FO's do indeed have 70-75hrs a month, and it's a cushy lifestyle. Captains are working hard at 100hrs and that makes a huge impact throughout your experience of EK and Dubai. Every FO is happy, every Capt is tired and moaning about rosters/leave. That explains the differing reports you may hear.
100hrs brings significant overtime payments though - no one complains about money.
There's a lot of BS about Dubai in this thread. Careful reading emotional anecdotes from heavily biased people. SOPs for example hasn't worked for Ek for many, many years. And no someone's rent isn't allowed to just increase 15% unless it was already 40% below market value (and hence still comparatively cheap). Rent is expensive though, but we recently got another 10% increase in allowance, on top of 20% last year. Now 264k aed/year ($72k).
As another said on the thread, Dubai is in its ascendancy. An up and coming city and is always improving. The city is booming as the inflow of HNW people continues to bring growth. Huge natural gas discoveries off the coast provide Dubai a large runway into the future. Lot's of opportunity here. It's a good place to be.
True, you wont find forests, mountains, fields here. True, public transport is bad, but it's not needed at all to be fair.
I used to love the hustle and bustle of HKG. But after being there recently, you can see people are not particularly happy anymore. People are stressed, rushing around, focussed on being productive - it's not the exciting expat atmosphere of yesteryear. It is markedly less friendly.
In Dubai, people are chilled; enjoying their day, enjoying their life.
Having said that, I do have a soft spot for HKG and Asia in general. I can see why people would want to live there.