Welcome to the UAE!

Where your passport will be stamped by a woman wrapped in black, constantly readjusting her veil. Where you drive out of the airport parking lot behind a Lamborghini. Where the Burj Dubai scrapes the sky at 2,559 ft, higher than any other building in the world (but reminds me of nothing so much as the Tower of Babel or perhaps Sauron's Barad Dur). Where having a child out of wedlock is a criminal offence punished by imprisonment and flogging.