Procedure for exchange of home country driving licence for a Dubai driver's license

• Bring your driving license from your home country to show them (you'll get it back) - and a copy.
• Bring your passport with resident's visa and a couple of copies.
• Bring a couple of hundred dhs and some passport photographs (at least twice as many as you think you need - 4 or 5 should be enough).
• Go to Dubai Police Traffic Department in Umm Suqueim on Sheikh Zayed Road interchange 4 near Mall of the Emirates (it's signposted), next to the garden center. You may be able to get a Dubai driver's licence at the other Police Traffic Departments - there's one near Al Mulla Plaza for example. Or you may get sent back to Go.
• There's a typing office there where you pay money and get an application form typed out in Arabic. Start there, then take your documents to the Dubai driving license application area. The usual Dubai application procedure applies - get a number from a machine, wonder why you bothered when no one seems to take any notice of it, and eventually hand in your application to someone official looking. Bring a book or magazine to read and don't sweat it.
• If you have to wear contact lenses or spectacles, you may do an eye test there. If that's not stated on your own driver's licence, you probably won't have to do an eye test (this changed sometime in 2005 - previously all applicants for a driver's license had to do an eye test there, then it was changed so they had to go to an optician, then it was only those who already wore visual aids so who knows what it'll be next week...).