SOCIAL LIFE of Expats in the Emirates

Once a new expat arrives at Dubai he always tries to join any beach club that offers an open membership. The benefit of being a beach club member is that they offer an immediate access to pools, hotel restaurants, night bars, or gyms. Second but just as important thing is that if expats plan to drink hard liquors or beers at home (if not at work) that may be even illegal for all expats are expected to buy and then renew a drinking license from the Emirates government every year. However, the alcohol license for consuming while on the hotel premises such as restaurant, bar, beach club is not required since the alcohol consumption is generally covered by the hotel license itself (sort of alcohol umbrella group insurance …)

There’s nothing like lying around the swimming pools with a bottle of ice-cold Heineken, or Corona in your tired hand when it’s hot in Dubai (and that’s really damn hot there in the Emirates any time from April through October). Well, if you’re an expat with a stable source of income and you’d like to socialise with your peers, then it’s easy: the cost of memberships to beach clubs in Dubai now about USD 10,000 per an expat family a year.

When western expats can’t afford buying their family alcohol permit, or beach club membership then they just go to their favourite hotel with a bar or restaurant that normally has such a license and meet each other there. The night-life in Dubai might be great with all these restrictions, options, and opportunities – all that expats need to know is how to legally bypass local customs and laws which are legion.

In Sharjah thngs are even worse – they do not sell alcohol licences there at all, so there you can’t drink in Sharjah not even when you join a hotel beach club. Honestly, if the Sharjah police catches you driving with a load of alcohol in your car (unopened) they treat you as a serious criminal, they may put you to jail, or even have your head chopped off. It’s just like when the State Patrol in the U.S. stops your car and find there marijuana, cocaine, other drugs, or unlicensed guns (intended for resale in New York. Pure business, you say. Sorry, says the State Trooper)

Any major supermarket in Dubai has a customer service stall or booth with a representative of government-licensed companies with the right to sell you an alcohol permit. However, not the alcohol itself. If you hate government abusing your rights to drink as a private British citizen or other Western expats then it’s possible buy alcohol without any license or permit somewhere in Northern Emirates but you have somehow bypass Sharjah in order not to be arrested for trafficking and/or smuggling of alcohol across the Sharjah Emirate. Possible if you hire your private Jet, helicopter, or a mini-submarine.

Even after you happily smuggled alcohol to Dubai with the help of local unemployed pearl-divers, or being a law-abiding expat with a license to drink you still can not do that during the month of Ramadan at least in public. You can’t smoke or eat in public, either. And the problem is that your friends, or relatives might be considered the public, too. So to assure a complete legality during the Ramadan time Western Expats should eat, drink and smoke only in private when nobody sees them. And that Nobody might just as well include expat’s wife, husband, children, girlfriend, boyfriend and all.