Forty years ago it was mostly desert, now there's an indoor ski slope and a man-made archipelago shaped like a palm tree.
Fun fact: Roughly 90% of the UAE's population are foreign nationals, one of the highest ratios on Earth.
Thirty million sheep and five million people on islands so pretty Peter Jackson just filmed the lot.
Fun fact: Apart from two bat species, it has no native land mammals — birds filled every ecological niche instead.