Don’t go to Dubai for business or vacation. Or the rest of the United Arab Emirates, for that matter. In fact, you’d be much safer avoiding even a layover or connecting flight there.
Why, you ask? You might be expecting me to give some answer related to terrorism or Islamism, but you’d be wrong. No, I recommend not going there because you can be arrested on the slightest and flimsiest of pretexts.
If you so much as step foot in the Dubai airport and walk around while awaiting your connecting flight’s departure, you could be arrested and sent to jail for a minimum of four years simply for having health supplement like melatonin (used for jet lag), which is even sold legally over the counter in Dubai and the US, or for having a few poppy seeds left over from a bread roll stuck to your clothing, or for having unknowingly stepped on a little bit of pot someone left on the ground, leaving a microscopic trace element lighter than a grain of sugar on the sole of your shoe. No, seriously. I’m not kidding. Check it out.
Geoffrey is an Aristotelian-Libertarian political philosopher, writer, editor, and web designer. He is the founder of the