A holiday from my regular life: The second day in Dubai

8^th August 2012

My second day in Dubai started when I woke up at quarter to 6 in the morning. Turned out I crashed at 5.30 last night and so did the other two! This meant of course, that we had all missed dinner last night and were all starving! So it was off to the buffet again! Luckily, it seems tourism comes before Ramadan at our hotel so we can eat there! Today they had added hash browns, I pretty much filled up on them. The croissants had been replaced too because we had almost finished them yesterday so they were soft!

After that big breakfast we left to get our Afghanistan visas again, while Tony stayed behind to do work again. We caught a taxi straight to the embassy this time, because we wanted to get there nice and early. We only had a 100 dirham note and the taxi driver didn’t have change for it, so he told us just to give it to the desk at the hotel we are staying at and he would get it from there! I was amazed that he would be so trusting of us. Once inside the embassy we were given a number, and sat in some seats to wait. The air temperature was regulated to a cool 30°C! And it actually did feel cold compared to the outside air… While we were waiting around there were officials coming past and talking to people, exchanging their tickets for one place in the queue for another. This was my first experience of the corruption I’m likely to encounter in Afghanistan.

After we had handed in our passports we jumped on the Metro to the Emirates Mall to fill in some time. We grabbed some water from a supermarket in it but, of course, we couldn’t drink it because of Ramadan, so we had to wait until we left the mall for that. I found an outdoors shop and bought some socks and some tough shoes for in Afghanistan, because I left home with almost no clothes, and just planned to get them all on the way, figuring they would be cheaper to get in Dubai than in Wellington. Then we read a map of the mall and we found out they had a ski slope inside the mall!! It was astounding they had the money to build this thing in a place where temperatures get so high. Me and Greg were talking about temperatures and apparently the water in the sea here gets above 30°C, which I thought was awesome, but Greg said that it feels like a spa and you really can’t stay in it that long, it’s warmer than an air temperature of +40°C. And then I thought about the pools here. In New Zealand we advertise warmed pools, but here they would probably be above 35°C even unwarmed, so really what you would want in a pool is for it to be cooled!

Anyway, I’ve had a few beers (they come big over here) and I’m feeling really tired! So goodnight! Next time I write I’ll be in Afghanistan!