gentetip

Dubai is a city of many faces: towering office and hotel skyscrapers and oriental bustle in Bur Dubai, the old town quarter. Mubashir Malik came here from Pakistan when he was just 18. He had heard a lot about Dubai: A place, where a lot of money can be earned, without being especially qualified. Now he has been driving a water taxi on the Dubai Creek for the past four years and feels like a rich man.
Brothers Arif and Faisal Matraushi are both passionate fishermen. Arif fishes from the evening to midnight, while Faisal drives to the Dubai fish market every morning at 3 a.m. to sell the catch.

Jeremy Sabaneer has worked his way up. He is manager of the "Leba-non" island in the middle of the "World", as Dubai's ambitious offshore island project is known. Jeremy began here more than 15 years ago, as a Pakistani migrant worker. Now he has his hands full. A bank has rented his party island for a company event. Jeremy takes to the air with water plane pilot Andrew Kennedy to check his world from above. And in the desert location of Lahbab, "mareTV" encounters racing camel coaches. Since the protests against the use of children as jockeys became more violent, they now replaced them with robots. High tech in a traditional sport. Typical Dubai….

Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean. The Sardin-ians themselves say it's a "continent for itself", a virtual world of its own, full of magic: A beach, gleaming in unreal pink shades, red corals protect against the evil eye and the inhabitants seem to remain forever young. On Sardinia, the owners of luxury yachts adopt sheep, fish have gold in their bellies and a giant mussel supplies the material for legendary sea silk. No one is surprised, that the Madonna goes on a sea cruise once a year.

Murmansk, the metropolis on the Barents Sea, is anything but Russia's cold north. There's always something going on here, for example the Olympic Polar Games. Ice surfing and ice swimming, reindeer racing, the first atom ice breaker in the history of the world, a corner shop in ice and snow, endearing village school lessons and the singing Norwegian Sea Fleet - arctic lifestyle far away, north of the polar circle.

The palm tree laden beaches on Mexico's Riviera Maya on the Yucatan peninsula are endless, and the turquoise sea with its gentle Caribbean surf is a warm 25 degrees during the mild winter in this part of the world. Between Cancún and Punta Allen, where once there was little more than bushland and a few sleepy fishing villages, vibrant life has evolved during the past three decades.
Richard Sowa has lived on a floating island for the past 15 years: an island he built himself out of empty plastic bottles. The bon vivant him-self sees it as a "solution for our planet's refuse problem".
Off Punta Allen, a village in the bay of Sian Ka'an, Mexican Mara Coral Ley and her cousin Kim, continue to catch lobsters by adhering to the traditional method and were awarded an "Eco seal for sustainable fishing" for their trouble.
It is silent under water off Isla Mujeres and it is here that the artist Jason deCaires has constructed a sculpture park. Hundreds of lifesize figures form an artificial reef at a depth of 12 metres. Fish and plants complete his work of art. The master himself is convinced: "Mother Nature is the true artist".