dragon Mart has a selection of Chinese goods at a wholesale price.

For those who like the look of high-end fashion but don’t have or want to pay the price, there are shops in Karama that have convincing “inspired by” clothing. Facebook Marketplace and Dubizzle offers a constant flow of goods in a temporary city, and helps make getting stuff into and out of apartments fairly easy.

If you know about cultural events, this will help keep your calendar full. The Dubai Shopping Festival, although very commercial, is genuinely entertaining with fireworks! The art event, Art Dubai, showcases local talent. In February, the Food Festival highlights the city’s many different cuisines. Ramadan evenings have special programming, and iftar meals are typically included to break the day’s fast.

Conclusion: Embracing the Extended Stay Mindset

Maybe the most significant piece of advice relates less to practicality and more to mindset: come to Dubai with an open mind rather than a judgmental one. This city invites lodgement, over its inequality, its being perceived to be wasteful, its seeming superficiality. Yes, the accusations are true, but in each case these critiques mask the genuine warmth, ambition and sense of possibility that Dubai offers.

The excitement of Dubai is predicated on the fact that people from all corners of the world bring something with them, and they honour the something other people bring! To live as a local means subscribing to that shared experience, learning Arabic words and phrases, doing some education about Islamic holidays, understanding a South Asian celebration, honouring the Emirati culture that builds the basis for everything else.

More than anything else, Dubai requires a different kind of thinking. The systems that appear to be inefficient, have their own logic. The cultural practices that disrupt your day-to-day operations have a context that ultimately renders them understandable. Frustrating at times, that gives way to endless change, that affords endless renewal, that affords endless possibilities.

A long enough stay will uncover the underlying fact of Dubai, it’s not the tallest building or the largest mall. Those monuments to consumption are only a wrapper of sorts for the real thing. The real deal in Dubai is a possibility, a possibility to live internationally, a possibility to build some kind of big deal, a possibility to remake the self in terms of all the constraints you are leaving behind.

Living like a local in Dubai means realizing that almost everyone in the emirate is from elsewhere – that “local” is a sliding scale – and the way the emirate “works” is also contingent on that people will always, always be arriving and leaving – that the magic of Dubai is in permanent impermanence. Get to know the practical details, sure, but welcome the deeper adventure of creating your own Dubai story, making this endlessly interesting urban laboratory in the desert part of your deep history.

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