Brad and Lily in Dubai-India-Pakistan: July 1-3--Phoenix to Dubai

The flight from Phx-NYC was about as expected. The flight was full. I slept uncomfortably, though more than I thought I would. There was a cute, chubby little girl next to me with her dad. She was a little concerned I didn’t get my pair of plastic pilot’s wings. We landed about 7 a.m.

Remember that little portable photo printer I bought? Well I kinda forgot to buy replacement photo cartridges, and each cartridge only does 10 pictures. And I didn’t remember that until the day before we left. So I got on the internet to find a place in Phoenix that sells the cartridges. No dice. Finally I arranged for a messenger service in New York that would buy them from the place in NYC and deliver to me during our layover at JFK. It wasn’t cheap but it worked. A guy in a van delivered my package of cartridges to me right after we landed.

The flight from JFK to Dubai was a dream. I can’t really imagine any international flight going more smoothly. I had a seat by the bulkhead with super legroom and no one next to me. Lily was right behind me and she had an entire row to herself, so she could spread out and be happy as a clam. The plane had a gazillion movies on the in-flight entertainment system, so time went by quickly.

When we were just north of the Turkey-Iraq border, there was an amazing view out the window. The moon was full, the sun was a bit short of rising, and the clouds were rippled in a way that I really haven’t seen before (probably because I’m not at 40,000 feet very often). I took a photo, but you know how the pictures never really do the views justice in that sort of situation.

We landed on time at about 8 a.m. Getting through immigration and customs was easy. We took a bus to the hotel that was a breeze. The room is great and modern, with a decent view.

We went to the Dubai Mall. It’s Ramadan, and also Friday (the Muslim sabbath), so it was pretty slow. Most of the people were foreigners. Since eating or drinking in public is illegal during daylight hours, the restaurants were all closed. The mall is gigantic and very modern—like something you’d see in Beverly Hills. There’s a big ice skating rink, and a huge mounted dinosaur skeleton, and a huge aquarium, and lots of other things. Shops selling jewelry and Arab stuff are interspersed with The Gap and Hollister and The Cheesecake Factory.

By afternoon Lily and I were both feeling pretty jet-lagged and hammered, so we went back to the hotel for a nap. Afterwards we were just as groggy as you’d expect, but after MANY attempts I finally got Lily out of bed and we went to the Burj Khalifa, which is the highest building in the world. Wow, it’s high. There are two kinds of tickets to check out the top—the regular ones that go to the 125th floor, and the fancy shmancy ones that go to the 148th floor, where there’s a lounge and a gift shop where you can buy stuff like a $7,000 ceremonial gold dagger. I misinterpreted things and bought the fancy shmancy tickets. Dang, that was like 80 bucks each. Oh well, we were with the upper crust for a little while. It was a little surprising to me how little you get for the extra money ($82 vs. $34 for the regular ones). A couple couches to sit on and a uppity gift shop and that’s it. It’s not like there’s any appreciable difference in the view. It kind of seems like buying exclusive access is a big deal here. Even at the aquarium there was a VIP option where you could pay extra and not wait in line. Maybe status and access is the last thing left to buy when everyone in the community is rich, as they are in Dubai.

Lily’s tummy started to hurt in the afternoon while we were at the Burj Khalifa. We ended up coming home early as a result so she could lay down. I was bummed by that because iftar (breaking the Ramadan fast) is a big deal, and I was hoping that we could get some cool Arab dinner while watching the famous coordinating fountain show close the Burj Khalifa. Oh well. As we were leaving the mall everyone was arriving. Friday nights (after sunset, when the sabbath ends) are a big party time here, and everyone was heading in to have a good time. I was really tired anyway, so I didn't really mind having an excuse to go to bed at 8:00. In fact, it was hard to make myself stay up from 7:00, when we got back to the hotel, until bedtime at 8:00. I slept like a rock except for about 30 minutes of jet-lag insomnia from 12:30-1:00 a.m.

The next morning (7/4) I woke up about 7 a.m. and we laid around in the hotel room for a while. We went down to the hotel restaurant to have breakfast. There were a lot of random foods there I didn’t recognize at all, but also western stuff. During breakfast Lily got a little teary-eyed and I asked what was wrong. She didn’t want to tell me but eventually confessed that she’s homesick. I think it’ll be a lot better once she’s working and doing productive things. But it turns out she’s not a big fan of doing the touristy thing. Unfortunately we have quite a bit of that ahead of us! Hopefully morale will improve as we get going. But I’m not thinking that she’s going to be a huge fan of the day-long tour I have planned in Chennai. We’ll see!