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Growing up in Canada in the eighties, you used to hear these stories about this mythical mall that had a roller coaster in it. AND a water park. AND a skating rink. To my young mind this was very impressive indeed. In fact, I suspected for a long time that it was one of those urban legends, like gum taking seven years to digest or snakes living in the sewer pipes, and didn't actually exist at all. The mall, it turned out, was real. It's in West Edmonton and does indeed have all of those things. It remains the biggest mall in North America, in fact.

When I started hearing things about Dubai, my reaction was similar. “What? A mall with an indoor ski hill?” What a notion! As with the other mall, however, it turned out to be true. The Mall of the Emirates has not just an indoor ski hill, but (because it's in Dubai and they don't do anything in a small way) the LARGEST indoor ski hill in the world.

This mall must be something truly spectacular, I thought. Something unlike anything I'd ever seen before. When I found out I was being sent to Dubai to write about the place, I knew my trip would not be complete without a stop there, and possibly a run down the fabled indoor slopes. I was looking forward to it.

My time at the Mall of the Emirates, it turned out, was limited. But after getting a look at the place, it didn't seem like such a big loss. To be fair, The Mall of the Emirates is big. It's a very big shopping mall. And it does have an indoor ski hill, which if not the largest in the world is certainly the largest I've ever seen. But that doesn't really change the fact that it's just a big shopping mall. And maybe this makes me the wrong person to be writing about it, but I've never really liked shopping malls.

Finding yourself on a ski hill on a 100-degree day is an odd thing, but you get used to it after a while. Our tight touring schedule didn't permit us to ski, so we donned ankle-length Ski Dubai parkas and rode the chairlift to the top of the hill and down again. It was surprisingly cold inside, like a walk-in freezer, and the crisp air-conditioned air smelled faintly of sweaty ski boots. Most of the people we saw on the slopes looked European, but that may be because the Emiratis don't wear their traditional robes to ski, and without them they look pretty much like everyone else.

After snapping some pictures of each other by the chairlift, framed by the evergreens and quaint wooden ski chalets painted on the walls, we went off to explore the rest of the mall. It's new, shiny and bright, with huge domed skylights and elevated walkways. There's an Adidas store, an H&M, and a Virgin Megastore, among countless others. Women in black burkas stroll in pairs and trios, differentiated only by height, sneakers and the brand of designer handbag they carry. It occurs to me that they must have a hard time picking each other out in a crowd. Men in dishdashas push strollers, past stores selling Chopard, DKNY, Louis Vuitton and Versace, window shopping with their hijab-clad wives. In one jewelry store, a couple of older Asian women are trying on watches. At 4pm the call to prayer sounds over the mall's PA system.

Before we leave I stand for a while by the exit to the carpark, watching the people exiting the mall with their shopping bags. Every time the automatic doors slide open a blast of cool air blows out and is immediately quashed by the desert air. It's hot outside, and I'd forgotten about that.

Watch this space for more of my Arabian adventures, coming soon…