Well, so. I finally went to Sharjah, the emirate just to the north of Dubai. It's the third largest in the UAE, after Abu Dhabi and Dubai. I'd heard many things about it since planning to come here and then since getting here. I'd read in Lonely Planet that they'd recently passed a "modesty law", I'd read that the royal family is close to the Sauds. Since I've been here, I've heard many other things. The traffic between Dubai and Sharjah is horrendous, mainly because rents are very cheap in Sharjah and very expensive in Dubai and because there are just one or two roads and they are quite thin. I've also heard that Sharjah gets its money from questionable armaments sales. I have no idea if this is true, obviously, but i will tell you, after one very short visit: they've got some cash. I've heard that the Sheikh Mohamed won't build a new road to Sharjah to help with the traffic, because it will make more people move from Dubai for the cheap rent. I've heard the Sheikh of Sharjah won't allow any street signs to tell people which direction Dubai is.
I don't know about many of these things, but I can report that there ARE street signs in Sharjah telling you which way Dubai is. There aren't many, but there are some. As for the modesty law: I don't know. My students tell me stories of friends being arrested for wearing shorts, but I also heard they repealed the laws. So, who knows. I was surprised at how big, rich and modernized Sharjah is. It looks a lot, in fact, like Dubai. Just less glitzy, which, frankly, is really nice.