Sharjah, UAE

The first place that I looked into was Sharjah, UAE. I had heard back in 2000 that it was an up and coming Emirate that, unlike Dubai and Abu Dhabi, was religious based. I had heard many good things about it, but some of the turn offs were:

• Expense- This is one of the most expensive places to live with rents comparable to living in the US.
• Employment- I understood that most jobs were filled according to race and ethnicity, domestic jobs going to phillipinos, computer jobs to indo/pakistani people, teaching jobs to caucasians (mostly from Canadian or British) so where do the African American Muslims fit in. And this all may have been heresay but it definitly shaped my decision not to go there.
• Visa- My understanding from that time was that you could only get a 90 day visa with sponorship by a UAE national. Other visas are non-renewable unless you leave the country and re-enter which seemed like too much of a hassle to do every three months.

Some of my friends did end up going to one emirate or another but we by-passed this as an option. Although it's a beautiful place, it just didn't seem like you would have the ability to stay. Here's a video tour of Sharjah: