Shopping in Dubai
 

Are there any good buys in Dubai for ordinary people? People who don't shop at expensive designer stores? I've heard about the gold and spice markets. Are there reasonably priced things in the malls?

The gold souk can be expensive, just depends on what you are looking to buy, found a good deal on some silver jewerly off the main shopping walk. They go by weight. I can't comment on the spice souk as I didn't buy anything, most people were trying to get you to buy "designer" bags. The Dubai mall has a vast amount of stores to chose from, I just came back from the UAE and the shopping festival was going on (which is basically a big sale). They have a range of stores from Gucci to Columbia to Nike. Really depends on what you are looking for. I spent most of my time in Abu Dhabi and really didn't think clothes were cheaper than in the US. The souk that is across from the mall, attached to the Address Hotel, seemed to had some reasonable priced souvenir type things. I didn't get to any of the other malls in Dubai other than the Dubai mall, so I cannot comment as to whether they had good deals or not.

A few of shopping centers which I would suggest are the Dragon mart, Al-Karama, Global village, Carrefour Supermarket etc where you can shop at reasonable prices