By KAHLA PRESTON
I don’t know about you, but five-star meals in the desert and intimate performances by Gloria Gaynor rarely feature in my travel itineraries.
An occasional restaurant meal and the odd night in a private hostel room (rather than the usual 12-bunk arrangement) is about as luxurious as it gets when I’m abroad. Bonus points if it’s a hotel.
So when I travelled to Dubai as part of the Qantas-Emirates partnership launch last month, I suddenly found myself in a world of fluffy hotel robes, fine dining and flowing champagne. Along with a small VIP contingent of Qantas staff, fellow media personnel and ‘friends of Qantas’ (i.e. famous people), I was spoiled rotten from the moment I arrived in Dubai.
Actually, I lie – even the trip to Dubai was a luxury.
As a rather tall person with limited flexibility, jet-setting, while exciting, is not a physically comfortable experience. However, being seated in premium economy – and then being upgraded to business class (!!) on the return flight – was an “aha!” moment. Who knew it was possible to sleep on a flight and not wake up with a debilitating case of pins and needles or a leg cramp? Revolutionary.
My two days in Dubai passed in an exciting flurry of press conferences, fascinating tours, mingling (a local souk merchant was convinced Hugh Sheridan and I looked so alike we were siblings. In fact, we could not look less related), fabulous events – and food. Oh, such delicious food, and an abundance of it. This is rather problematic when the words, “No, I shan’t have another slice of cake, for I am already full,” have never escaped your mouth. Even now, I think my body is still running on the meals I ate in Dubai. No regrets.
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I would like to warn everyone what can happen to you in the United Arab Emirates. If you are going to travel there you need to be aware that the country operates under Islamic Sharia Law. Recently an Australian women Alicia Gail was working in the United Emirates in a hotel. tragically her drink was spiked by some coworkers and when she came to she found that she had been savagelty raped by three of her colleagues. Poor Alicia went to hospital for help, but she did not realise that it would be impossible to charge her rapists, because under Sharia law she would need the rapists to confess or to have 4 adult male muslim witnesses. obviously, the cards are stacked against women who are raped, there is no way they will get justice. Instead of the rapists being brought to justice ALICIA WAS IMPRISONED FOR 8 MONTHS!!! for having sex outside of marriage.Do not support this country in its oppression of women by spending your tourist dollar there. We should be boycotting any country which operates under Islamic Sharia law as this is it how it treats women.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/su...
Been twice on stopovers from UK, cousin lives there, will prob stop there again to see her & her husband but the place is awful. She has been there for over a decade, probably close to two decades now, respects the local customs (in fact has moved out to a quieter emirate now but still works in Dubai) and she hates the 'Jumeira Jane' types - the expats who live in huge McMansions, boast about their maids and swan around the malls wearing bikinis and hotpants then complain when they get stared at, but back home they were living in tiny little Coronation Street houses (nowt wrong with that, but stop pretending to be something you're not).
I also hate the 'look how rich we are, we have the tallest this, the biggest that' mentality (something about being a working class Brit - this type of bragging is very very far from classy) - this article explains why they are able to have the 'tallest this, biggest that' (saw a less extreme version in KL too).
http://www.independent.co.u...