A few days after returning from Baku I headed to the Duran Duran concert down at Dubai Internet City meeting some friends at the Radisson pre-concert before heading on to the concert amphitheatre. It was an excellent venue and although the booze was way to expensive, the lightshow and the atmosphere was top notch. Duran Duran kicked off quite late on a warm evening and the performance was first rate almost all the old hits were performed as well as a few decent new songs. A week later Ruth arrived in Dubai I met her at the airport on the Thursday evening and took her to my apartment and helped her settle in she seemed to like the view over The Creek. Next day we set off for the Marina taking a taxi because it was ... read more

I hadn't visit Qatar for 15 years and to be honest it wasn't a very memorable place then but the city has grown. From the nice new airport to the nicely designed museums near the harbour I was pleasantly surprised. After arriving at the hotel I met up with a colleague and we set out to explore the city with the award winning Islamic Art museum the number one priority. The museum sits on a piece of land jutting out into to the harbour and is an impressively modern building with three floors of wonderful Islamic art, we spent several hours enjoying the collection. As we departed the sun was setting so we decided to take a boat trip on the harbour the new city with its many architecturally unique buildings was lit up on the ... read more

The terrain between the border and Trebinje was unusual there was little sign of habitation and the landscape was rocky and desert like which was certainly unexpected for this part of the world, but soon began to change as we came closer. On the outskirts of town we stopped at a service station for a coffee and to orientate ourselves a little before turning back down the highway and heading back towards the town centre where we took a right rather than the left we should have and ended up back near the service station although the drive through the outskirts of town were scenic. We then headed back to the town centre and headed left which took us to the older part of town where we hoped to find the Arslanagic bridge which fords the ... read more

We left Probistip early the following morning, the boys are struggling with the cold but I am enjoying not being hot for once. The journey south was on excellent roads through pretty countryside, I had no idea that Macedonia had such beautiful snow covered peaks which we followed all the way south to the city of Bitola. Bitola is the home of the country's most important ancient archeological site Heraclea Lyncestis. This ancient Macedonian was founded in the middle of 4th century B.C. by Philip the Macedon, Heraclea existed for over a millennium as an important strategic point. We arrived around midday to find the site empty of people with a single caretaker in residence who seemed happy to take us to the gift shop and delivered a long but interesting discourse about the history of ... read more

I arrived in Dubai and returned to work after just a few hours sleep, I delivered a few gifts to work friends and settled back into the team. Friday arrived quickly, I took a train to The Mall of the Emirates station where I boarded a taxi out to Sports city, I was heading to Dubai cricket stadium with some of my Sri Lankan work mates for the ODI between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. We decided to buy the more expensive tickets as that allowed us access to the stand with the bar, it is still damn hot so Anthony and I began consuming beers at a cracking rate while we waited for Dileepa and the others to arrive, soon I was surrounded by Sri Lankan lads who are always happy and smiling between pints of ... read more