Day 6 - Singapore to Dubai and Day 7 - Dubai

I'm writing this late in the morning Dubai time on Tuesday.

It was a very long Monday...

I did get lucky on the laptop battery front - there was a place in the Funan Digital Life mall in Singapore selling a whole bunch of them. And no I didn't have to sing. Something tells me the humour of it would've been lost on the staff...

Bought a cool set of noise-cancelling earphones for the remaining flights that I had. They worked really well on the way over here!

I had to check out of my hotel at 3pm and my airport transfer wasn't until 8:45pm, so I had some time to kill. I tested out both the laptop battery and earphones in the foyer of the hotel listening to some music. It was steadily raining at the time and by the time I bit the bullet at 4:30, it was still steadily raining. What does one do when it's raining and you've got time to kill?

The answer was perfect. I headed back to the cinema where I saw "Wall Street". It was only a couple of blocks from the hotel, so it really was the perfect solution.

But to see what? I passed on "Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen" because obviously I hadn't seen the first movie. That'd be like watching "Wall Street 2" before "Wall Street"! In the end I settled on Leonardo Di Caprio's new flick, "Inception" mainly because I didn't like the sound of anything else.

And I'm glad I went for it - it was a brilliant movie. Molly says "do yourself a favour" again. I won't give away the plot, but let's just say the title refers to getting inside a person's dreams and planting an idea in their head. A very mentally challenging film to follow but well worth it if you do.

I'd gotten back to the hotel and within 10 minutes, my ride was there - he was about 20 minutes early!

So we made it to Changi Airport where I went through the usual international travel procedure. Check in, pass through Immigration, change currency etc. However they didn't do the security screening until I was at the gate.

We left at 11:40pm. I so badly wanted to sleep but I mustn't got in more than about 2 hours. By the time I got to Dubai Airport at 2:50am local time, I was a mess. It meant the time was now 6:50am in Singapore and I'd had hardly any sleep since that time the day before. I felt like a grizzly bear...

And it didn't help that it was a long way from our gate to the passport control, baggage and security areas. Multiple moving walkways, multiple downward escalators, multiple upward escalators. Good thing I wasn't in a hurry to catch another flight!

Finally I made it out, found my driver and got to the hotel. They have left hand drive cars and drive on the right side of the road. Took a few minutes to get used to! And I have to say that my driver used the lane markings as an indication, not a strict thing to follow. But at 4am, you can get away with that in probably any city around the world.

When my head finally hit the pillow at 4:15am, I was so glad. But I had to get up in time for my free breakfast. Did it finish at 10 or 10:30? Reception did tell me, but I suffered a massive memory failure. Presume 10 just in case. Typical it turned out to be 10:30, but that's about my average sort of luck...

Breakfast was nothing out of the ordinary, aside from the donuts. And they make a mean fruit juice over here too. Kenny G was playing in the breakfast room - I didn't mind it actually because it wasn't anything "hard" to listen to.

Picture time - what's my room like? Let's start with the view. This shot looks toward Port Rashid and Dubai Maritime City. I don't think I can see the Persian Gulf, but it isn't that far away. In the foreground of the shot is Fort Al Fahidi, the boat you can see is just behind the Dubai Museum.

 

Calling it a room is an unfair description - it's actually an "Executive Suite". See below pictures of the bedroom and the lounge room. Yes the two rooms are separate!

 

You can't see them in the photos, but there are also two Sony widescreen TV's.

I'm planning on spending a bit of time in the room today, because I don't feel particularly energetic at the moment. I might head across the road to the Museum if I'm more enthusiastic later, but right now I can't see it happening.

I may check out the hotel pool, it's perfect weather for that actually. 38 degrees and fine!

Tomorrow, I'd like to do a tour of the city if I can arrange it. Right now, I can hear the call to prayer coming from a nearby mosque - there is no doubt whatsoever that I am now in a Muslim country.