Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Dubai is one of my famous extended layovers on the way to Thailand. I don’t like to take long flights, so I prefer to split them up into max. 5-6 hours each. I also don’t like to rush from one plane to the next at the airport. To solve this, I stay at the layover destination for at least 5 days. This time in Dubai, it was 3 weeks. Stopping on the way also eliminates problems with time zone differences since it’s only 2-3 hours and that I don’t even feel. In general I don’t have big problems with time differences yet, but it’s a nice addition the my other issues anyways.
A good friend of mine I was spending some COVID time with while in Tunesia migrated to Dubai a couple of months ago, and I was curious to see how she’s doing there and her environment there. She is not living in Dubai itself but in a city connected to Dubai in the North called Sharjah. Which is way less touristy, more religious and cheaper. I came to this part as well, not to reduce unnecessary commuting.
My Airbnb host was an Indian developer. A super friendly guy who worked in Abu Dhabi. He came by to say hello and even brought me an external screen so I would work better. We started to talk a little, and he ended up touring me around with his car in the area at 1 AM in the morning. I’m not a big car fan, but his car was very nice.
Shortly after I arrived, there was rain in Dubai. Yes, rain, you heard it right. It happens a couple of days per year that it rains, not much. But because the ground is so dry and there are no sewers in place, things are underwater for days just after 30 minutes of rainfall. That happened while I was having a quick meeting, and when I looked out, things looked quite different. I went for a walk to capture those strange pictures in the Dubai area.
The following days, my friend and I worked regular working hours and after work, we met for dinner and hung out. December/January is the best time to visit Dubai, with mild temperatures around 30 degrees celsius. During my time in Dubai, there was also the Football World Championship in Qatar. So many public viewings and overall a nice atmosphere. We first were thinking about going there for a game, but even being just an hour flight time away, it was still way too expensive talking everything into account. So we just followed the games in the screen as everyone else.
On my first weekend, there was the Dubai Marathon. An initiative for people to do sports. We wanted to take part in it. Not to run a full marathon but a smaller distance. The nice part is that they closed the big streets in Dubai, and you were running towards the highest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, where the finish line was. Just that by itself was a fantastic experience.
There were more highlights during my stay in Dubai. For example, I met some more people I already know from my previous travels who are based in Dubai now. For example a Peruvian friend with whom I went for a walk and drinks, or another friend from Tunesia who’s a flight attendant at Emirates and hence based in Dubai. With her I went for kayaking in one bay just before dawn. It was a nice atmosphere with great lights. With my expat friend, I also went into downtown to see the famous lights- and water show. Another evening we went for a concert of a Egyptian singer at a amphitheatre on a small island, visited the Global Village, or we went to a little theme park, like children, and played the rollercoaster or the ferry wheel. It was a lot of fun. Just amazing company always.
During my last weekend in Dubai, we wanted to do a little getaway from the city and took a bus north to Ra’s al-Chaima, a 1.5-hour drive away. There, we booked a hotel and intended to do a bit of hiking. Sadly, I didn’t manage to organise a proper tour that could take us. Arriving there, I didn’t have much motivation to do something, just too much travelling lately. So the getaway wasn’t as spectacular as we wanted it to be and my friend was a bit disappointed, understandable. I just didn’t had the energy to do the organisation. One good thing that there was the national holiday during this weekend and some shows where taking place in the close by mall, which we could enjoy. We also went to the beach to enjoy the water and sun for a short while.
