{"id":28,"date":"2009-03-30T06:44:27","date_gmt":"2009-03-29T21:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/?p=28"},"modified":"2009-03-30T06:51:48","modified_gmt":"2009-03-29T21:21:48","slug":"back-in-dubai-after-2-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/uncategorized\/back-in-dubai-after-2-years","title":{"rendered":"Back in Dubai after 2 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On holiday again. Alas unlike 2007, this is not a proper 10 week holiday but a 4 week taster of 2 or three countries. On the plus side, I&#8217;m going places I&#8217;ve never been as well as catching up on how things have changed in Dubai. Enough fake anticipation, I&#8217;m a week into the trip and sitting on the balcony of the Mayfair Hotel in Cairo, a so-called 1 star hotel but actually quite a lot better than that makes it sound. Let&#8217;s call it a 1-star bedrooms with 2 star service in a 3 star building. I like it anyway and it is certainly an oasis from the hustle and bustle of Cairo.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, Cairo comes later. First I had 3 days in Dubai. Don&#8217;t believe all the negative press you read about this place. It&#8217;s no ghost town. Every crane I saw was woreking. And it makes sense. In a world where you&#8217;re nervous about giving credit, giving it to those who do the banking for the oil producers is still a pretty safe bet. Anyway, I could go on about this for ages, but will save that for another post.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 480px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/images\/2009_dubai_egypt\/960\/Sheraton_Deira_rooftop.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Rooftop at Sheraton Deira\" src=\"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/images\/2009_dubai_egypt\/480\/Sheraton_Deira_rooftop.jpg\" alt=\"Rooftop at Sheraton Deira\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rooftop at  Sheraton Deira<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>On arrival at 6am and a speedy trip through immigration, I found myself with 6 hours to kill before my room would be ready, so I set out on a bit of a walking tour to kill time. The older parts of townin Deira and Bur Bubai (without the &#8216;j&#8217; it&#8217;s a promontary on the Western side of Dubai Creek, with the &#8216;j&#8217; it&#8217;s the tallest building in the world, you&#8217;ll get used to it).<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t get my camera out so there are no serious photos of this day but I&#8217;ll sort something out on my way back through or dig up some photos of my 2007 trip. This side of town hasn&#8217;t changed much except for the massive new Emirates only terminal 3 at Dubai Airport. Which is awesome except they have no facilities for taking passport photos. More on that later. I took two photos from the hotel roof that I&#8217;ve included.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, that&#8217;s my first blog entry for the trip. Loads more including my day out at the pyramids coming shortly.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 480px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/images\/2009_dubai_egypt\/960\/Burj_Dubai_from_Sheraton_Deira.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Burj Dubai from Sheraton Deira\" src=\"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/images\/2009_dubai_egypt\/480\/Burj_Dubai_from_Sheraton_Deira.jpg\" alt=\"Burj Dubai from Sheraton Deira\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Burj Dubai from Sheraton Deira<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On holiday again. Alas unlike 2007, this is not a proper 10 week holiday but a 4 week taster of 2 or three countries. On the plus side, I&#8217;m going places I&#8217;ve never been as well as catching up on how things have changed in Dubai. Enough fake anticipation, I&#8217;m a week into the trip [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30,"href":"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/30"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.konyagi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}