SPEAKERS boom in the darkly lit, smoky room. It’s 2 am and the club is packed with a sea of sweaty, gay men getting their groove on to a Madonna classic — and I’m one of them.
After an all-day drinking session, followed by a spot of impromptu karaoke, during which I made friends with a lovely lesbian couple (we bonded over our love of ‘80s power ballads) I’ve ended up at this underground hotspot. Nothing strange here you might think, I mean, there are gay clubs the world over, right? But what makes this unusual is that I’m not in the relatively liberal West; I’m in Dubai.
A province of the United Arab Emirates governed by a dictatorial royal family and a tourism hotspot attracting the gaze of the world thanks to its constant sunshine and headline-grabbing world’s “biggest” and “tallest” buildings, shopping malls and man-made islands. Like Las Vegas, Dubai was built in a desert from nothing and like Vegas, Dubai (in the Arab world anyway) is known as sin city.
By Paul Ewart – Full Story at news.au.com
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