Red Eye in Dubai

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6.00 am, Wednesday April 2nd 2008, Dubai Airport.

It’s 4.00 am for me now and so far I’m doing pretty great considering I didn’t sleep much the night before I left and have purposely stayed awake on the flight into Dubai. Arrived here at 5.15 am and have spent the last 45 minutes or so walking the airport from end to end, or at least the part outside of customs. I tried getting some Dirham (yes, I too was surprised that my mirrors and beads were not an accepted currency here anymore) from the ATM but it said that my carrier was offline and wouldn’t give me any money. It was, however, a Barclay’s machine and I have an ABN-AMRO account so that might have something to do with it. Get over it already you pommie bankers, you lost out!
On my way to the other side of the airport I passed a sign that said “Emirates travelers with more than 4 hours layover are entitled to a meal”. My Dutch heritage perked up at this until I saw the massive line that was queued up. I might be Dutch, but I’m not Russian and I’m not going to further lengthen an already gruelingly long four hours by standing in line for two of them. ‘Walk on, with hope in your heart’ as they say -or shout incoherently at least- in Manchester, and sure enough another ATM turned up eventually which did want to dispense money, or at least something that does a fairly convincing imitation.

So far impressions of the airport are pretty close to what I expected. It’s basically a big shopping mall in the middle with gates added on at either end so people can fly places with their purchases. These two end bits that hold the gates seem a little surreal, almost like up-market refugee camps with people camped out in, on, underneath and in any conceivable configuration around the many chairs. The usage of shopping bags as a container for carry-on luggage does nothing to lessen this sense of homeless and displaced people who occupy almost every seat from end to end, interspersed with the odd out-of-place looking traveler typing on a laptop, much as I am now. I had hoped that it would be a little more Arab. Yes, it has big palm trees and lots of gold and shiny bits, but it also has a Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and Irish Pub.

The most surprising thing is the low number of recognizable Muslims, compared to for instance Dusseldorf, the airport I departed from some seven hours ago. It must however be said that Dusseldorf seems to be the preferred point of departure for a major part of the German Muslim population. My cousin dropped me off at the airport nicely on time and after a quick check-in and a few coffees with him, I decided to make the trip through the baggage check. The lines were very short, only two or three people at each one, but with the practiced eye of a western traveler at a western airport I observed “ah crap.. they’re all wearing a scarf on their head”. And sure enough, the elderly Arab couple in line in front of me were stopped and their barrage was inspected, yielding a large and fairly exhaustive collecting of toiletry items from deodorant-spray to shampoo to hairspray and I'm pretty sure they were hiding a camel in there somewhere, although that might have been because of the drugs I was forced to quickly swallow when I saw the customs bloke had a sniffer-dog. Luckily I was allowed to pass once it became clear they had brought their entire bathroom with them and after a slight frown and a stern look from the customs officer at the discrepancy between my face on my passport picture (from 2006 so with markedly less hair both on my head and on my chin) and my actual face, I was through to the gates.

Luckily the plane was very quiet which meant I had two seats to myself, although I would have been quite happy to share the second one (or even my own for that matter) with either of the two girls in the seats in front of me. As for the flight, well I guess praise be to Allah because honestly, this is what flying on a commercial airline should be like. I think I can speak with some authority when it comes to flying after many years of 10+ flights a year and this Emirates flight topped any previous economy experience and equaled if not surpassed quite a number of business class flights. Seats were good with quite some leg-space, even on this smaller plane (Airbus A330).

The crew was terrific, not just friendly and professional in the way of Singapore Airlines staff, but easy going, joking among each other and generally creating a very nice atmosphere in the plane. The food was very nice (Arabian lamb-stew dish with rice) although I might’ve liked that even if it had been crap as I was very hungry. All in all, so far Emirates comes highly recommended by yours truly, but I do have another 13 odd hour flight to get through so we’ll see how I fare on that one. Another good point about Emirates is that if the need hits you to say praise to Allah - and again, I can see that occurring quite happily - they have a little prayer room in the centre of the plane, just above the wings. I wonder if they have a compass in there so you can figure out which way is east, or if you just sort of wing it (get it? Wing it.. haha.. ok so maybe I am a bit tired after all) I guess I will have to see about spending my colorful piece of paper on some coffee, if I don’t get run over my one of these electric cars with a siren that they keep driving back and forth through the crowds.

Oh btw.. these reports will likely get shorter once I no longer have 4 hours to kill at an airport!

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Comments

[Jack]

Time to kill
You'll have plenty of time, once you set out them live bait lines waiting for those biguns to hit. Jack

[Roy]

You are probably / hopefully on the plane "down under" by now, it was fun reading your report :) (Anyway... time to get dressed and off to Amsterdam)

[Jeroen van Wissen]

Have fun!
Hey Martijn, Have a lot of fun there! Gonna mis you on the race track this year ... gotta drink alone now :(