Despite a buffet breakfast, I was able to restrain myself a little. We were picked up from the Galle Face Hotel on Colombo’s waterfront at 0845.
The ride to the airport of over 30km took about an hour. Security was tight at Colombo Airport just to enter the terminal. With our flight departing at 1255, we had plenty of time. We took things easy and the time required to go through the formalities didn’t bother us.
With Keerthi and our smooth Toyota Corona Premio at Colombo Airport.
We boarded the Emirates A330-200 by bus for the flight to Dubai. The food was excellent in economy class but some of the British crew weren’t trying very hard to be pleasant.
Landing at Dubai at 1510, we took Bus #401 to Al Sabkha Station where we checked into a nearby budget hotel. Accomodation in Dubai is expensive and there seems to be very few quality pocket-friendly options. It’s either high-end or real dives.
Our choice, the Pacific Hotel was kinda a dive. But it was convenient and does the job for the night and departing very early in the morning. It was already late afternoon.
Our humble hotel.
We walked around Deira’s electronics souk and bought a memory stick priced rather cheaply compared to New Zealand.
Deira is an amazing place. It’s like Hong Kong for shopping and very cosmopolitan. More than half of the population is expat from eg. Philippines, India, Pakistan. Our phone in New Zealand was NZD430 officially but NZD350 parallel-imported. It is NZD260 in Hong Kong but here in Dubai it was NZD160 without or prior to bargaining! No wonder it is dubbed “Fly, Buy, Dubai”,
The Arabs don’t seem to appear till the evening when it was cooler. I don’t blame them as it was super hot in May. Some were friendly towards me and greeted me in Arabic. When I responded back in Arabic, their faces lit up.
We took a light dinner of kebabs on a roadside café and then wandered to the gold souk. We finished with Arabic sweets taken back to the hotel.
We tried to contact Kim’s friend Donna again to organise a meet-up on our return stopover but none of the contact numbers were successful. Our room air-con tripped, making the room very warm. But when it worked properly, it was too cold and dry. It wasn’t a good night sleep.