The cocktail and prawns are laid in-front of me by two waiters both dressed in near full three piece suits even thought the temperature is pushing forty seven centigrade. For a split second someone looking over may have mistaken me for some rich celebrity playboy spending his millions on seafood and wine in the playground of the middle east, then they would have noticed the $3 thongs, twelve day growth and general unclean look, quickly realising I’m just another bum backpacker.

Welcome to the Dubai, United Arab Emirates

As I leave Dubai international Terminal 3, possibly the nicest airport in the world, I’m whisked away on the metro. The view outside is of Dubai, a town unlike many others.The city scape looks like the scene from some futuristic thriller where global warming has reduced the earth to a giant sandy ball, only rich people survived and everything has a brand name on it. The architecture is strait out a child’s imagination, skyscrapers are larger at the top, there are angles at the strangest points and the tallest building is 600 stories.

Hitting the worlds largest mall I’m assaulted by every designer brand on the planet. Armani suits stand next to stella mcartney dresses, Ferrari shoes next to Austin Martin watches. Then I stumbled upon possibly the coolest thing in the world – SKI Dubai.

It was snowboarding time. Outside the temperature was hitting 47, but inside it was a balmy -3C as I suited up in my stylish thermals, beanie and gloves.

After an hours lesson to ensure I didn’t break anything I explored the man made slope and had fun slipping and sliding around, and of course falling down…. a lot!

It must be said skiing in the desert is a MUST if you visit Dubai. (Costs around $100 US for adults)

Knowing I still had to kill 10 hours I did possibly the most normal thing I’ve done in 3 months of travel – I went to the movies. Toy Story 3 (3D) was playing in the cinema right next to Ski Dubai and the big kid in me, who after skiing was super excited, wanted very desperately to see buzz and Woody and Mr. Potato Head, in 3D. Now I’m not saying I cried (a tear may have leaked out) but the ending was ridiculously well written! There was a group of dads with their little kids and every single one was wiping his face and trying to hide it from their children as the final scene faded.

After a ridiculously childish time I headed over to pretend to be rich at the Burj Al Arab which was actually quite an expensive exercise – who would have guessed. The hotel is beyond luqurious, I mean there is little in the way of money spared. Even though I was only having a $40 meal at the restaurant I was driven there on one of the many ‘golf buggies’ along side some rather rich looking Arabic gentlemen who all were quite bemused that there was a clearly poor Australian backpacker joining them.

By this stage, 5pm, I had been awake approximately 43hours and after leaving the stunning Al Arab I spotted the last activity, Going up Dubai’s tallest building.Sadly this was a little disappointing - the tower itself is a bit of an engineering wank – at 600 floors only around 450 of them are large enough to be of any use for offices, apartments or viewing decks (which is on floor 400). That said the view is spectacular, and the ride up is trippy, the elevator is like a mini nightclub.

After this sojourn to the top of Dubai I headed back to the airport, at this point I’d been awake two days and I started seeing, hearing and feeling things. As any good traveller does after making it through security I headed to the departure board to confirm my flight was on time, during this process I was suddenly made aware that I had in fact not booked a flight to Heathrow but to Gatwick. After no sleep this realisation nearly pushed me over the edge into madness, luckily I collapsed in a chair before this and managed to get 2 hours sleep before boarding my aircraft, and then passing out for the 7hour flight ahead.

So now on to London.

From a gold coated airport seat in Dubai

GK Out

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