Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:23:08 +0000
Taking a Break in Perth Index Dubai Day 1
After a week of alternately sitting on couches and being ferried around by my relatives, it's unfortunately time for me to get back on my feet and out there in the world. I have to say, right now I'm feeling a lot less enthusiastic about world travel than I have since the trip began. I could have really used an extra week in Perth. But then, that probably would have turned into an extra month, and then an extra year, and eventually I would have gotten bored with not doing anything. I promised everyone I'll be back at Christmas, so I can use that to mitigate the homesickness. A decent night's sleep will probably help, too.
With my flight at 12:00 I played it safe and ordered a taxi to the airport for 9:30, which turned up early and got me to the airport far quicker than expected. So it was a pretty early start, and I ended up giving myself far more waiting-around-in-airports time than I really needed. Still, I did get a very nice view out the window during the flight to Singapore, and got some nice pictures of Shark Bay.
It was a somewhat screaming-kid-infested flight. I forgot my memory card with all my music on when I packed, so I didn't even have any music to block it out with.
Transfer in Singapore worked far more smoothly than last time, with everyone happy to accept my Australian passport. I bought a replacement memory card, but when I tried to load it with music from the hard drive I found that the hard drive seems to be on the blink. It's magically recovered from that kind of thing before, so maybe there's still hope. It's not helping with my lingering homesickness though, to know that when all else fails I can no longer curl up in my hotel room with some episodes of Doctor Who.
The flight from Singapore to Dubai is a pretty painful one, leaving at around 11:00 Singapore time, and getting in around seven hours later, which is then more like 2:00 in the morning Dubai time. Factoring in takeoff, meal and landing, that leaves only two or three hours sleep. I did manage to sleep for most of that, but it's not enough. It didn't seem advisable to try to snatch some sleep in Dubai airport, and I was far from confident that if I took a taxi to the youth hostel there would be someone at reception, so I just hung around in the cafe keeping myself awake. Not the best way to spend the early morning.
When I emerged to find a taxi around 5:30, the sun was creeping over the horizon. At dawn it's obscured by the Dubai smog, but the perfectly cloudless sky makes it clear that it's going to be lethally hot. And I lost my hat in Ho Chi Minh City. I'll have to be careful here.
The taxi driver found the hostel without much trouble. Unfortunately it's a bit far away from anything that could be deemed an "attraction", and apparently there are far too few taxis to go around in Dubai. So transport is going to be an issue.
Right now it's just after seven and I'm waiting for a more reasonable time to venture out to see what I can see. I plan to visit the museum today, and nothing else. That should keep me out of the sun. As soon as they let me into my room, however, I'll try to get some sleep.