Hi just wanted to a post a blog to let you know that I have arrived in London.

I arrived yesterday at about midday UK time. Luckily Dubai is only 2hrs ahead of London so there wasnt really any jet lag effects. 

Took a shuttle service from Heathrow to Kensington Gardens where I am staying in a very modest hotel for 2 nights. Its a very small room but clean and not old and cruddy, so can’t complain. Its not too expensive and in a really nice part of London, near Notting Hill. Very trendy place close to the Tube Line.

So I arrived at my hotel, spent about an hour trying to get my UK Sim card that I bought from Ebay in Australia to work with no luck. I tried to top it up with some credit but it kept asking me for my UK post code and rejecting it. Anyway gave up on that and thought I will use the roaming phone until I get another Sim at the First Contact meeting. By then Ben had arrived around the corner at Bayswater Station so we spent the afternoon sightseeing. Saw Buckingham Palace, London Eye, London Bridge and Tower of London. We ate a late lunch/ early dinner in Pizza Hut. Ben ordered a large stuffed crust pizza thinking he’d be able to eat it on his own, well it was huge so we ended up carrying around the half finished pizza in the box for the rest of the afternoon. This is London, everything is expensive so we weren’t throwing it away!

Right now I’m writing this from an internet cafe in Tottenham Court Road. It’s a very busy part of the city. I came here to attend an information session about setting up my UK bank account for work and also my NI number. Managed to find it without problems.

This morning I was trying to find Kensington Palace but with no luck. I’m just no good at map reading and there didn’t seem to be many signs pointing the way. Anyway after a while of wandering around I gave up and decided to get the Tube from High St Kensington…somewhere. I was planning to go to Victoria Station to see WestMinster Abbey but then I saw Knightsbridge and I thought: I’ll go to Harrods!

What an amazing place. I spent way too much money there because you can buy all these cool Harrods stuff like bags and teas and pens. And its nice stuff, not tacky. And the Food Hall blew me away, they actually have a yum cha bar (called Dim Sum here) and rooms and rooms full of fresh fruits, meats, chocolates, alcoholic beverages, seafood. Its like 10 times bigger than DJs Food Hall in the City!  And then I was walking back to Knightsbridge Station and unfortunately I had to make a detour because the closest entrance to Harrods was shut so I ended up walking past Accessorize and bought another cute bag and a hat.

Well like I said I’ve probably already spent too much money in the one day I’ve been here. Tomorrow I am taking train to Oxford to stay at a hostel near Ben’s place (gotta save money and I dont think theres much room at Bens house) and then we are taking train to Scotland on Sunday through to Wednesday. Hopefully on Thursday I can get my National Insurance Number in Oxford and on Friday I leave for a week in Greece.

Starting to miss home but am enjoying myself. I am going to go and have another late lunch now. I bought a peking duck wrap in Harrods for 4 pounds, looks tasty.

Much love always and check out Flickr, under Photo Collection for my latest photos

Vanessa

Dubai2 008

Originally uploaded by vness085

One of my Dubai Photos….check the link out I added below under Dubai Photos to see the rest. I am having great difficulty mastering Flickr.

Dubai Photos

So as you will see from my title, I have been awake since 5am. When I woke up it was still dark, from the window where I am sitting I can daylight is just starting to come around. It would be nice to see a sunrise but I don’t think I’m at the right positioning for that and even if I was there would be too many buildings blocking the view anyway I’m sure. I think this is my favourite time in Dubai, its not so hot!

I haven’t been doing a whole lot here like I said last time. I am really starting to feel the effects of this dry heat weather and my altered body clock. I keep waking up really early so then I am exhausted by the end of the afternoon (the heat surely doesn’t help that) I should probably stay up later so I don’t keep waking up so damn early but it seems rude to that when Celine and Jonathan both go to bed quite early because they have work the next day,

So I’ve been on my own here a lot while they are at work. Actually Jonathan has gone to Yemin for work (he’s involved with oil mining now, he didn’t go there for a holiday lol) so it will just be me and Celine here for a couple of days.

Yesterday I woke up (early of course) so I rang my family. My brother asked what time is it is there? I said ‘5am, I can’t talk too loud because my hosts are still asleep!’ I wasted a few more hours checking emails, reading yet another book. At about 7.30ish Jonathan and Celine got up to get ready for work. From about 8.30 to lunchtime I just did stuff like watch a dvd, went for a swim, stuff to pass the time until Jonathan got back at  about 1pm.

In the afternoon we went to look at another of those fancy Dubai hotels. This one was quite amazing, It had these man made canals outside that you can take a boat along. And they have like stalls and lots of fancy stores inside and there were turtles in the water. Sorry I am terrible with the names of these landmarks because they have Arabic names, Then we went to another shopping mall. This one was quite cool. I had like an Indian Court and a Chinese Court.  We came back and played Jonathan’s new birthday present (the Wii, how generous are his friends to buy him one of those!?) and then he said he was going to yoga with Celine and did I want to come. I said no thanks, for one I am on holiday and I felt too hot and exhausted for yoga. I went to lie down for a bit and ended up sleeping for 2hours. I woke up just as they got back around 8.30 and we went for dinner at the local Wagamama. This is Dubai, most of the people here are expats so don’t be surprised I am not eating Arabic food all the time! We actually went to Johnny Rockets (it still exists here and is still exactly the same as the one that used to be in Castle Towers when I was in primary school) on Friday and also due to go to wait for it….Chilli’s! FYI the menus at these places are exactly the same as here.  I am not complaining at all!

So today because Jonathan is in Yemin and Celine has work, Jonathan organised for a driver to take me around to old  Dubai. It’s a friend of his who drives people around at his work. And tomorrow I am going on this desert safari drive.

As it is now 6am I may try to go back to sleep for a few hours as I will have quite a few hours to kill before the driver comes to take me out this afternoon. People don’t really go anywhere until mid-late afternoon, its just too hot!

Until later my friends…

-V

Well here I am in Dubai. This is my second day here. It’s seriously so ridiculously hot here that you do not want to venture outside of your nice airconditioned apartment (if you have one, I’m guessing most people do)

Seriously I know my adventure is just beginning and I have never left Australia so it sounded cliched but Dubai is a weird place. We went driving around yesterday and most of it is quite ugly.  There’s cars and construction everywhere and its just so hot that you can see the heat rising up. Don’t get me wrong there is definitely some amazing architecture here, like that 7 star hotel, I forget the name. Theres a lot of nice buildings like that but seriously this place is concrete city. Like right now I am looking out the window of my the computer room in my cousin’s apartment and I can see the pool below and on the other side ANOTHER half built hotel/apartment block/shopping mall. They are building everywhere. Its because 15 years ago there was nothing here except sandy deserts and my cousin says even in the last 5 years half of the city has been built.  Oh and I  can see a lot of palm trees everywhere I look here. That’s a good thing because so much of the places we drove around to yesterday, they’ve already destroyed what little foliage there was to begin with.  Yes compared to this place Sydney and Melbourne are beautiful, beautiful places. There is only one real beach here. Everythign else is manmade: manmade beaches, manmade marinas, even this manmade ski park thing inside the Mall of the Emirates, which is a freaking huge place. It was okay, looked like most malls you would see but they had Chillis and Johnny Rockets so who’s complaining.

I sound like such an ungrateful brat. Don’t get me wrong I’m so glad to finally be seeing the world but I wouldn’t want to live here, its really quite ugly. There are parts they are building that look like some Miami Florida ripoff. You know lavish expensive resorts with all these expensive stores right by the manmade marina.  Places for the rich….

Hmm another weird thing, in the guidebook they said women shouldnt wear lowcut dresses, even my travel agent advised me against wearing singlet tops so I’ve packed all these relatively conservative clothes but everywhere we’ve gone I just see westerners in bikinis swimming at the (manmade) beach or in the pool. And Mall of the Emirates is so westernised, everything is in English. I’ve seen lots of those sheike looking men and a few women totally covered up but most people seem to be westerners.

Last night Jonathan had a party for his 30th, all his friends are expats. Mostly British. The girls seem to be the wives/girlfriends of these expat guys who’ve come over here for work (all wealthy from the look of it) or people who come from families with money.

So yeah its been a strange experience so far. I wrote in my journal yesterday, very boring entry about the plane trip over but I’ll post it up later if anyone wants to read it.

Still feels surreal. I am enjoying this part of the trip though where I can enjoy doing absolutely nothing because I know starting soon the full on travelling thing will start. I’m also wondering how I’m going to buy any souvenirs, there doesn’t seem to be much room in my suitcase. At the airport it weighed in at about 17kg so I’m under. It just feels full already. I’m going to have to do some reorganising of it before I leave here on Thursday. And I left the camera cable at home too damn it so I think I’ll try to go out and see if I can find one here when my cousin finally awakes from his alcohol induced coma. Then I’ll post some photos up.

With love from Dubai

Vanessa