Blogs from United Arab Emirates, Middle East - page 181

Well after my 4 weeks in Malawi, I decided to visit Arun in Dubai! I got permission from my boss to take a week off so I flew out of Lilongwe (Malawi) to Nairobi, then Nairobi to Dubai. And thanks to Arun it was a week of pure relaxation and fun. Really. Dubai is a very interesting city to say the least. A mix of absolute crazy wealth pushing everything to the limit (just name it they'll have it... cuisines of every kind, ski hill, crazy shopping malls, houses on man-made islands, the tallest building on sand, 7 star hotels, etc actually except for soya milk cappuchinos and mochas... never was able to find that... guess no one out there is lactose intolerant....)with the spices and poverty of the thousands of asian immigrants working in Dubai. ... read more

Wow, talk about blowing a whole budget in 2 hours. Well, after a week of not spending a penny at the CPF, as EVERYTHING from food to laundry detergent was paid for, I finally made my way back to Dubai and to the gold souk. I must have been in shopping withdrawl. We got on the sketchy twin otter plane to land in the Yemen airport at 4am. I don't know why so early, but we ended up waiting and waiting to get on the 8am flight to Dubai. Yemenia airlines out of Riyan is cattle call: no seat assignments, every man, woman, child and goat for themselves. I didn't actually see any goats on the plane, but I have heard stories about people bringing them on board as carry-on. Anyways, didn't like the idea of ... read more

Jules just reminded me of some more crazy stuff from Dubai... OK, I'll explain Ramadan to you...Basically you cant eat during the sunshine hours so from 5am to 6pm, you are NOT allowed to eat or drink. Basically all day people are just lying around the streets all lethargic and pissed off. Even our taxi driver told us he was going crazy cos he couldnt eat all day and his wife live in India....don't know how the two related...but they did to him. Juliette had a bit of trouble at the markets on the first night, women over there are not supposed to show any skin, Jules was walking around in long shorts which was causing no end of attention from the locals. We couldnt figure out why these guys kept starting at her ankles...but when ... read more

We arrived at 5:15am local time. It's Friday which is their equivilent of Sunday, and it's Ramadan so NOTHING is open. Customs is hilarious....no documents, just present your passport, tell them you are a tourist and they stamp you in. As for anything to declare? Don\t bother, the x-ray machine (yes, singular) was recycled from the war and about 5 guys wearing bed sheets just sat around telling jokes...I suppose though, not like they have a roaring agricultural industry here to ruin. The city is 4km from the airport, and we got a free bus to our hotel. The currency thing is a bit hard to get used to. We just had a $42 breakfast, a couple of pieces of fruit, a croissant and a hash brown..oops! Ciggarettes are cheap, at duty free it was about ... read more

Hello. Here are some shots of us on the plane, looking a little worse for wear on our 14 hour flight fromMelbourne to Dubai. Dubai was definately an experience in itself - about 40 degrees celcius by 7am. It was hard to walk around with the heat baking up from the footpath. No one has backyards - they were all just plots of hard dirt surrounded by a fence. There were camels tied up as pets, and everything was really sandy. We went on an amazing desert safari that included a 4WD kamikaze ride over sandunes, a BIG (awesome) cultural feast, camel rides (yay!) henna (temporary) tattoos, dress-ups, & a cultural dancer or two. It was really, really excellent. Shopping (especially Duty Free) is ridiculously cheap in Dubai, especially if buying gold products or electronics. It ... read more