Intercontinental Dubai-Festival City

DUBAI! Like Vegas, only WAY more expensive.<br>The cheapest hotel within 5 miles of the Dubai Airport? $550 a night! The minibar might as well be a safe. The airport terminal is like a gleeming, brilliantly lit movie set. Dubai is home of the world's best hotel, the Barq el Arab, the only 5 star hotel anywhere. Brunch is $150, plus drinks, even alchohol! I managed to crash ...

... card and are within shouting distance of their boarding gate. They normally have offset eyes due to one always being focused on the departure board for fear there might be last second change.<br> They also having a tendency to cruise the "duty free" shops and can easily be indentified by their cry "How much is that in English Money".<br> <br> We Left Dubai for Hong Kong but just like the Terminator "We'll be back" - in seven days time.....<br><br><br><br><br><br>

... be taken aback with all of the nightlife Dubai has to offer.  One thing that is equally perfect as the nightlife, is the quality of delicious snacks. Tabouli, vine leaves, baba ganoush, and hummus, are great ways to ease into the Mediterranean style of food. Lebanese restaurants scatter Dubai like towers, each one with varying recipes and each one with their own perk.  Some restaurants cater to the hungry shisha smoker, allowing him or her to smoke  as they dine, Even if you ...

... I had jumped into an unmetered cab - too late by then! It ended up being AED65 so about $30 - not much for Aussie taxis but still a bit more than it should have been. Another lesson ! The mall was really impressive. Obviously. It was huge and beautifully decorated and the indoor ski slopes looked great. The supermarket was unreal. Must have been the size of Menai Marketplace and the carpark and then some!! After this went for a little wander ...

... So a lot of people actually have two phones, one for business and one for personal. Chris was already at Elements Café for one hour before we got there and was finishing eating a sandwich. I ordered a lemon-mint Shisha and a pepsi and us three had a good laugh. After a while Ayman's friend Hassan showed up. Very cool guy, he is half Emirati and half American. Then Ahmen and his Uncle Joe showed up for a little bit before they had to go to the airport to pick up his ...

... Oh ya, car prices are quite cheap here. Suzuki Swift is 45-49k, Honda Civic is ~70k, Toyota Corolla ~65k Savings in rental and can be used to buy car?? I think roughly you can allow 3 months to get a driving license, so the first 3 months, 90% Louis &amp; Jovan have to use school bus. For bus fare, the Malaysia colleague at Corporate office told me she can claim, we should be able to claim as well..

... t a nice expereince. Although you know that you have nothing illegal on you you start to worry anyway. Like what if someone hid something in your bag etc. They wouldn't care, it would be straight to prison for a long long time. <br><br>In the end we only stayed one night as our minds were set on getting home and starting to build our life again. Maybe we will come back to Dubai on holdiay in the future when we look respectable.

... all the modern conveniences. It looked like a shopping mall at Christmas even at 1:00 in the morning. Even better, because we were waiting so long, Emirates gave us a wonderful free buffet meal at its hotel restaurant. They had chocolate mousse for dessert. We also got free Internet at little booths stationed throughout the airport. So I can't complain. We arrived in Delhi around 10 in the morning. A new continent awaits!

... in the Club Building (there is a seperate breakfast for tower guests and also La Fornace, pizza restaurant is an alternative - we could also have a continental breakfast in the Club lounge - but we didn't do that). Breakfast is served until 11.00am, which proved great later in the week as we sometimes found we weren't hungry first thing, so we'd do a bit of sunbathing and then go for a bite to eat later. The choice at breakfast was quite staggering, everything you could think of and ...

... hotel well known by all, Burj Al Arab. Funnily enough they wouldn't let us in for a look but we headed to the local public beach to watch the sun set and the lights come on. It looks pretty amazing. Exhausted we headed back to the hostel where we retired to our separate male and female dorm rooms, on separate floors of course. Megs was in the shower when Rick came up to her room to try to talk to her. He was chatting ...