OUCH: St. Regis, W, And Westin Dubai All Leaving Starwood

Connect via Dubai, Delhi or Mumbai. Delhi would be most convenient since the Dubai to Chandigarh leg would be a long flight in a sub par LCC (Indigo).

@ Vineet Chandigarh was one of the greatest projects of legendary architect Le Corbusier. Do a Google image search for “Chandigarh corbusier” and you’ll see what’s to see! How would you travel there?

@Drew Haha, I find those Central Asian capitals dreadful, you'll love Dubai then. The Caucasian capitals of Tbilisi and Baku are also nicer than the Central Asian one's (kind of like an exact average between the Central Asian ex-Soviet republics and the Eastern European ones). Only my opinion. They also get more liberal moving East to West (less dictatorial). @The nice Paul Chandigarh?? Chandigarh?? You can't drop something like that and not expect to explain yourself :P I went for a wedding, asked the guide assigned for a tour, he's like umm...there's not much...we have rock park (he was local). Perth is known to be friendlier and more laid back, perhaps they were implying you'd get bored sooner. Did you prefer it to Melbourne? There's a whole subset of Abu Dhabi over Dubai sort of people locally, that I truly don't understand (Abu Dhabi is more expensive too, despite being a much smaller subset). There is literally nothing in Abu Dhabi you can't find in Dubai (including peace and quiet or green leafy suburban housing). I've had airline employees swear to me they were happier in Qatar (Doha, there is only one 'city') but when prodded why, they said they saved more relative to Dubai and Abu Dhabi and spent less.........because there was so little to do and they consequently went out fewer times. Not sure if that reasoning for being happier was sound :P You might enjoy Muscat, some people say it has more soul (and Oman in general definitely has more natural beauty). In reality, Dubai subjectively has more of everything, including soul (if soul can be defined by a vibrant arts and culture scene, or a 'buzz'/'vibe' around the city) but its eclipsed in Dubai whereas Muscat has no skyscrapers, no concrete jungle feel, so I guess people notice it more. It is also much more local (and hence 'authentic' feeling) since they are aggressively getting rid of expats to free up jobs. Dubai feels more like a melting pot, there are locations that feel like downtown Sydney, some like any western suburb, some parts like South Asia and then some local parts, but you never have local residents living in older mud homes like in some other neighboring countries. To experience anything close to that, you have to goto Al Ain or some other city (which is mostly local).

@ Drew You're a brave man: Sao Paulo is one of my least favourite cities in Latin America, though I'm sure it has lots of merits (it's just that I've always found them to be very successfully hidden). I am with you that some "constructed modern cities" are intriguing and enjoyable: I spent a happy week in Brasilia, exploring more Niemeyer than I could ever hope to find everywhere else, while staying in the blissfully peaceful Brasilia Palace Hotel - the first building he designed and built there, to provide VIP accommodation for visitors to the construction site of the new capital. Chandigarh has long been on my list of places I *really* want to visit, though it's a bugger to get to and I have not yet had the opportunity. @ Vineet I just spent 10 days working in Australia: Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, in that order. The only thing that both my Sydney and Melbourne colleagues could agree on was how dreadful Perth was - whereas I found it to be utterly delightful. Diff'rent strokes, etc...

@Vineet Your last sentence above is the key point for me, in reverse. I have been to Europe dozens of times in various capacities (vacation, study, business) and while the cultural depth, diversity, and sophistication are undeniable, after a while it becomes somehow monontonous in spite of the ostensible "variety". OTOH I find "constructed" modern cities fascinating, not only because of their architectural ambition but because of how they present modernity outside of a Euro-Atlantic setting. To take a less-known place that strikes me (not having been to Dubai yet) as a mini-Dubai, I spent a very rewarding five days in Astana earlier this year. And in spite of everyone (well, everyone who'd been there, admittedly a small number) telling me that I would like Almaty more because it was more genteel, had more cafes, street life, etc., in fact I preferred Astana because it was so in-your-face, particularly given the somewhat lunar setting of the Kazakh steppe. But then, I may not be your typical tourist, of any nationality. I once walked along the side of a freeway in Sao Paulo (another city I love, though many do not, including many Brazilians I know) because Google maps misled me about pedestrian routes and I stubbornly refused to alter my course. The fact that I survived does not mean that I recommend this to anyone else :-)