First Post - Sydney and Dubai

Finally, my first blog post! I haven’t had a chance to do any writing since leaving Australia, but now that we are stuck on a 5 hour flight to Prague, I can recap on our adventure so far=)

It’s been about 4 days (I think) since leaving the country so forgive this post for being so long as we still want to touch on our quick Sydney visit too.

Adventure time!

So, Day 1 from leaving Brisbane! Brendan and I left Brisbane at 8.30 am and arrived tired but excited at Sydney. The last time I went to Sydney was during a school trip and from that previous experience, I remember it being scarily huge. It didn’t hold up that way this time though. Instead, it felt like a bigger and filthier Brisbane with more interesting cracks and history.

On our first day we explored the harbour area. We discovered some nice restaurants (including the delicious Lindt café), the maritime museum, some malls as well as some general sightseeing bits and bobs. On our way back to the hotel in the evening, we came across some Chinese markets, full of tasty dumplings, pork buns and kebabs.  

A view of Sydney from the Maritime Museum

On our second day in Sydney, we had until 4pm before we needed to be at the airport. So it was off to see the CBD, The Rocks, The Harbour Bridge and the Opera house. The Rocks were good fun to look around as they were full of side streets with little pubs and cafes.  Unfortunetly, we were in such a rush we didn’t get to stop at any of them=(

This is why Brendan shouldnt be around nice things

We arrived at the international airport in the evening and met up with our other trip buddies, my mum, Vlasta, and Ian. The flight to our first overseas stop was fairly uneventful, although it made me wonder why babies can’t make more pleasant noises besides screaming and crying. One bizarre show I watched on the inflight entertainment was The Amazing World of Gumball. If you like a different kind of animation, I recommend checking it.

We flew on the Emirates A380 Air Bus to Czech

I should probably introduce our trip mascot at this point. Meet Dorbz, the fuzzy ball thing we picked up from Toyworld due to its adorableness. We are planning on making a montage of photos of Dorbz posing in front of various things during our trip.

Meet Dorbz, our trip mascot! He has nothing to do with any of the places we are visiting, but boy is he round.

Dubai time!

We arrived at 5.30am in Dubai to nice weather… before it went mad and rocketed to 42 degrees and 90% humidity by the time we got to the hotel (and it it’s not even the middle of summer yet here!).

Part of Dubai from the early morning sky.

Dubai, day 1. How tired we all were all at this point! We spent most the day at Dubai Mall, the world’s biggest shopping mall (about the size of 50 international soccer fields) and inspected only some of the 1200 shops, particularly the chocolate shops=)

We also checked out the world’s tallest tower that the mall is at the base of, the Burj Khalifa. This tower is huge! It’s like an enormous toothpick amongst the city. It stands at 829.8 meters and has 163 floors. We only got to go to the 124^th floor's viewing deck and were lucky enough to have a clearer day to actually see the city below.

Dubai, Day 2. After a (regret) buffet breakfast, we hoped on the Red Bus tour, a hop-on hop-off  bus service that travels around to some of the main attractions in Dubai including Wafi Mall, the Fort Museum, the many souks and Palm Island.  The gold souk was probably my favourite stop for that day. The gold souk consists of many shops selling all kinds of shiny items, as well as some people in trucks selling imitation products like Rolex watches and Gucci bags. But unlike the watches and fashion pieces, the precious metals and stones were very real and amazing to see! Even if you didn’t make eye contact, salesmen would try to sell you gold, diamonds or platinum and haggle with you. I learnt that this was a great place to come and buy gold and save hundreds since Dubai does not charge tax. This time though, I decided to just look=)

To finish off the 2^nd day of Dubai, we took a night bus tour around the city.

Dubai, Day3. We visited the Jumeriah Mosque, the only mosque in the Emirates that allows non-Muslims to enter. There were two ladies who were very informative and told us about their culture and beliefs and were even happy to answer any questions we had (why women cover themselves up was a popular one).

After the session,  we had a look around the mosque. In one of the small gardens we found a very thirsty looking cat. I think we did our good deed for the day by offering him some water=)

Back on the Red Bus we went to check out Atlantis on the man-made island of Palm Island. Then after a few more stops, we came to the spice souk.  This souk was even worse in terms of people trying to sell you stuff.  Multiple people would run up and follow you asking ‘Where are you from, friend?’ or ‘Would you like to buy saffron?’ I found it amusing and liked the experience, but mum was red in the face with frustration.

My favourite part of the 3^rd day in Dubai was lunch at an Arabic restaurant. Mum and Ian had some incredible Moroccan lamb curries with plum and almonds, Brendan had some cranberry rice and veal kebab and for myself, a golden lentil curry with lemon.  There were also some traditional Moroccan tea and Turkish coffee up for grabs (both of which were very nice) as well as shishas and a variety of flavoured tobacco.

To end the last day in Dubai, Brendan and I went off to a not so traditional place, Sega Republic.

So that’s the end of our time in Dubai! Being such a young and rapidly developing city, Dubai is filled with amazing structures amongst a sea of sand. There is construction taking place in every direction and the horizon is filled with cranes. You wonder at first why anyone would want to live there with that incredible heat, but you quickly learn that everything is air conditioned (even the bus tops).

Inside one of the amazing air conditioned bus stop=)

Next, to spend a few days in Prague before heading off to the Czech village of Malé Babice to visit my relatives for the first time!

Grapefruit juice in the morning gets some getting use to

Some fun facts we learnt in Dubai:

-          No pork in Dubai (Oh how I’m looking forward to bacon again!)

-          Cars are incredibly cheap since there is no tax (Dubai also makes millions $$ on speeding tickets a month)

-          Buses and monorails have women and children sections only (Brendan and Ian jumped on one of these by mistake before being ushered out=P)

-          Muslim men can have up 4 wives (if the previous wife/wives say it’s OK and if he can buy them all a house)

-          There are over 200 nationalities in Dubai

-          80% of Dubai’s population are international.

-          International people cannot become a permanent resident of the country

-          No kissing or over displays of affection in public (This is enforced by police)

-          No dancing in public

-          No playing of loud music in public

-          Everything in Dubai is huge!

(I should probably note, Its been 3 days since writing this post. I only had the chance now to upload it to the net)