I arrived Tuesday in Dubai, around 2am. Quite a temperature shock... It was only 27 degrees!! The hotel was nicely located on the beach west of town, not too far from the office.
On Wednesday morning I took a taxi to the "old town", driving east through all the construction sites: Palm Island, World Map Island, a tower of something like 280 floors and 1km high (still only a project) and many more.
Here some people are driving like crazy, overtaking from left and right, at 100km/h when speed limit is 50km/h. There are plenty of traffic jams but some still find it worth to use the hard shoulder or drive on the sand to take a short cut... Apparently this driving is a big issue in Dubai: since people are coming from so many various places with different driving "rules" nobody knows how the other will react, which ends up in numerous daily crashes. One happened just in front of me: 2 girls were driving a mini cooper too fast, overtaking from left and right and suddenly they couldn't negociate a curve and ended up on the roof.
Finally we reached the old center and the taxi dropped me in front of the Dubai Museum. From there is was easy to have a look at some touristic bazaars and then negociate a deal for a 1 hour cruise within Dubai. This cruise allowed me to see the most impressive buildings and to enjoy a relaxing time before heading to the office for 3pm.
In the street you can see a bit of everything: man dressed in the traditional clothing, women wearing saris, tourists in shorts & T-shirts, other women with very tight tops and short skirts: everything is allowed or tolerated.
After a few meetings we all went for a drink at my hotel: nice bar on the beach, cooling breeze. It could hardly have been better, wouldn't it have been Prophet Mahommet's birthday: no alcool allowed anywhere for 2 days... ;-)
At 8pm I was in the taxi for the airport, ready to leave for Islamabad. As my plane was due to leave at 10:15pm and since I already had my boarding card, this shouldn't have been an issue. However there were more traffic jams than expected and finally I reached the airport at 9:30, boarding time. The entry gate for the checking was already closed but I managed to get there anyway. Just on time at the gate when they were closing it as well... Lucky me!!
Trip to Islamabad was another funny thing to look at: many passengers seemed never to have taken a plane before, some didn't know how to fasten their seat-belts, some wanted to change seats, others didn't want to sit for the take-off or landing... Poor stewardesses!!
We arrived in Islamabad on Thursday at 2am. I was fortunate enough to be in the first bus unloading at the immigration, rushed to the counter and quickly got my luggage: 4am I was in bed, much better than during my last trip!
I have also posted some pics on yahoo (click here) for those interested.
