Tags: travel

I've been to many places, but I've never be to Dubai. That's why I found this piece in the Independent a few years ago quite illuminating : The dark side of Dubai. It's a tale of a boom gone wrong, and respectable white middle-class women forced to sleep in Range-Rovers in the hotel car-park. There's also tales of maids being ill-kept and slavery in the Middle Eastern dream.

It's an interesting read by the journalist Johann Hari. But there's yet another problem in paradise.

It looks like Mr Hari "invented quotes" when he visited the Central African Republic to write an article for a charity. The article that mentions 'French soldiers telling a piteous story of how “children would bring us the severed heads of their parents and scream for help, but our orders were not to help them”. The article is : Inside France's secret war .

Problem is, that apparently didn't happen according to the translator : '“They did not say this. I know because I was there and I did the translating for them.”'. The Telegraph, quoting Private Eye.

Now, I haven't been to Dubai yet, but I think that I will be taking Mr Hari's impressions of it with more than a pinch of salt.