They never saw it coming.
After 15 hours of flying, I wanted only one thing: to brush my teeth. The stale swirl of gin and salt coated my tongue. I worried the customs official would catch wind of my long-haul halitosis.
I answered his questions quickly:
“Yes, first time here.”
“Three nights.”
“Then back home.”
I’d have killed for a mint.
He sniffed, then stamped my passport and waved me through.
I kept my distance from the hotel driver and the front desk attendant. Offending every Dubaiite I encountered hadn’t been my game plan.
Safely stashed away in a suite on the 35th floor of the recently-opened Atlantis The Royal, I planned to rid myself of this embarrassment. But my toothbrush was 11 time zones away, crammed into a Dopp kit I’d forgotten on my nightstand at home. I called downstairs and received the happy word that my room came kitted with two toothbrushes.
I switched on the bathroom lights, and the brushes glimmered. This isn’t hyperbole, they quite literally shined. The light reflected off them as though I’d uncovered relics in an ancient tomb.
These toothbrushes were made of gold.
I’d never seen such beautiful toothbrushes before. Their beauty bewitched me like Bogart, wide-eyed at the treasure of Sierra Madre. I was Gollum lusting over a ring, Goldfinger drooling at Fort Knox. Who knew something so utterly mundane could be so entirely luxurious? Once accustomed to this golden wand, how could I ever return to Colgate plastic or Sonicare pulses? No, from here on out, only gold would do for my pearlies.
But surely something so precious couldn’t leave the room–it wasn’t meant to be taken home. Still, I needed that golden toothbrush to be mine, forever. I couldn’t leave this country without it. So I concocted a plan. And that’s how the Great Dubai Toothbrush Heist was born.
Step One: Onsite Surveillance
The sun had already set when I arrived, so I didn’t get a clear look at things until morning. I needed to understand my surroundings, surveil the guests, maybe recruit my Danny Ocean crew–the Atlantis 11.
A smoggy mixture of sand and fog obstructed the views from my balcony. The sky, though clear, didn’t hold a vibrant shade—but a muted, dull baby blue color. Even through the haze, Dubai looked like a hallucinogenic dreamscape. The narrow fronds of the artificial archipelago of the Palm Jumeirah neighborhood fanned out before me, each with two rows of mega-mansions, all with pools and white-sand beaches. If I squinted, I could see millionaires milling about in the already-90-degrees Fahrenheit morning. They looked like well-heeled ants in tony ant farms.
The Atlantis The Royal must have dominated the views from their palaces. The hotel’s scale is overwhelming. It’s an unlikely structure—as though architects hadn’t designed a thing, but let a kaiju toddler assemble it from leftover Legos. Any minute, it all might come tumbling down. That’s not to say it’s ugly—no, no—it’s a confusing masterpiece, an incomprehensibly beautiful superstructure. And incomprehensibly extravagant from the moment of arrival.
Past its gate on the Crescent Road, luxury cars queued up for the valet, all violently revving their engines. These aggressively flashy automobiles are so rarefied you’ll never even see them prancing Rodeo Drive or High Street Ken. But this auto-exotica mingled in the Royal’s driveway as though it were a Formula 1 track. What the hell, I wondered, is a Koenigsegg, and what are the lease terms for a $2.8 million Jesko? What dealership stocks the $3.1 million Vagabondi Moliere? What’s the down payment on a $3.4 million Pagani Huarya? (I made one of those up, but I’ll bet nobody can guess which one.)
The glass doors parted for me as I strode inside, and the air conditioning shocked me with a 40-degree temperature drop. In the lobby’s central courtyard, a massive chrome sculpture called Droplets–intended to evoke water in the desert–was dwarfed by the magnitude of the space. And then there’s the marble. Entire mountains of marble must have been lugged to Dubai. Alpine peaks chipped down to nubs. Somewhere in Carrara, a marble miner wept as he surveyed canyons of empty quarries.
Stealth wealth doesn’t exist in Dubai. Wealth doesn’t whisper here. It shrieks.
The wealthy roamed about, their pearly whites surely scrubbed with gold. Some talked into their phones, but many talked at them, filming themselves, influencing. Infants waddled about, chased by au pairs. I detected the delineation between au pair and faux pair by labels. The wealthy marched as human billboards for Gucci, Moschino, Fendi, Prada; so too did their children, brandished in Baby Burberry. But not the au pairs (which, in my opinion, made them all the more stylish): well dressed, without the advertisement. The broad marble-slabbed corridors that operated as the hotel’s central thoroughfares were curated to serve the needs of The Royal dwellers. Here guests perused designer wardrobes and procured million-dollar Botero sculptures. Dermatologists analyzed their skin and plastic surgeons administered something they call “face art.” I ogled.
Every city’s got something. The Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall, Micky Mouse. Dubai’s something is excess. And it can be as alluring as the Moai, as striking as the David, as mysterious as the Pyramids. And all of that raw essence pulses through this palace of so much muchness.
I wanted my share: golden toothbrushes. And then I found my angle.
Step Two: Identify the Score
The idea came to me as soon as I returned to my suite. Housekeeping had tidied up, and I noticed a subtle change in the bathroom.
The gold-piped white lacquer box that housed my treasured golden toothbrush (among other trinkets) now had a replacement for the vanity kit I’d used and discarded. I wondered if housekeeping would similarly restock the golden toothbrush.
Granted, I didn’t need another one–the kit came with two–but I’d gotten greedy. I never wanted to be without a golden toothbrush again. So, I needed one for now, one for later, one for my wife who would surely be jealous of my golden toothbrush, and one in case any of our golden toothbrushes were lost or stolen. And though I supposed I could return to this hotel in the future to pilfer more rare element dental tools, I prepared like squirrels for the winter and conspiracy theorists for the apocalypse–I planned to hoard golden toothbrushes.
Promptly I hid one golden toothbrush in my suitcase. The rush hit me as I zipped it inside. “You’re mine now,” I said to it. But would the turndown maid restock that golden toothbrush? And if so, could I get housekeeping to keep replenishing them? I planned to hit the pool while waiting to find out.
The upside to desert heat is that it strips you of agency. And in Dubai, even the heat is extravagantly over-the-top. The temperature read 104, with the caveat noted in my iPhone weather app that it “feels like 123.” Though wiser to stay indoors, the poolside crowd wanted to flaunt their designer swimwear.
While splayed out on a chaise-longue, lathered in a concoction of SPF 100 and hangover sweat, my brain slowed, and so did the time. Which is a good thing–because time is the only true, finite luxury that exists. I hydrated with a 2021 bottle of Assyrtiko.
An nsk-nsk beat blurted through invisible speakers. And happy giggles pierced through the monotonous jingle. It was delightful shrieking–but I couldn’t place it among the glowering models posed around me as though preening for a vintage George Michael video. High above us all, on a roof deck, light reflected onto a canopy, bouncing off a private pool in the sky. As with anything–from classes on planes to circles in Hell–there are status levels of extravagance. I hadn’t made it beyond the ground level, but up at the rooftop, I heard what sounded like actual fun. Down where I was, the models pouted and played with their many jewels. They ate sushi from Nobu and posed, posed, posed. No doubt it all looked very glamorous on Instagram, but like an overly filtered photo, it somehow felt a little unnatural. Everything seemed too pristine for reality, too uncomplicated. But that’s what luxury is supposed to be, I suppose–a separation from harsh reality.
And divorced from the real world, it’s easy to become obsessed with shiny objects.
Like a golden toothbrush.
Step Three: The Operation
Turndown service disappointed–chocolate is nice, but I wanted that dental replacement. It hadn’t been restocked, but I didn’t have time to fret–I had to pivot.
Housekeeping probably only tended to the white lacquer box in the mornings. Which meant I only had one more round of housekeeping to score in my short three-night tour. I had to go big. So, I hid the second golden toothbrush. This involved inherent risk: such boldness surely gave away the game that I’d hidden the two already provided golden toothbrushes (what solo individual goes through two toothbrushes in two nights?); and while the absence of one golden toothbrush could prompt the reminder that one was missing and needed replacing, the absence of both might cause forgetfulness to restock any at all, à la “out of sight, out of mind.” But I hadn’t any other options.
The following morning I laid the trap and went to lunch.
Tucked throughout the Atlantis The Royal are the outposts of a veritable “Avengers assemble” of international culinary giants: Jose Andres, Gaston Acurio, Heston Blumenthal, Nobu Matsuhisa, Costas Spiliadis.
During my short stay, I gobbled up their gustatory gusto, lumbering from one eatery to another. A hodgepodge of nationalities crammed into every restaurant, dressed in their fineries, their clothing stamped with the names of long-dead Italians. The restaurants, with their name-brand chefs, are, in a way, expensive labels, too. And they’re used similarly–to make an impression.
Good food is often wasted on the rich as either a prop or a photograph. And this is good food. Across the more than 40 courses I devoured over three days, three caused a total distraction from my toothbrush obsession (and all of them signature dishes and available in other cities, meaning you needn’t fly to Dubai to try).
1. Conchitas La Mar: Hokkaido scallops with parmesan foam, served at Gaston Acurio’s La Mar at Atlantis The Royal, but also available at Acurio’s restaurants in Miami and San Francisco. Anyone who believes that seafood and cheese can’t be friends ought to experience the extraordinary pairing of rich, salty parmesan and buttery sweet scallop as it will cause the rethinking of every declaratory culinary statement ever decreed.
2. White Chocolate and Caviar: A pearl of white chocolate wrapping a dollop of caviar, served at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal at Atlantis The Royal, but available in some form (on occasion) at Bluemnthal’s restaurant in London. The pearl is a uniquely important symbol of this region–pearl diving in the Gulf dates back millennia–and Blumenthal honors local history with the illusion of the jewel on the plate. Once bitten, the illusion vanishes as the mouth fills with a deluge of the sea.
3. Black Cod Butter Lettuce: A staple of the Nobu empire and served at the Nobu by the Beach at Atlantis The Royal, as well as multiple Nobu locations around the world. Who knew butter lettuce could be this good? This is a dish I frequently crave, and could happily eat every day until the world finally splits in two.
Though several of the chefs here have better restaurants–Blumenthal’s Fat Duck in Bray, England, and Acurio’s Astrid y Gaston in Lima, Peru, are two of the most remarkable meals of my life–the concentration of genius within the footprint of one hotel is uncommonly outstanding. Though Las Vegas has its share of big names, I can think of no hotel there–or anywhere in the world–that’s more extravagantly stacked than this one.
The only downside: the fistfuls of chewable Pepcid berry-flavored tablets left my teeth perpetually pink. Good thing I had a golden toothbrush–but did I have my score of four?
Step Four: The Getaway
They glittered. Two fresh, gloriously sparkling golden rods had been added to my white lacquer box. I dared not use either of them, but instead fished out my original little golden wand, and ran it over my smiling pearlies.
Perhaps this attests to my plebian status that I would even fret that they might appear–I’m sure if I had called down and asked for a new white lacquer box, one bursting full of golden toothbrushes, my wish would have been granted.
So I truly didn’t need that pang of anxiety as I checked out, my score of four locked away in my carry-on. But still, I worried I might be presented with a nasty surprise in my folio bill. However: nothing, not even a whisper of penalty for my sticky fingers.
Perhaps they’re free for the taking–and if so, what’s better than a heist without a victim?
As the Atlantis The Royal’s confoundingly beautiful superstructure, that striking herculean accomplishment in a city built on one-upmanship, vanished behind an orange sandstorm, I left behind my brief sojourn into that oasis of unimaginable wealth.
Though it may seem odd, maybe even tasteless, to be awestruck by all that glitters in a newly erected hotel, it is in many ways the point.
It was built for our astonishment–just like any other towering landmark erected over the last 5,000 years. Perhaps it’s hubristic to name something so opulent that’s constructed upon an artificial archipelago in the middle of the Gulf after a grand city famously swallowed by the sea, but the point of extravagance is to defy the possible.
Tourists pay bundles of euros to sleep in Versailles, a gaudy palace of old, but this, the Royal, is quite possibly one of our palaces of new–this along with the umpteen slowly rising luxury goliaths climbing into the skies every year in every major city, and some minor ones too, all for an ever insatiable audience of privilege proverbially born with golden spoons in their mouths.
But who needs a golden spoon, when you’ve got a golden toothbrush?
Dubai, a glorious vision of unreality, a staged production. You come crashing to earth when you see the "honey" trucks collect the guests feces every morning, because the city didn't bother to install a sewage system!
Explain. Were you expecting that your used one would be left for the next guest? Did you even question whether the one you were using had been used by the previous guest?!
What a very entertaining article! You inspired me to check the price of a stay at this hotel and even to contemplate doing just one 3-night stay during this lifetime as bucket-list experience. I'm reknowned for being a bargain traveler, I delight in finding good deals. But once every blue moon I do splurge on something special like my recent Paul Guiguin cruise of Tahiti. So, now having checked the cost to check in at Atlantis The Royal Dubai, sufficeth to say you did not steal, but actually did pay handsomely, for your four golden toothbrushes. But I can sense you feel you got your money's worth, especially with those souvenirs. Personally I just need to have less and less stuff and could never be bothered to hang onto the toothbrushes, even if they are 24 karat gold. But the experience, the memories, the photos, mmm so good!