Dubai

We were accompanied by lots of athletes whose events had finished in Ashgabat on our flight to Dubai. We had expected delays so had booked two nights in Dubai just in case.


We stayed at the Millennium Airport hotel near the airport as we had previously been to see the sights of the city. The hotel is massive and overlooked a building site that was being worked on 24 hours a day. We saw buses bringing workers in and taking them away at the end of their shift. The construction went around the corner and across the street but we did not know if they were going to be the same development or separate ones.

It was so strange to be in a place where everyone smokes inside. The bar restaurant in the hotel was full of smokers.

We wanted to replace our travel clothes and buy some gifts for the family so we headed off to the Deira Mall where we replaced our walking shoes. John got as haircut from a Syrian barber who also treated us with some Syrian biscuits. he has been about 14 years in Dubai and still gets home now and then to see family in Damascus.

The fresh salads at the Carrefour supermarket were a welcome treat from Central Asian cucumber and tomatoes and a better option that the hotel restaurants with their bistro type meals.



The next day we took the metro near the hotel to the Dubai mall shopping centre. It is even larger than Deira. We watched some of the skaters on the rink on the ground floor and the fish in the large aquarium on one of the floors. Bought a few gifts and did a lot of people watching too. Bus loads of tourists poured into the place.

The hotel had a free shuttle bus stop at the front for the airport which was really convenient. Immigration at the airport was really easy as we boarded our flight to visit my cousin in Singapore.




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