Dubai, United Arab Emirates

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I cannot remember the arrival into Dubai. I cannot remember anything about the flight from Bangkok. I do remember Chris giving me one of the little purple pills that we brought in Sumui and him telling me to have a nice sleep. This seemed like a good idea since I’m not a good flyer. Apparently the last time I was cohesive was in KFC at Bangkok airport. After that everything is a blur. Chris found the whole thing amusing.

God only knows how we got through customs.
God only knows what was in the pills!
God I cannot wait for the next long-haul night flight.

We found one thing out very quickly about Dubai. It is not a place you come if you are on a budget! Certainly the prices are a rather painful after spending six weeks in Thailand, where a good meal costs less than $3 NZ and great accommodation less than $30 NZ. Sigh.. back to the real world.

We were booked in to stay at the Dubai YHA which sounded like a good idea as it was about as cheap as we could find. Upon arrival we found that none of the taxi drivers had clue where it was and very few spoke English. Therefore our map with English words was useless. After booking into the YHA we spent the first day negotiating the public buses and trying to navigate our way towards any of the things that make Dubai appealing. We were not successful.

While the new rooms in the YHA are pretty darn nice, the same cannot really be said about the old rooms. The room was certainly livable but the dodgy lock on the door (you could see big gashes where someone had tried to break in with something big and heavy), the fact that is miles away from anywhere, transport was tricky and expensive, the swimming pool was EMPTY and the RUDE, RUDE, RUDE guy on the front desk meant that we were keen to escape ASAP so we checked out after our first night.

In our haste to get out of the place we realized half-way through our taxi ride that we had left our passports at the font desk with the owner of the YHA (passports have to be left as a security deposit). Damn. First mistake.

Upon arrival to our new hotel (found on the internet: Yay for internet hotel bookings!) we found that the new hotel had not received our booking (Damn internet hotel bookings!)

Since we were only mere tourists (there were plenty of rich business people milling about to keep the hotel staff busy) the hotel front desk people didn’t bother looking into the matter until it suited them.

We waited in the lobby with our packs for nearly an hour with no apologies or refreshments. Finally from the internet booking service was contacted and another hotel of the same standard was found for us.

The ‘kind’ bell-boy flagged down a taxi for us as we needed to go back to the YHA for the passports before moving to the new hotel. When a white car arrived with no taxi markings, we said “This is not a taxi, there’s no meter!” to which the reply was “Yes, yes, same as all taxi’s - see there is the meter.”

The meter was hidden in a little flip out thing next to the stereo. Like idiots we said “oh okay then” and got in. Looking back on it, the heat must have affected our brains as this was the same scam as in Thailand. Dumb. Second mistake.

Of course we the driver popped down the little meter back at the YHA it was twice the price of the exact route we had just taken an hour or so earlier. The traffic was less so there was no reason for the doubled fare. W@#!@k#! Of course when Chris told him what we thought of him, he couldn’t speak any English except for “no no same same!”

After paying the W@#$%#%@ we picked up the passports and finally made it back in a nice metered taxi to our new hotel. Dubai dramas over - nearly two days wasted!

We did have some enjoyable experiences in Dubai though. One being the crazy, crazy, enormous shopping malls. Sounds pathetic that we traveled to a place with a new and interesting culture to explore and we spent some of our time in shopping malls - but the heat was unbelievable and the desert safaris were expensive and unappealing after our long trip so we went for the air conditioned comfort of the malls. How embarrassing.

We enjoyed looking at all the seriously trendy stuff for sale and loved the fact that it was totally out of our price range. No temptations - makes things much easier!

The day before our flight to London we headed towards the one place that we had saved money for. Wild Wadi is an amazing water park next to the famous Burj Al Arab at Jumeirah Beach. While it is quite compact, they have packed a huge number of rides into the park. The best aspect of the park is the uphill waterslides which mean that you only have to line up once and you can go on up to 12 different slides. The slides have really powerful jets that propel you upwards before you land in a pool and zoom down the next slide. Some really cool slides including a nasty dark one and a huge, incredibly steep one that Chris went on twice. There is a cool area for little kids. A water playground with lots of hoses and guns. The playground is flooded every minute and the kids nearly get drowned in the deluge. Fantastic!

The views from the top of the slides are amazing. We were able to get a glimpse of ‘The World’ and ‘The Palms’ - the islands they are building and selling over here. They have a lovely wave pool and lots of tidal rivers that you can float down. Poor Chris didn’t last long on the body-boarding ride but only his pride was hurt.

Also this park had the nicest and most helpful staff members we had even encountered. Top marks for customer service!

Our full day at Wild Wadi was a perfect end to our trip. The sun was scorching all day long and we enjoyed the chance to revert back to childhood for the day.

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