Okay this is too weird.

In the last day I've found two seemingly unrelated blog posts about that underwater hotel in Dubai, Hydropolis.

Naturally they have two diametrically opposed stories:

"Underwater Hotel In Dubai In Financial Trouble"

"Hydropolis, The Underwater Hotel in Dubai Due To Be Completed Soon"

You might remember I first debunked Hydropolis on the Newlywed in Dubai blog just about three years ago (see Hydropolis is Waiting ...).

Time for more debunking, it seems.

The first article has several glaring mistakes. (And just what is thaindian.com by the way? Does is supposed to mean "Tha Indian" or "Thai Ndian"?) They state that the hotel has been under construction since 2005. That's insane.

Should have known we were in trouble when they called Dubai "a very open-minded and international community". Yeah, they're terribly open-minded over there. Downright liberal.

One of my favorite parts about Hydropolis is the ever-changing artwork. Here, in no particular order, are different architectural renderings. Notice how the construction material and even the overall design changes each time. That's not sketchy at all.

Um, if this has been under construction for half-a-decade, shouldn't they know what it looks like?








But my favorite is this "aerial photograph" of the "construction site":


The thing is, that open body of water at the bottom is Dubai Marina. Dubai Marina that's buildings were well under construction the first time I visited Dubai four years ago this autumn.

So this supposed construction photo is five years old.

Odd, considering I've been on that beach many times in that time. In fact, that photo I took of the camels in front of the skyscraper was on one of the two open beaches between the hotels in this photo above. It's tough to say exactly which one, as this photo above was taken waaay before the buildings were finished.

So why didn't we see construction going on out in the Gulf? I mean, we saw construction on both the Palm Jumeirah and the Palm Jebel Ali when were on the beaches near them.

But the kicker, the pièce de résistance, my closing argument, is that the official Hydropolis website is down, it's under construction.

Would the website for a half-a-billion dollar hotel be down just days (weeks? even a month?) before it opened?

Shenanigans.