Cheese Please

Had more cheese in the past week than in the past couple years combined I think! I hardly ever eat cheese at home, but at the hostel, breakfast was included, and always consisted of a bowl of something (scrambled eggs once, corn flakes once, unidentified but good stuff twice) plus several assorted cheese packets and jams and pita bread. I think I might be the only one at the hostel who took full advantage of the breakfast deal, it seemed other people were often not eating their main course.

Well, now I'm home. Got in yesterday evening. It's pretty nice to be home, but anticlimactic in a way too. And also my mind started to wander onto things less pleasant, like not actually returning to many friends, or the fact that there's no job or school or anything waiting, just an uncertain void. And having no insurance to help pay for any drugs etc. I might need, or dental care, etc.

Anyways, after that first not so interesting day of wandering around, things improved a bit. I just hung out the next morning, not doing a whole lot, reading some little brochures about what to do. The guy who gave me a taxi ride was around at breakfast, chatted about Dubai and it's future a bit... Phoned my flight attendant friend, and arranged to get together. Took the public transport system there, I really like being able to take public transit again actually! I spent lots of time looking through the very thorough bus routes book that I got. It took me much less time that expected to get to our meeting place. Just hung around a while, had lunch at a Thai place, it was really great! I was really excited to use chopsticks! One of the things I was looking forward to lots upon getting home was to be the food, but Dubai is spoiling that a bit since I am already getting good food here. After lunch, we met up with another flight attendant she knows, and went to a mega shopping mall. Not particularly different than here, except for the arabian treasures section where I picked up some souvenirs. Oh, and we walked around Ikea, something I like to do when visiting foreign countries, even though there the same everywhere in the world! They got a call and had to head out early for some important person's impromptu birthday party... I learned a lot about the life of flight attendants during these couple days, how everything is really living life day to day, not able to make plans beyond a few hours, sleep patterns really screwed up, difficult to acclimatise to anything, able to meet tons of new people (new crew on each flight), but then not likely to see them much after that. It's neat to go to various parts of the world, but overall the job's not as glamourous as I used to imagine.

Next day, got up early for breakfast, the taxi ride guy joined me again. He asked me if I wanted to know something funny, told me to look at the jam packets, see who made them (Halwani Bros.), turns out he IS one of the Halwani bros. So I've been having breakfast at a youth hostel with the co-owner of some multinational company, just a little unexpected! (he could have been BS-ing, but what he talked about and the way he talked about things the last couple days, I find it believable.) Took a taxi into Sharjah... from where I was, it wouldn't be much more expensive than busses, and would save tons of time. Sharjah has lots of museums and art galleries, so it is interesting for a little while until you get tired of them. Got a taxi back to the hostel around 3pm, it was much cheaper than the one there for some reason. In the evening the previous day, I met another tourist who was on his way out, but highly recommended a desert safari, despite being a little expensive. So I called the place and made a reservation, it was actually a bit cheaper than expected. Turned out to be well worth it. Fun racing over sand dunes in a Toyota Land Cruiser. Ended at a camp, got to ride a camel for a few seconds. Got to buy a couple more souvenirs :) Got to have a really good dinner (dinner included was one of the things that made me comfortable with the overall price). Got to see a bit of belly dancing. And head back to the hostel around 10 pm. The desert safari was definitely the thing to do in Dubai.

Next day, got up early again, and headed on public transit to Hatta, a village a couple hundred km away, supposedly a good weekend vacation place. I don't really understand why, seemed there wasn't much there. Maybe at a different time of year. It was neat to see mountains though, even though they were completely barren, a different scenery. A german I met on the safari accompanied me. He originally planned for 1 month in Dubai, but after being there a couple days, reduced his vacation to just 5 days! We wandered round the historic village, it was pretty good. Headed back to Dubai fairly soon after that. I found I was really low on money, but could possibly get by... calculated enough that I'd have enough for the few bus rides I'd need, and as long as I found a restaurant that took credit cards, I could finish up my money and leave UAE with virtually no money. I really didn't want to have to go to a bank machine. As it is, things worked out perfect. After dinner I even let myself buy a McDonalds ice cream, though I realised that that 33 cent purchase might have left me begging for airport bus money the next morning (that's how close I was cutting things!) After Hatta, I bussed to near the super fancy super expensive hotel, and hung around there looking in awe upon it. But to enter the hotel you need to have reservations to spend at least $70 inside (which I heard from the Germans is equivalent to two coctails) so I didn't bother. Found a nearby beach and hung around there... the water was as warm as the air. Bussing home sucked, I think thursday night is part of the weekend here, so everything was rush hour traffic jammed and full busses.

Next day, had breakfast as earliy as possible (7 am) then got public transit to the airport with my last scraps of money. The flight to London was good, and by incredible coincidence, the monday flight's flight attendant's flight attendant friend was a flight attendant for my flight! Of the thousands of emplyees and hundreds of routes, that's amazing. The flight from London to Calgary was really empty, I'd say a maximum of 1/3 seats were used. Much older flight attendants.

Great to be back in Calgary, though cold! Ghana was over 30, Dubai was over 40, Calgary is under 10.

So many things to do. But I guess no big rush, my schedule is completely empty.

Probably won't be posting much more on this blog, now that the trip is over. Thanks for sharing it with me.