Dubai

Everyone assumes Dubai got rich from oil. It didn't. Oil makes up less than 1% of Dubai's economy today, and the city never had much of it to begin with.

What Dubai had was a creek and a good idea. In 1833, around 800 members of the Bani Yas tribe, led by Maktoum bin Butti, settled at the mouth of Dubai Creek and broke away from Abu Dhabi. They started the Al Maktoum family line that still rules the city today.

For decades, Dubai lived on fishing and pearl diving. Then in 1901, the ruler made a decision that changed everything: he scrapped all taxes on trade and invited foreign merchants to set up shop, handing them land and protection.

Traders poured in from Persia and India. Dubai became a free port, a place built on buying and selling rather than digging things out of the ground.

The pearl business crashed in the 1930s, wiped out by Japanese cultured pearls and the Great Depression. But Dubai's merchants pivoted to gold and re-export trade and kept the city alive.

Oil finally turned up offshore in 1966. Instead of simply banking the money, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum poured it into ports, an airport, and roads, betting that Dubai's future was trade and tourism, not crude.

In 1971, Dubai became a founding member of the United Arab Emirates. Over the next 40 years, it built one of the most jaw-dropping skylines on Earth.

Ride an abra, a small wooden water taxi, across Dubai Creek for about a dirham, then wander the glittering Gold Souk in Deira. Go up the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world at 828 meters, and look down on the whole city.

Walk out onto Palm Jumeirah, an artificial island shaped like a palm tree and built from reclaimed sand. Take a desert safari over the dunes at sunset.

Eat a shawarma wrap from a street stand, try spiced machboos rice, and finish with luqaimat, warm dough balls soaked in date syrup.