Dubai, United Arab Emirates

That’s it! The house is built, sorted, and now locked up securely and it is time for us to head off on another round of adventures. Yes, after going through the drama of building a new house and getting it almost EXACTLY the way we wanted, we are heading off to Europe for nearly six months!

But instead of flying direct to England, we have decided to stopover in Dubai for a few nights. But, as we decided to stopover for 3 nights, it has made a huge difference to our travel insurance. By staying for 3 nights and not 2, our travel insurance premium increased by $100! What a rip-off! But, hey! That’s insurance – always a rip-off!!

So, we landed in Dubai at 0-dark-30 (ok, so it was 5:10am) and apparently that is rushhour for arrivals from Australia. We were flying on an A380 and all the Ramps were full, so we had to park on the tarmac and get bussed to the terminal. From the amount of time we spend driving around the airfield to get to the terminal, I was starting to wonder if we had landed in Abu Dhabi, and were driving to Dubai.

Anyway, we finally arrived, got stamped into Dubai and headed to our hotel. And, we arrived in time for another breakfast! But as we would be leaving too early to have breakfast on our third morning, we decided to even out the balance. Yep, here comes another breakfast! But it wasn’t totally overload as Nick hadn’t eaten breakfast on the plane as it was too fussy and not the sort of thing he likes to eat.

If you ever want to see what an excess of money combined with a determination to have everything Western, then visit Dubai! In the MOTE (Mall of the Emirates) – they have a ski-field! Yes, that’s right, an indoor ski-field, with J-bars and a Ski-lift! Walking around MOTE, we were exposed to every kind of extravagance that money could buy – designer clothing, designer shoes, jewellery, cosmetics/perfume… all being purchased by women wrapped in their black hajibs from head to toe.

I might just add that our hotel was out near Jumeirah Beach, between the Palm and the new Palm that is currently being built. There was beach, sand and a broadwalk with lots of restaurants, but we ended up buying some dinner from a street stall – we had a Kima Paratha and a Saj with Cheese and Zaartar. Kima is a spicy mince and a Paratha is like a fried Roti. Saj is like a flatbread and the cheese was a soft white cheese and Zaartar is a mix of spices. We rounded it all off with a couple of Gelati from an ice-cream cart.

I understand that Dubai is very open to western dress standards, but it was really strange to see the locals dressed in their flowing gowns, men in white with their tea-towels held on by thick licorice straps and the women all in black, walking amongst young westeners in their mini-dresses, skimpy shorts, muscle-shirts, etc.

Day 2 in Dubai began with another yummy breakfast – Nick was in his element and I was enjoying the variety of choice that I didn’t have to prepare and cut-up. We had opted for a guided tour of the Old Town which would include the Gold Souk. We saw the Burj Al Arab (building built on reclaimed land), the Burj Khalifa (tallest building in the world), the Dubai Mall (largest Shopping Mall in the world), the Sheikh’s palace, as well as his summer house and his yacht, we visited the Dubai Museum which tells the story of the development of Dubai and the creation of the United Arab Emirates. And then we went through the Spice Market and ended up in the Gold Souk.

I have to admit to a slight twinge of disappointment with the Spire Market but I think it was because we were walked through without any chance to stop and also because we had seen the Spice Bazaar in Istanbul which looked more the thing. And the Gold Souk – how many shops selling gold jewellery do you need? Looking in a lot of the shop windows, I couldn’t even imagine how or where you would wear most of the stuff we saw. A lot of what we saw looked like it would be bought and worn for weddings, to display your wealth.

After our tour, we headed back to the hotel and headed down to the pool to soak up some sun and relax.

Our last day in Dubai was spent relaxing – eating breakfast (yes, again!), and then heading down to the beach for a couple of hours. Sadly, because of the reclamation works, the Arabian Sea doesn’t flow as easily as it used to, so the water gets a bit whiffy after a while, so then it was back to the hotel pool for some lunch and drinks.

The drive through the sand dunes was much more fun! Even if we were in a long line of cars. The sand dunes in Australia are much more orderly, in that they run horizontal to each other, whereas the Middle East ones are all over the place, like leftover sandcastles at the beach! We saw one 4WD which managed to get stranded at the top of a dune (all four wheels couldn’t touch the sand at the same time), which reminded us of a turtle stuck on it’s back but no-one stopped to offer any assistance! We had the obligatory photo opportunity in the desert with photographers wanting to take your photo and then sell them back to you!

Finally, we got to the Bedouin Camp which was created for the tourists, but we had a lovely meal there, rounded up with some bellydancing and all under the most amazing canopy of stars, with a backdrop of sand dunes.

Our drive back into Dubai was fairly staid, but we had a chuckle on comparing roads – in Australia, we are lucky to get 4-6 lane highways, with a maximum speed of 100kph, but in Dubai, they have 12-land highways with a top speed of 120kph however, I don’t think our driver got the memo about the top speed because he always seemed to be doing a lot more!

And now, it’s Friday morning – Happy Birthday Tyson – and it is off to the airport to catch our plane to Heathrow.