Dubai Forums Dubai Expat Forums Dubai Expat Help Forum

I have accepted an offer to relocate to Dubai, and it would be really helpful if you guys can list out some of the things you wished you had brought with you, which are not available or difficult to obtain in Dubai.

Thanks heaps.

use the search function people

http://www.dubaiforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=5714

Should you need further clarifications after reading the thread linked by MaaD feel free to do so.

Most of that other thread covered process stuff. In terms of material things, well I just moved here and here's my thoughts:

1) If you own a house and especially if you have children then I would say ship your furniture/ belongings over. Although it's quite cheap to furnish a house here, when you add in things like TVs, computers, plus any kids toys etc. you're definitely worth shipping. Added to this, despite me thinking many places came furnished here, pretty much everything I looked at (mostly villas) was unfurnished and those that were furnished were done so terribly. My short experience so far is that the landlords simply couldn't care less over here, they take your money and do nothing for it.

2) If you wear a suit to work and are coming from the EU, buy them in them at home and not here! Despite having every shop you can imagine here, they're not always cheap and I couldn't find any half decent suits for a decent price. I ended up going to M&S here and paying more than 20% on what the UK price is. You can get them made here quite cheaply, but speaking to people at work they say the quality can be really patchy.

3) You'll no doubt have read, but bring booze with you if you drink. Just buy 4 litres at the airport when you get here. You can get a license to buy booze later on when you get your residents visa, but that may take a while so you need some stocks. Friends have been able to get drink without a license from shops but only a couple of times before they stop serving. I hear in Abu Dhabi it's very easy to get without a license though, despite it having much stricter controls generally.

4) Pretty much everything else you can get here (including pork products) so no need to try and smuggle and food in.

Depending on where you are coming from certain types of over-the-counter medicine that you might be used to would be unavailable. For example, I like to use "NyQuil" (or something similar) when I come down with a cold, but you can't find that here. The pharamcies only sell stuff like "Panadol," which I don't like. Perhaps they don't sell NyQuil, etc. here because it does contain some alcohol. Yet, for me that works better than Panadol.

Another thing would be if you have a printer and/or fax machine, then stock up on some ink cartridges, fax film, etc. It can sometimes be very hard to find exactly what you need for something like that despite all the many shopping malls here. Strange.