Goodbye Bangkok… Hello Dubai
Bleary eyed and probably still pissed we arrived in Bangkok on our 10 hour night bus which followed a 3 hour ferry ride, got a room down the Khao San road to at least try and get our sleep patterns back on track. We had a few things to do before we caught our flight that evening and of course those things mainly included Georgie and shopping. After sleeping on a bus and a boat I was almost a cripple so we also had to squeeze in an hour massage and packing, by a lovely coincidence our friend Jo was also in Bangkok so while we waited for the time to leave our beloved Bangkok we chatted away and said our goodbyes again.
We had checked in on-line… luckily because although we had left more than enough time to get to the airport and faff about there Bangkok’s traffic was jammed solid and what should have taken 40 minutes took 2 hours. Knowing full well if we missed the flight Jo and Mandy would have held me personally responsible and probably removed parts of my body in the most painful way possible I was shitting myself, the taxi driver could sense the tension in the back of his cab and put his foot down but it really did seem too late. We arrived at departures with 10 minutes to spare and if I hadn’t checked in on-line earlier we would have been an hour late! We rushed through the gates and made it onto the plane with literally seconds to spare.
A lovely flight, if a little long after the last few days on buses and boats but soon enough we were on the ground in Dubai only an hour away from seeing Jo and Mandy with only Dubai’s infamous customs and immigration to deal with… Of course I was singled out and taken into a little room, relieved of my jeans and searched a good’un, nothing intrusive but still very thorough! I put it down to being to cool and attracting jobs-worth’s to flex their muscles… Once I got my trousers back we boarded the shuttle bus to Terminal 3 to meet Jo and Mandy and only waited for maybe 10 minutes before Georgie let off a whopping scream and ran off in their direction.
It was so good to see them again and with hugs and squeezes out of the way it was like they never left the last time we saw them. A short taxi ride later and we were at Richards house, our crash pad for the next few days and our good friends home. He naturally welcomed us with open arms and open bottles and we all sat out in his gorgeous garden catching up and getting squiffy, everyone was getting tired from traveling and for Richard it was getting late so before things got too serious we all headed off to bed happy, excited and very tired.
The next morning was a glorious sunny one as ever in Dubai, Richard was up and so were his boys Fergal and Keiron. We hadn’t seen them for as just long as Richard and it was really good to see them too, there were no plans what so ever for the day so all we did was sit around the pool in Richard’s garden enjoying the sun and playing with the boys in the pool. Georgie was teaching them how to play poi, Mandy was handing out cuddles as if they were going out of fashion, |was in charge of the play station and Jo went off with Richard to a party for someone.
Come the evening the boys were tucked up in bead and Richard took us out for dinner at a steak restaurant called the Steakhouse in the Madenet hotel, having a few drinks at the bar beforehand I was asked for my I.D which made my day! The meal was nothing short of awesome, it has been an age since I had a steak and the steak I had was in fact the finest steak I have ever had, I will dream of that steak forever! We ate, we chatted and we drank, as is the pattern when around those lot. By the time we were in the car park staring at all the Ferrari’s and Bentley’s Georgie was ready to fall asleep on her feet so by the time we were back at Richards it was time to turn in.
It was a real culture shock not just returning to a western world but to Dubai, the flashiest and most glitzy city we’ve ever seen. It was really nice to be back in a house with friends and family but it really did take some getting used to and Dubai isn’t exactly famous for being a halfway house kind of city, its all about more is more and the best Georgie and I could manage was an open mouthed gorp at all the finery of it all…
