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Published: January 22nd 2007
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From Dubai to Bangkok
Last Day in Dubai 1/20/2007 Our last day in Dubai wasn’t much to write about. We spent almost the whole day at the pool reading and swimming. It was a nice change to sit around and relax. With constant travel comes constant decision making which can be tiresome. I’m sure many of you would love to have this problem…but it really does take a lot out of you to have to constantly be thinking about what your next step is.
The most memorable part of the stay was our dinner at the Burj al Arab. The Burj is one of the most famous hotels in the world at present and touts itself to be the only 7 Star Hotel in existence right now. While famous for its expensive, luxurious nature we were surprised at how uncomfortable the hotel seemed.
The hotel, and people staying there, seem very caught up in their own importance. The style is very modern with fountains and primary colors. The interior just doesn’t feel like home. Maybe I just miss home, but I just didn’t feel like I would be comfortable there.
With that out of the way, lets’ move on. Dinner was on the 27th floor. The restaurant juts out from the hotel and is suspended directly over the Arabian Gulf. Unfortunately it was night out so this left very little to be seen, but the view of the city from the side of the restaurant was stunning. Since nothing around the hotel is taller than 10 stories the view is completely unobstructed which makes the lights spectacular.
The food was amazing, of course. We had an appetizer platter that contained oysters, foie gras, tomato and mozzarella salad and a few other delicacies. For the main course I had a filet mignon and Kel had ravioli. We didn’t end up having dessert because we were stuffed by time we were done. All around the dining experience was one of the best I’ve ever had, and I think that Kel agrees.
After dinner we went straight to bed because we had to be up very early for our morning flight to Bangkok
Flying to Bangkok and Fun with Immigration Our flight to Bangkok was at 9am which meant that we had to be up and out
of the hotel at 6am. While the three hours of time prior to a flight feels excessive, it turned out to be completely necessary. The Dubai airport is completely crazy. It took us almost 45 minutes just to check in to the flight. Then we had to get through immigration which turned out to be a real hassle, which is a surprise when you are leaving a country. The line we selected was one of the shorter ones which we thought would be an advantage. Instead the lady checking passports took her sweet time. With some people she spent up to 10 minutes which really made us wonder what she was looking at. I was starting to get worried that she was going to take a ton of time with us. Instead, I was completely wrong, it only took us 30 seconds to get through.
The flight was really very nice. Emirates Airlines is truly the best airline I’ve ever flown on. This plane was a little smaller when it came to personal space but completely made up for it with the cool personal entertainment system in each seat. Each person has complete control over their own entertainment. There
was a choice of over 15 movies, 30 complete albums of new music, 25 artist’s greatest hits, a ton of games. It really is very impressive. I watched 3 movies during the flight: Little Miss Sunshine, Mission Impossible III and the Illusionist. I would really recommend the Illusionist to anyone, great movie. Because of all the movies the time seemed to really fly.
We arrived at 6:10pm Bangkok time which was exactly when we were supposed to arrive. We immediately went to immigration to get into the country. Here we ran into yet another snag. Since we didn’t have Kel’s aunt’s address with us (they were going to pick us up at the airport) we decided to leave the space on the immigration form blank. We figured this wouldn’t be a problem because it is unlikely that anyone stays in one address while traveling in a country.
We waited in line for a LONG time. Turns out that Thai immigration doesn’t have the cool passport scanners that we’ve seen elsewhere. Instead they have to check all of the information in the computer and they take their time doing it. We talked to a British guy in the line
in front of us who worked for Sony/BMG record label promoting bands in London. He was a lot of fun to talk to and kept us from being bored. After the 30 minutes of waiting in line, the Thai official looked at Kel’s form and merely said, “No, not correct, leave!”
Thus we were back in the back of the line. We had to fill out the address, we used the only address we knew which was the address for Diane and Jack’s (Kel’s uncle and aunt) International School where they work as teachers. Then back to waiting. They didn’t even look at the address, we could have written Yo Momma Street and they wouldn’t have cared - there just had to be something in the little boxes. We were through immigration by 7:30. We had been in line for over an hour.
Once through the checkpoints, we had to look for Jack, who was going to pick us up. At this point it is a full comedy of errors. We couldn’t find Jack (who it turns out was turning the airport upside down looking for us at this point) and we couldn’t get our cell phone to
dial Thai phone numbers because we didn’t know the international code (+66 if you’re ever wondering). After an hour of hunting and trying to call, Kel finally got a pay phone to call Jack.
Jack met us and off we went almost three hours after we had arrived. CRAZY!!! Jack drove us out to his and Diane’s house which is outside of Bangkok. We had a quick dinner and pretty much went to bed.
A Lazy Day in Bangkok Today we slept late and watched TV most of the day. Almost the whole morning it rained buckets, upon buckets of rain. Normally this sort of rain doesn’t happen this time of year so hopefully we won’t have to deal with crazy rain while we are here because if we do we will be wet a lot of the time.
After having lunch in the house we decided to walk around the area just to get our bearings. There isn’t much to see around here but it was nice to get out and walk around. We walked for about an hour through the sort of weather we normally only get for about a month or two in Richmond. It was about 90 degrees and 95% humidity which doesn’t tend to make me feel all that bad but makes Kel a very, very hot girl! Kel’s kinda is really meant for cold weather which means that it might take her a few days (or longer) to get acclimated.
We walked past many food stands which all smelled really amazing and were incredibly cheap. A full lunch here cost 30 baht which translated to less that a dollar. Amazing. We hope to set our budget back on track after the expense of Dubai. It appears that it will be easy to save some money while we are here given prices like this.
We spent the rest of the afternoon in the house resting and then had dinner with Jack and Diane once they came home from work. We were treated to homemade Thai food - spicy eggplant along with sautéed shrimp with vegetables and spring rolls. Yum! Soon it’s off to bed - we’re planning on heading into the Bangkok to see the sights tomorrow.
Hope you are all doing well back home! Thanks for reading…we really love to write this for you guys!
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Don
non-member comment
movies!
Lindz and I just watched the Illusionist, too! I'd like to think we were both watching at the same time, like a little universal concordance. One of the better movies we've seen in a while. It makes us miss movie and Yum Yum Good nights at Casa de Turner. Ok...I'm behind on journals so I guess we're off to Bangkok.