I woke when the hot sun leapt the balcony and splayed over the floor of my hotel room. I opened the glass door and for a while watched this part of Dubai - Deira, the markety, bustling part - wake up. My priority for the day, as it is most days, was to arrange my next travelling leg. After some quick research on the web I caught an airconditioned bus to find the main Emirates Airlines building, where Sri Lankan Airlines also had an office. My revised plan, since I decided to pass on Pakistan, had been to (regretfully) fly to Bangkok from Dubai to resume my surface travel. There were no direct flights, but one of the cheaper indirect alternatives stopped tantalisingly in Colombo. I had been very briefly to Sri Lanka in 1990 on
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