The first thing I noticed in Dubai wasn't the skyline.
It was a bus.
May 2024, rush hour, somewhere along Sheikh Zayed Road. I'm in an air-conditioned Uber watching the city slide by.
And then this bus pulls up next to us. Old. Obviously old. Packed with workers - laborers, day workers, the people who actually build this place.
It was scathingly hot. Dubai in May is brutal. That bus didn't have AC. Or if it did, it wasn't on.
The windows were open. The men inside looked crushed. Exhausted. Most of them were sleeping, heads tilted at uncomfortable angles, bodies squeezed into seats designed for smaller people.
We sat at the same light for maybe thirty seconds. Then the bus pulled away and disappeared into traffic.
That image stayed with me. It still represents Dubai more honestly than anything else I've seen there. Not the Burj Khalifa. Not the Palm. Not the mall with a ski slope inside.
That bus.
Two Dubais
Dubai is sold differently depending on where you're from.
I grew up in China for the first 18 years of my life. Then I moved to Canada and spent the next decade there. I've seen how the East talks about Dubai and how the West talks about Dubai. They're describing two different cities.
From the developing world - South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, parts of the Middle East - Dubai is the place to "make it."
The salaries are higher than back home. The currency is stable. You can send money to your family. You can build something. It's not easy, but it's possible. That's the pitch.
These are the people on the bus.
I did not know the visa, insurance or benefit arrangements of the workers I saw. Dubai law requires employers to enroll employees in health insurance; observing a difficult commute does not establish that those workers had no coverage.
The bus made me think about how vulnerable workers can be when a job or their health changes. I had not investigated the individual protections or remedies available to those men.
A visit or tourist visa does not authorize work in the UAE, whether paid or unpaid. Working requires the appropriate authorization; my earlier claim that visitors could simply work was wrong.
Editorial update, October 11, 2026: Primary boundaries: the UAE government's work-authorization guidance and Dubai's health-insurance law. The May 2024 bus scene remains a travel observation, not an investigation of those workers' legal or insurance status.
From the West - North America, Europe, Australia - Dubai is sold as a tax haven.
The pitch emphasizes the absence of a general personal income tax and free-zone companies. That is not a promise that a business costs $10,000 annually or lets every owner keep all income: corporate tax, qualifying-income rules, fees and other tax jurisdictions can matter.
A place to park money, buy real estate, live well for less. The pitch isn't "come here to grind." It's "come here to keep what you've already made."
These are the people in the hotels.
Same city. Completely different experiences. Both are real.
What I actually saw
I've been to Dubai three times now. May 2024, again for the Qatar Economic Forum in May 2025, and a few shorter stops in between.
The diversity surprised me.
My first Uber driver was from Iraq. The cab driver after that was from Ethiopia. Over a few days I met people from a dozen different countries - South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa. More origin stories in one week than I'd heard in years living in Toronto.
Toronto calls itself diverse, and it is. But Dubai is diverse in a different way. It's not diversity as identity - it's diversity as labor market. People come from everywhere because the work is here. Not because they chose Dubai. Because Dubai is where the opportunity landed.
You don't see many Emiratis in Dubai itself. The local population is small. The city runs on expats. That's the word everyone uses. Expat. Not immigrant. The distinction matters. Immigrants stay. Expats are temporary, even if "temporary" stretches into decades.
There's something honest about that framing. No one pretends you belong. You're here to work. When the work ends, you leave.
The surprise
I expected Dubai to be restrictive. Conservative. The Middle East I'd imagined from Western media.
It wasn't.
I saw alcohol served at bars, Western brands in malls and pork on some hotel menus. Those observations did not establish permission for every public behavior or relationship. Seeing two men hold hands is not evidence that same-sex relationships are legally protected or risk-free.
Editorial update, October 11, 2026: Canada's UAE travel advice describes legal risks around public affection and same-sex relationships. My feeling safe on a particular walk does not establish general safety or override those rules.
It's not Saudi Arabia. It's not Qatar. It's something else entirely - a city that decided to be whatever it needed to be to attract money.
This flexibility exists because commerce is prioritized, not because the society is liberal in the Western sense.
Commerce seemed central to the places I visited. That is my impression, not a rule that money overrides law or guarantees permission.
That flexibility is impressive and a little unsettling. Dubai doesn't have a fixed identity. It has a value proposition. Come here, do business, spend money, don't cause problems.
I walked through the old town one evening - the part of Dubai that existed before the skyscrapers. Narrow streets, small shops, the smell of spices and shisha. Felt completely safe. Families out walking. Kids running around. Workers closing up their stalls for the night.
That Dubai felt more real than the Marina.
The money question
Here's my honest take: Dubai is a great place to spend money. I'm not sure it's a great place to make it.
If you already have income - from a business, from investments, from somewhere else - Dubai is excellent. The lifestyle per dollar is high. The infrastructure is world-class.
The weather is brutal for half the year but the rest is pleasant enough. You can live very well there for less than you'd spend in New York or London or even Toronto.
But making money in Dubai? That's harder than people think.
The competition is intense. You're not just competing with locals - you're competing with hustlers from every developing country who came specifically to work. People who are hungry in a way that's hard to match if you grew up comfortable. And they know the local culture, the local networks, the way things actually work there. I don't.
I can make money in the US. I can make money in Canada. I understand the markets, the customers, the systems. Dubai would be starting from scratch.
My conclusion after three trips: Dubai is a place to deploy capital, not generate it. At least for me. Other people might have a different experience. But I'd rather build in North America and spend in the Gulf than try to do both in the same place.
Who it's actually for
So who is Dubai for? Based on what I've seen:
It's for people with location-independent income.
Location-independent income is one reason someone might consider Dubai. It does not by itself settle work authorization, tax residence, insurance or whether the move fits their life.
The time zone and flight connections appealed to me. The claim that zero income tax means keeping everything was too broad; corporate and cross-border obligations still need to be established for the actual arrangement.
Editorial update, October 11, 2026: The UAE Federal Tax Authority distinguishes employment and investment income from business activity and explains when natural persons can be subject to corporate tax. Free-zone status is not a blanket exemption for every kind of income. This travel account supplies no personal tax-residence determination.
It's for people optimizing for lifestyle, not career.
If you're still building, still grinding, still trying to figure out product-market fit - Dubai is probably a distraction.
For someone with a working business, that lifestyle may be attractive. I cannot promise that a move delivers the same result for another person.
It's for people comfortable being permanent outsiders.
A residence or work visa is different from citizenship, and conditions can change. My visits do not establish who can acquire citizenship or what permanent security another person would have.
It's not for people escaping problems.
I've met founders who moved to Dubai because things weren't working back home. They thought a new city would fix it. It didn't. They just had the same problems in a more expensive apartment.
A move can change the surroundings without resolving an existing business problem. That is what I took from those conversations, not a law that winning or struggling must be amplified.
Where it fits for me
I think about the world in terms of geographic arbitrage. Not living in one place - living across a portfolio of places, each one serving a different purpose.
Toronto is my base. It's where I have roots, relationships, history. It's where I built my companies. I'm not leaving.
The US is where the money is. Most of my customers are American. Most of my opportunities come from there. I need access even if I don't live there.
The Gulf states are the third node. Not because I need to be there. Because optionality matters.
If I set up a company in the UAE, I'd probably choose Abu Dhabi over Dubai.
The ADGM - Abu Dhabi Global Market - is cleaner, quieter, less chaotic.
Dubai's DIFC is more famous but feels more crowded, more competitive for attention.
The real difference is who you meet. In Dubai, it's influencers and crypto guys and people launching things. In Abu Dhabi, it's sovereign wealth funds and institutional money and people who don't need to talk about what they're doing.
That's the energy I'd rather be around.
I don't need Dubai right now. But I like knowing it's there.
I like having the option. If things change in Canada, if policy shifts, if I want to restructure how I hold assets - the Gulf is a viable alternative. That's worth something even if I never use it.
The bus again
I think about that bus sometimes.
I could not know how those men described their choices or circumstances from the bus window.
I was thinking about workers supporting families elsewhere. I had not asked those men about their families or what brought them to Dubai.
My way of evaluating Dubai tells me little about whether the city works for the men I saw on that bus.
I was evaluating another visit because I could. The scene made me think about people who have fewer practical choices than I do.
That was the divide I was sitting with: how differently a place can look when you have the luxury of evaluating it as an option. I cannot reduce everyone's experience to two groups.
I have the luxury of choice. I try not to forget that.