Well we have made it to Dubai after an 11 hour flight from Perth. We were in a 4 seat row at the very back of the plane. The seats were quite small much to the discomfort of the 2 largish Greeks who occupied the seats next to us. One of the Greeks was used to flying business class but his mate had talked him into buying these cheap flights - he found flying economy class very challenging. He could not unfold his table fully as his belly was too large so he tried to stand up in the aisle as much as he could. Unfortunately we had quite a lot of turbulence during the trip so the seat belt sign was on most of the time and he had to remain seated. He did say at the end of the trip that he would be flying home business class!
Dubai Airport is massive but very easy to find your way around. Lots of stainless steel and glass. Jim had to open his hand luggage after it went through the x-ray machine as his monoculars had shown up on the machine. His new buy off e-bay and of course they were in army colours. The girl queried whether they had night vision (which they don’t) looked through them and then let us through. Thought for a minute we were not going to get out of the airport - good start to the holiday! We never thought that these would present a problem we just didn’t want them to get broken in the check-in luggage. I thought the additional spare parts Jim brought in the check-in luggage for the van would be the problem!
We have done the City tour on the hop-on hop-off bus and are amazed at the new projects under construction. Some even look as though they have been started but not finished. Most of the labour in Dubai appears to be foreign workers and there are loads of them everywhere.
We stopped at the Wafi Shopping Mall on Friday which is the Holy day so most of the shops were closed. This shopping mall consists of shops selling only very expensive designer labels and this is where the rich and famous shop.
It's quite amazing the amount of freight (including washing machines and electrical gear) just lying on the wharf at Dubai Creek waiting to be loaded onto the wooden dhows for shipment to various ports around the Arabian Gulf. There didn't appear to be any security guards or anyone keeping an eye on them. Apparently the crime rate is very low here.
Well tomorrow we fly to Istanbul (with the monoculars in the check-in luggage I hope). We hope to meet the McKinney's from New Zealand at the Dubai airport as they are catching the same flight as us to Istanbul.
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