Days 108-109: To Bucharest

The first destination on my way to Bucharest was Dubai. My flight left Suvarnabhumi Airport at 12:20pm. On the BTS train a man randomly struck up a conversation with me and we turned out to be sitting on opposite sides of the aisle on the same flight to Dubai. He had a lot to talk about, and we chit chatted all the way to the gate. He said he had been visiting Bangkok on business. He worked in the hospitality industry and lived in Dubai.

The flight to Dubai was only 70% or so full. They were willing to sell me a ticket for 250 USD (I hesitated at first and had to spend 300 USD after the price went up) for the two flights all the way to Bucharest, but the flight wasn't nearly as bare bones as an AirAsia flight. They actually feed you for free on this flight -- like, a lot. Along with a box meal of chicken, potatoes and carrots, I was given this entire box of goodies:

Blurry because the camera was moving. The camera was moving because I wanted to take the picture quickly. I wanted to take the picture quickly because I didn't want to be the guy seen taking a food pic of his airplane food.

Dubai International Airport was backed up as we approached, so the pilot gave us a 15-minute sightseeing tour of the area 30 kilometers southeast of Dubai. Looking down on it from above, it's hard to believe humans were arrogant enough to inhabit this land. It's desert, in the sense of the most barren wastelands in Iraq that they show on the evening news type desert. No rivers, no lakes, not even any crops. Yet there are houses and cars and people being fueled by who knows what. The parts that aren't desert are uninhabitable rocky crags that look like they're made of the same stuff as the earth below them, but compressed into spikes, probably to further deter humanity from living here when they could go literally anywhere else on Earth.

Dubai itself is significantly more commercialized and extremely modern. It even has a few irrigated fields nearby. The city is situated in a place that has no natural vegetation (as far as I can tell) except for the occasional palm tree (or is it merely a mirage?), so any patches of land that aren't covered in concrete or irrigated look only partially finished -- as though construction workers decided to erect a building but neglect the landscaping.

The center of Dubai is silhouetted by sun and dust. The blurring is caused by a confused autofocus.

When our plane landed, the friend I had met on my way out of Bangkok asked if I wanted to stay for free at his family business here in Dubai. Of course I said yes! His driver picked us up and took us to Elite Residence Marina. It's not a luxury hotel like the ones so often advertised in Dubai, but having a room to myself with a queen size bed was heaven. The building is right next to the Burj Khalifa / Dubai Mall Metro Station, and 10-minutes of riding travelators will get you inside the Dubai Mall -- a lexicon of the world's most proliferate chain stores and high-end luxury brands. As far as I could tell, there isn't an easy way to walk to the base of the Burj Khalifa, so all I managed to do during my evening in Dubai was to get lost inside Dubai Mall.

My hotel was located directly above this cafe.

The view from the balcony outside my room. The Burj Khalifa is partially obscured by the second skyscraper from the left.

To be continued...