Saturday 25/10/08 - ...and hello to Dubai. Time is 21:25 when we land in Abu Dhabi. Straight through immigration, no visa, no questions. Our itinerary says to make our way to the Etihad limo counter - it is hard to find - we get conflicting advice while exiting and find it is back in the immigration zone after we are out in the open - just a small counter before walking into the arrivals hall.

On producing our boarding pass from the flight we are told to go to exit Gate 6, where the limos are parked. The limo service is complimentary to take passengers to Dubai, about an hour away we have been told. However we could not find the name of our hotel in our documents. The limos supervisor says we are booked for transfer to the Renaissance Deira and tells our driver. Apparently he doesn't understand as he asks us again when we get going and then calls his boss to confirm yet again. Afetr some 75 minutes, we arrive at Radisson!! Much consternation and Arabic discussions between our driver and Radisson staff re location of Renaissance - our driver does not appear to know of it, hence the confusion - and 45 minutes later we are finally at the Renaissance. The transfer started at 20:10 at Abu Dhabi and we reached our destination at 00:15 after a wide-ranging night tour of Dubai. The first hour or so of the trip was at about 140 kph in the new white Caprice. Actually it was quite interesting to see Dubai by night so we aren't too worried, only very tired by the time we wind down and get to bed about 1:30.

The construction activity in Dubai is immense, even at night. We are told that 28% of all the cranes in the world are now in Dubai, working 24 hours a day. (Most of the others must be in China?) And the traffic at midnight resembles Sydney peak hour. No wonder they have a 60km metro line under construction. As a result, many city areas are quite a mess with lots of temporary access situations.

Photos: Hotel room at Renaissance, "his" and "hers" in our bathroom (cute eh? - haven't had a facing each other arrangement like this before) and reception area at the Renaissance.

Sunday 26/10/08 - the bed is so extraordinarily comfortable - you feel like you're floating in space that I don't open my eyes until 6:45, very late for me. Down to breakfast at 7:45 and find no one from the group there. Maybe they are off on a tour somewhere? Talking with the breakfast supervisor, we find we are the only ones in the group to have breakfast yet. On the way back to the lifts we find another 4 of the group on their way to breakfast - seems that everyone else is too tired. Many of them have been early breakfasters all along so we are surprised that they have all crashed after the short flight to Dubai.

Marta does a bit of washing and we go for a walk to the local shopping areas just for look, waiting for the hotel shuttle service to take us to the closest large centre at 10:30 (shops don't open until 10:00) for a quick look around. The local centre turns out to be a medium size (by Sydney standards) and we have a coffee at Gloria Jeans. Then the hotel shuttle to the "City Centre" shopping complex (large by Sydney standards) about half an hour away, followed by a 4WD Desert Safari in the Eastern Desert of Dubai at 14:45, a visit to a camel farm and dinner in the desert at a "traditional" Arabic camp. Yet another belly dancer but this one was really great and worth watching. Great control, great style and very fit, I find out later that she is a 35 year old from Egypt. I even get an enchanting table-top performance directly above me at the camp. Nice!! Looks like Egypt now ships its best belly dancers to Dubai and leaves the second rate ones behind for its local shows.

Photos: Scenes in Dubai streets on the way to the City Centre shopping complex and inside the centre.

Photos: Marta with one of our 4WDs at the Desert Safari, a shot on safari in the dunes and the group of vehicles in our safari stopped for a rest and photos.

Photos: A desert sunset with a cloudy sky (rain is coming in a few weeks from the way the sky is looking, Hussein tells us), Marta with one of her favourite animals and my favorite belly dancer.

Hussein, our 4WD driver, is a laugh a minute, literally. The four of us are in stitches for most of the hour or so drive to the dunes and the hour or so in the dunes. Lister even complains that his stomach is aching from all the laughing. Hussein even likes some of his jokes so much he can't stop crying from laughing - BEFORE he tells them. Hussein seems to be in control of the desert safaris - he is an Iraqi who came to Dubai in 1976, married a German lady, has two daughters and never been back to Irag. I wonder what that story may be? Didn't have time to explore it further before we got back to the hotel. He also tells us life in Dubai for locals is great - married couples get 1000 Dirhams (1 Dirham = AU$44) a month for each child from the government, free medical, free hospital, free schooling and free housing. Locals = nationals = people born here. Foreigners are slugged for everything and get nothing for free. Hussein can never be a local so is one of the ones slugged for everything. Tough life.

It was a great ride, a great evening and a great day.

Monday 27/10/08 - last day in Dubai. We fly out from Abu Dhabi at 10:10 tomorrow morning and arrive in Sydney at 7:15 on Wednesday morning after a 14 hours flight. We now discover another omission by our travel agent: there is no mention of when we will be picked up in the morning for transfer to Abu Dhabi airport.

Our itinerary says we farewell our tour director at 8:00 after breakfast, hardly likely as our plane takes off at 10:10 and the airport is about 1 hour 30 mins away. A second itinerary tells us that "after breakfast you will be transferred to Dubai International Airport..." but no time is given. On querying this with Scenic's local tour director, Mr Kausar Ali, he tells us that he cannot help us as we are not now part of the Scenic group as we are not departing with Emirates, he has no information on our departure and cannot help us with our "private arrangements". Don't you just love it? No doubt some good "reason" from our agents or Scenic when we get back to Australia. The guy on the reception desk at the hotel was much more helpful and happy to call Etihad, confirming our driver will be here at 6:30 tomorrow morning for the pickup.

This morning the group is doing a sightseeing tour of a local mosque, the king's palace and a museum. We decide to give it a miss. Too many mosques, palaces, museums and local history already. Can hardly remember any of it anyway without going back to see what I have written. Others in the group seem to me the same with history retention so it can't just be alzheimers. Instead we will do The Big Bus Company Tour of Dubai. It covers both city and the beaches, total 4.5 hours if you stay on for the lot and is of the hop-on hop-off variety with the ticket valid for 24 hours so we can stop at whatever we find of interest.

Dubai is one big untidy construction site. Buildings are going up left, right and centre. Roads and streets have been ripped up and detoured to provide for this construction as well as the new overhead metro of some 60 kms. Traffic is choked in all directions. Lights are dead slow, seem to take around 5 mins to change. The whole city has basically been built over the past 15 years or so and there are concrete, steel glass towers everywhere, as well as numerous huge holes with new projects started and others partially complete. The latest, due for completion in about 6 months, towers over 1200 metres (1.2 kms!! - or so we are told) into the sky, like 4-5 thin pencils of various lengths on their ends and tied together. It's actual height has not yet formally been released but it will be the world's tallest building when it is completed. However... another project, which will surpass this one, is due to start soon so it will likely only hold that record for a couple of years or so.

The Big Bus Tour consists of two routes - the RED route for the city (2 hours) and BLUE route for beaches. We end up doing both and not hopping off at all. The whole day, with an hour or so at the City Centre, was about 6.5 hours with no hop-offs and gave an excellent overview of Dubai. It is HUGE. Imagine Las Vegas plus the Gold Coast, multiply by 50-100 times and that's Dubai. Four and a half hous by bus covers it only from a distance for much of it. The city is continually in a haze, which we are told is dust as result of the 24/7 building activity. We notice that cars parked in the open for a while get a thing layer of dust cover - although we cannot smell, feel or see the dust. It wass interesting that some buildings that appeared very hazed from a distance still looked hazed when we drove past as only some 200-300m distance.

Photos: The photos below are a collage around Dubai, taken from The Big Bus Comany bus (first photo) as we toured around the city, to give a general impression of what we saw. Note cranes in background in many shots and the haze for anything more than 200-300m or so away.

Back at the hotel we had final drinks with the remaining members of the group. A few were staying on for another 4-5 days at various locations, including the new luxury Atlantis (only open 2 weeks - intro special AU$6300 for 3 nights). One was flying on the London on business and the rest were heading home with Emirates. We are the only ones flying Etihad. A few drinks and a quick hamburger were about all we could manage after a tiring day and we were in bed by around 22:00.

Tuesday 28/10/08 - time to head back to Australia. Limo to Abu Dhabi airport gave us a better look at both Dubai and Abu Dhabi en route to the airport. Traffic in Dubai is crazy. Population of only 2M but feels like they have 4M cars on the road. Abu Dhabi has 1.5M people with traffic not a big issue. Difference is all the construction activity going on in Dubai and the resulting road closures and diversions.

A couple of hours at the airport while Marta trawled some duty free shops and I had coffee and a sandwich - and caught up with emails - in the Etihad lounge completed our stay in Abu Dhabi until our 10:10 departure. Then an uneventful but tiring trip home. Marta snoozed for a while but even with a fully made up flat bed I stayed awake, watching movies and reading a book.

Photos: Marta being fussed over to make her as comforable as possible, a steak sandwaich and glass of red while while watching a movie and the bed just made up in preparation for my evening sojourn.

We arrived into Sydney half an hour ahead of schedule at 6:55 Wednesday morning - and the tour is over. Now for a rest.