It's off to Dubai Today

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Today is a day of mixed feelings, excitement to be off to Dubai but sadness as today is Tim’s Pop’s funeral. Tim is really torn for not being there and continuing the trip. Last night he wrote a letter to his Pop explaining his feelings and reminiscing about their life together, it was such a beautifully written letter and makes me feel even prouder of my wonderful husband. I think he felt better for writing it, but he is still very quiet today, all our thoughts are back home in Perth. For some reason, even though we can receive e-mails, we can’t always send them, so we found a really lovely staff member who let us send the e-mail with Tim’s letter to his Mum on his personal e-mail account. Jordan is full of people who genuinely want to help you, expecting nothing in return.

We have a different driver to take us to the airport complete with a different car. It’s a nice big Toyota van with HEAPS of leg room, this would have been a great car for the last few days, but coulda, woulda, shoulda…

Throughout Jordan, we have seen a lot of tent areas. Today we learnt that these are gypsies from Romania. There are 2 different tent groupings, colourful ones that belong to the gypsies (these are mainly around the towns) and black and white ones (because they are made from goat and camel hair) that belong to the Bedouin people (these are mainly in the desert, never near the gypsies).

Jordan airport is names after their Queen that died in a helicopter accident about 30 years ago, I thought it ironic that an airport was named in her memory considering how she died.

There is a lot of security at the airport, and they even have separate metal detectors for women to go through in case they have to be frisked. It’s also one of the few airports we can take water all the way through to the plane.

DUBAI

Dubai airport is spectacular; it’s like the Las Vegas of airports, lots of shiny pillars, lights and it’s HUGE!. They have travelators and a coffee shop just to get to our luggage belt!

When we changed our money at the airport, the lady suggested catching the train to the Mall of Emirates and then a taxi to our hotel. The train is very clean and automated. All the stations have glass walls with doors that open when the train pulls us. It’s not a quick trip, it took about 40 minutes to get to the mall and then it was a bit of a hike to get to the taxi rank.

The taxi’s are all in really good condition, clean, air conditioned and they have a meter, a bit of a change from some of the places we’ve been. Initially the driver doesn’t know our hotel, but from seeing all the new hotels and apartments popping up I’m not surprised! So after a phone call or two we are one our way. Our hotel is quite close so it only costs us 10 Dirham’s (just over $3 Australian). It’s close enough for us to walk to the Mall, but not with luggage!

Our hotel is great! We get upgraded to an Executive room, which means we have a really nice big private patio (private except for the rooms above us..), kitchen complete with washing machine (a nice change from hand washing in the bathroom basin, or it costing a kidney to get hotels to do it for us), 2 bathrooms, lounge/dining room and our bedroom. There is a gym, sauna (don’t think we will be using that) and a rooftop pool.

It’s pretty well what I expected Dubai to be, lots of high rises, but not just your average straight up and down kind of building, it’s like all the architects try to outdo each other, with the shape, height and over-all design. There are lots of men wearing the traditional gear and more women wearing the full gear than anywhere else we’ve been. The sandstorm is probably the thing I didn’t expect, you can’t see 100 metres down the road at times.

Today there is a lot of dust being blown around, apparently it’s not usual and should go in the next day or so.

THE MALL OF EMIRATES

We decide to walk to the mall. The dust is suffocating and I’d hate to be asthmatic. It doesn’t take much to figure out the shortcuts to get there, it’s harder finding the entrance once we do. So we do the only logical thing and we follow someone who seems to know what they’re doing…

It’s enormous, we get ourselves a map and stand there looking like tourists working out where to start, we’re not alone!

You name it and it can be found here. There’s a huge supermarket (we stock up on snacks and laundry detergent), it’s like a combined Coles, K-mart, Harvey Norman, they sell everything!

They have all the brand names that we can only afford in Thailand and Bali, there is even a mini Rodeo Drive inside, complete with street lights.

We check out Ski Dubai where we will be going tomorrow, it’s a huge indoor ski area. Only we would go to the hottest desert on the planet to go to ski!

We have dinner in the food court where they are playing, you guessed it, the World Cup. Italy is playing and there is a huge crowd watching. We share a table with a couple from South Africa who are on a 4 year contract working there. They don’t like living here (they especially don’t like the heat) but the money is fantastic.

We’re surprised by the amount of people who have kids there late at night, poor tired grumpy naughty (because they are tired) kids. The shops stay open until midnight and apparently they keep the littlies out till then.

So we walk back to the hotel, joking that we have become again those tourists we laugh at, walking around a new place late at night in the dark! But we get back safe and sound. It feels very safe here.

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