Gold Souk Dubai

This post is a brief description of the Gold souk in Dubai.Gold souk is in the heart of  Dubai. It faces the Dubai creek and is approximately a 20 minutes drive from the Dubai airport. For someone coming directly from the airport by metro should get off at the AL RAS metro station. You will need to change from Red line to green line at the Union station.

The Gold souk is a market where mainly gold jewelry is sold in all its various forms. Finished products of jewelry, gems, unset jewelry, workshops, manufacturing, all is done in the gold souk. You will find diamond jewelry, precious stone jewelry, plain gold jewelry, bars, coins, designer jewelry, branded jewelry, jewelry produced locally and internationally. Gold souk is one of the main hubs for gold jewelry trading and retailing.

All karat-age of jewelry is sold: 14KT, [ not commonly though], 18kt,21kt , 22kt, 24 kt. Gold comes in white gold, rose gold, yellow gold, white gold, copper colored and all various colors including green. Usually this colored gold in is 18kt purity. [ Gold is colored by changing the percentage of alloys mixed in gold but maintains the 18KT purity of gold.] When buying such jewelry always look for the 750 or 18kt mark or ask the sales person to show you the purity marking.


The jewelry stores sell a vast variety of jewelry. Besides gold  jewelry, there are stores selling luxury watches, second hand watches, certified diamonds, loose gemstones and un-setted jewelry [jewelry without stones for other jewelers to buy] and silver jewelry.

There are shops in the gold souk that will exchange your old gold jewelry against your new purchase. Some will purchase for cash [ very few] . The stores that purchase jewelry against cash, usually ask for receipt and contact details to prevent fraud and reselling of robbed jewelry. So make sure you ALWAYS retain your jewelry receipts.

Besides being the heart of jewelry stores, the area around gold souk has plenty to offer locals and tourists. From the famous spice souk where a dearth of loose spices are to be found to stores selling cloth , perfumes, oud, cutlery and crockery stores, stationery, scarves, abayas, electronic stores, laces, toys, footwear ..and the list goes on. The Gold souk area has plenty to offer everyone.

If you get tired of looking around there are plenty of small cafeterias and famous shawarma booths to be found at nearly every corner. Do try their cocktail and fresh juices too. There is also a Baskin Robbins to be found in the Gold souk. This is in fact one of the first few Baskin Robbin shop that opened in Dubai and is roughly 20 years old or more.

Do not forget to pay for your parking it is 2 Dirhams for one hour, 5 Dirhams for two hours, 7 dirhams for three. hours and 11 Dirhams for four hours.

If you are in an adventurous all out exploration mood you can walk to the creek, take the famous abra [boat] ride , cross the creek and explore the opposite side called Bur Dubai.....

Hope you enjoyed reading this post. I would love to answer any questions you may have about the gold souk....

Thank you :)

Parking In the Gold Souk.

Parking in the gold souk happens to be one of the subjects I love to discuss. I believe it has improved my decision making and parking skills a 100 times. If anyone needed to learn how to become quick at making decisions and how to become a bully in the parking lot; Gold souk parking would have taught you lessons no one ever could have ever hoped to teach. Well now that has changed. Thanks to some changes done by the RTA. Thank God for that.

Anyways here are a few tips anyways, since during the free and peak hours, gold souk parking lot reverts to its old mad, crazy self.

First things first; Gold souk has paid parking. The paid parking hours are 9 a.m to 1 p.m and then 4 p.m till 9 p.m. therefore 1 p.m till 4 p.m its free parking. If you come to the gold souk around 12.00 p.m onwards the chances of you finding parking easily are slim. People in the gold souk have different shifts and sometimes no shifts :) . Just random working hours. But hope does prevail. Around 1.00 p.m onwards some people [like me] do leave the gold souk for lunch. So if you are hoping to visit the gold souk in the afternoon, the chances of finding hassle free parking around 2.30 p.m onwards are pretty good. Around 4.30p.m onwards it starts getting a bit difficult again.

The next gap would be around 7.00 p.m. But this gap is short lived so you have to be quick. It lasts for roughly half an hour. This is the time the office goers get off from work. So keep a look out. It is common in the gold souk for people to motion and ask if you need parking. If someone is walking into the gold souk parking lot it is  okay to ask them where is their car parked. Sometimes they will tell you sometimes they wont depending on the rush hour. The reason being; if there is a car already double parked behind their car [in hope of parking] and the person gives you the parking spot, it may result in a fight and police being called. at worst fist fights and being taken to the police station. Such scenarios were quite common before, but have thankfully eased now. 

Keep a sharp look who is walking into the parking lot, majority of the time they are walking towards their car to leave or to simply to renew the parking hour ticket. No one goes for a stroll in the parking lot :P. 

But you have to be sharp and a little impolite. Do not keep two cars distance between your car and the car leaving the parking spot, otherwise chances are another car will zoom by and park in your spot before you can blink. So yeah it can be quite frustrating but hope does prevail.

The alternate to getting your car all the way to the gold souk is coming by metro. The Ras al Khor station is the one that is for Gold souk. Its a five minutes walk away and totally hassle free. I often recommend my friends to park in city center and take the metro from there and come, though you are limited to do your work/shopping/ browsing within a four hour time frame before you have to pay for your city center parking.

Hope this post was helpful.

Happy parking :)