They thought money could be anything... well guess again
Watching a Radio-Canada (the French Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) documentary series on the financial crisis, they went to Dubai and some guy from a big real estate firm was saying they were selling 1 billions $ worth of real estate a week in 2006-2007.
Basically, people were showing up saying, I'd just buy something, anything, I don't care what it is..
Nobody wanted to live there, they just wanted to speculate on the Dubai status.