An Idiot's Guide to 12 hours in Dubai.

It was never my intention to write a piece on our 12 hour stop off in the city of Dubai. It was only supposed to be a rest from what otherwise would’ve been an insanely long flight, and a chance for the Dubai customs officers to rifle through our belongings and us to make as few social faux pas as we could. But the city was so drastically different to anything Cheshire or South Yorkshire (as you might have guessed, I aint a well travelled chap) had to offer, I figured I’d give the boys at the Dubai tourist centre a favour and spread the word about their pokey little city.

As I have suggested, I am useless when it comes to all things foreign and anything which can’t be bought from Tesco’s or Weatherspoons. I was genuinely excited by the prospect of flying out of Gatwick, as if it would offer something different to my usual aeronautical haunt of Manchester. Our twelve hours in Dubai started with us swanning through customs with the same sort of arrogance as a seasoned bingo gal struts into Mecca Bingo, we then proceeded to get lost in the airport, before getting confused by their notourisly simple and easy to use tram system. (Driverless, as a security guard was delighted to point out). The city itself was an incredible testament to what a blank chequebook and some boozed up English architects can achieve. Every building was stunning in both design and scale, tearing up out of the Arabian desert as if in some utopian sci-fi film. We visited two of the most jaw-dropping of these monster buildings, firstly, the Dubai Mall, the largest in the world (again, according to the security guard, who had a lot to say for himself), and containing an ice rink, a waterfall, a full sized aquarium and something called an Underwater Zoo. (we never discovered how an Underwater Zoo differed from a aquarium, suggestions included snorkelling elephants and drowning monkeys were never confirmed). After the Mall, we were going to drag our homeless tourist asses back to the airport, this was Dubai, alone and bed less in a British city would have inevitably resulted in a 8 pint session at a local pub, a shouting match with locals and a subsequent trip to some sort of late night eatery. Alas, this was Dubai, and thus, at least two of the above would have not been welcome. But as we left the Mall we came across, without doubt, the most outrageous, unnecessary building in the city, the region, and quite possibly the world. The Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, the entire emirate dedicated its economy and workforce to its construction. Over one hundred floors of gold-plated decadence, a the grand opening of the building earlier this year cost well in excess of £100million. It looked like a space-age rocket, the lights flickering and dancing up and down its huge exterior. We saw it, we liked it, we decided to go and have a drink in it. I have never felt more out of place at a bar than in the Armani Hotel Lounge (yeah, it aint a bar, its a freakin’ lounge). I have never been forced to put three drinks onto my credit card, because i don’t have enough cash to get a round in, (I had in excess of £30, no dice). As we sat and drank our solitary drink discussing the economics of the Emirates in the worlds biggest building, I’m not gonna lie, I felt pretty bloody cool.

Time seems to stand still (or at the very least get oddly subverted) when dealing with planes, I just can’t get my head round time zones or the time difference. So come 3 o’clock in the morning in Dubai Airport, we’d pitched up outside Burger King, we were all wide awake and watching various sheikhs and businesspeople waltz around the vast expanse of marble and stone which made up the airport. This was odd, as earlier that morning (about quarter past ten), I had cracked through a couple of beers on the plane, because drinking that early on the plane doesn’t make you an alcoholic, it makes you a sociable traveller.

 I’m going to leave you with a piece of travel advice; between the three of us we only managed to bring two DVD’s for the entirety of our four month stay. One of these was the aforementioned Blood Diamond, which will be perfect for those long evenings alone in secluded, rural Afrika. The other was Four Lions, a comedy about four would-be suicide bombers who for two hours make a series of malfunctioning bombs and Jihadist videos. A hilarious film, though quite why we decided to watch it in the middle of Dubai airport I’m not sure, I couldn’t imagine a more inappropriate film to watch in the airport than one about suicide bombers, but I suppose we couldn’t leave the city without making one massive faux pas. So, would-be Livingstone’s and Stanley’s, remember, take films appropriate to where you are going, maybe a Rom-Com, or some sort of Ben Stiller flick, but not a film about Afrikan civil war and another making fun of Islamic fundamentalism.

An Idiot's Guide to Packing for Afrika

(Due to the rather darsh internet connection they have over here, these next two blogs are a little belated, thought I'd stick them up at the same time as I have long since packed and left Gatwick/Dubai)

Everyone prepares for big events in different ways; Rocky prepared for his fight against Apollo Creed by chasing a chicken round a street and doing an uncanny impression of a moron, whilst Spurs footballers prepare for a big game by way of a three day bender in Dublin some some sort of related sexual assault charge. For my own ‘big event’ both these seemed tempting as preparation, but an earlier incident in Dublin and a distrust of mobile poultry meant that the cornerstone of my preparation for Afrika consisted of watching the film Blood Diamond.

Little tip for any other budding Afrika-bound travellers; don’t watch Blood Diamond. A brilliant film it may be, but the constant gunfire, casual genocide and perennial screaming did little to sooth over any underlying fears about the continent. Though saying that it did provide me with three invaluable lessons which I will adhear to over coming months; firstly, don’t trust anyone with a dodgy South African accent (he’s only after one thing), secondly, everybody in Afrika wears wife-beaters, and thirdly, never, ever, use the phrase ‘Your just another black man in Africa,’ when speaking to the local population, it does not go down well.

Blood Diamond aside, my preparation for the trip has been fairly coherent and surprisingly organised, thanks in no small part to the willingness of everybody to impart some sort of ‘advice’ or insight when it comes to Afrika. These ranged from my brothers insistence that driving from Tanz, through Somalia and Sudan, and back to Manchester was a ‘do-able exercise,’ to my uncle’s solitary piece of travel advice, namely “Make sure you don’t catch anything uncureable out there,” said with a wry smile and the knowledge I knew exactly what he was getting at. As a result, the subsequent packing for this particular expedition has been comparable to a Columbian man stumbling across a world of drugs but only having one, small mule to put them all in.

I can sincerely recommend the website gapyear.com, as a solid place to sort regardless of your destination; essentials such as mosquito nets, water purification kits and a wind-up torch can all by found with relative ease. They are all rather pricey, but as it turns out there is a limit on the crap Tescos is willing to sell, the idiot traveller is often given little choice. After spending on this fun-filled website the equivilant of what  Tanzania's answer to Alan Sugar earns in a year, and filling up my man-size backpack with such gear, I had a similar amount of difficulty deciding on what clothes to take.

Now, this isn’t a night out in Sheffield. A dirty shirt (nobody will notice the smell once we are in the club, and if they do, theres usally someone whose pissed themselves in the corner I can blame), and shoes held together by an ecletic mix of glue and gaffer tape is unlikely to impress the locals. My next thought was inspired by Roger Moore, and his one-man mission to resurrect the safari suit in the 1980’s Bond films, however a jumped-up white bloke in a linen suit waltzing about rural Africa teaching the ‘Queen’s English’ is one thing that my degree taught me not to do. Africa’s twin tormentors of sun and mosquitos, mean that it is wise for those of a fairer complexion (no one cares if you don’t burn in Rochdale, this is Afrika) to cover up as much as is possible, with long-sleeve shirts and preferably lighter trousers. Obviously, I am also taking a range of Topman’s shorts for those days when I fancy a breeze circulating, though this in itself brings a new problem as knees are considered offensive by many of Tanzania’s more conservative population, and we have been advised to wear shorts which cover the offending body parts. Sure, drunk policeman and ‘white man bus fares’ are part of life, but as soon as someone shows a bit a knee everyone kicks up a fuss. Typical.