Dubai arrival - day 2

We arrived at 5.30am feeling pretty good. Dubai airport took a long time to get through, but most of that was because we walked a long way. When we were supposed to arrive at midnight on our initial flight, we booked a non-cancellable hotel close to the airport. So we still used that to have a wee sleep before being able to check into our other one. They upgraded us to a 3 room suite with 2 bathrooms and a big bath. It would have been great to have that the whole time we were here. Neither of us slept for very long – maybe an hour, but it was great to have a lie down and a nice shower.

Our 2nd hotel is around 800m from the Dubai Mall, but the room is much smaller being just one room with 2 single beds close together. But we chose it for the location which is great. We got all checked in around midday, and then really needed some food, so went off to the mall. It is still as huge as I remembered! Had a nice mixed grill thing for lunch, and found the supermarket for the yummy passionfruit that I had in South America. The aquarium is spectacular in the mall with sharks and lot of different rays.

Before I came here I had googled different things to do. The global village looked good, but that was closing before I arrived. But, it had an extension so the last day was now today. So after recovering from our mall visit – feeling a bit jaded by then – we jumped into taxi and set off.

As we were leaving the clouds were looking threatening so we put on light jackets, and my umbrella. It took 40 mins to get there, and by that time there was quite a bit of rain. The village was a bit like Epcot in Orlando. Lots of different countries had an entrances off the central area, and there were lots of culture specific foods and products. We went into several; Yemin, Turkey, Iran, South Africa but by that stage the rain was quite heavy with lots of thunder and lightening. Some of the cobble areas were a bit slippery, and lots of women walking around with their long black dresses getting wet at the bottom. I was surprised at all the honey stalls in Yemin, I had no idea that was a product from there, and loads of different varieties. The vendors were quite pushy about getting us to try the honey. I bought some dried fruit in Turkey, and at another stall just wanted a couple of figs, so held up 2 fingers. The man said 2 kilos? And I said no just 2. I think he was a bit disgusted about that, so gave me 2 figs and wandered off. They were very nice, maybe I should have got 2 kgs…. So after about 1.5 hours, we bailed. It was starting to get dark, and was getting harder to keep track of each other in the rain as it was mainly outside. We were pleased that we went to see it, and could have spent a long time going into all the countries, but in reality we had arrived that morning, hadn’t had a lot of sleep and weren’t really up to investigating it until the 3am that it was open to.

So then took a taxi back to the mall because I seem to have managed to lose my cell phone charger cord. Very annoying as I am normally careful about that, and remember putting it into a snap lock back – just can’t find that particular bag. Lucky to have lost it when we were close to a mall that sells absolutely everything! We were feeling a bit wet – Jody’s denim shorts were soaked. So we watched 2 of the fountain shows, and then made our way back to the motel. I had vege sticks and watermelon for tea. Jody had a Macca's burger and chips (she could join our team in Tok!). She has been having trouble with cramp, so wanted some salt.

We now have an exciting excursion planned on Monday which is different to what we were going to do, and we are both pretty excited about – must be for me to put excited twice in one sentence! More news about that later….Read more