A couple more weeks travel

I had to head down to Dubai the week before last. Those religiously aware types may know that it was Ramadan. My collegue/buddy who arranged the trip down there apologist profusely for organising a trip during the Islamic fasting time. Ramadan lasts for about 40 days and if you observe it, it forbids you from doing a whole bunch of stuff between sunrise and sunset. To make sure you follow the social mores, the hotel I was staying at passed a memo under my door giving me the lowdown.

In public, you may not chew gum, wear singlets, eat food, drink or do PDA (public display of affection). Obviously the public wasn't too fussed and was happily grazing on their turkey club sandwiches on the beach as they were getting into each other. As with anywhere warm and beachy, there was the usual assortment of Dutch and Germans with a sprinkling of Italians. The flights aren't too bad to Dubai from Milan - around 300 euros if you book far enough in advance. And most hotels have cheapie rooms during Ramadan. The cool thing about Ramadan is since the arabs are fasting all day, they get tired and sleepy quickly (they're not allowed to drink any water or smoke cigarettes either). My job down there was to give the fullas down there some advanced training on their equipment, but only until 2pm. Then it was home time, or rather cruise down to the beach and work on the tan. On Thursday (their start of the weekend), it was 1pm. Although most of the days I had to work on other European stuff at the same time, thus I stayed mostly white.

I got a chance to go into the Burj Al Arab hotel for dinner. That's the one which is shaped like a sail and the one with the photo of Andre Agassi playing tennis on the top. The only restaurant (there are 6 inside) that I could reserve a table at was 75 euro per person. The food was good, but was a pretty small seafood buffet on the bottom floor. Afterward, we cruised up to the bar at the top for a few cocktails - a really fantastic view from the top - it reminds me of going to a jazz bar in Shanghai at the 75th floor. Overall it wasn't as extravagant as I expected it to be. No gold encrusted pimp jewels nor diamond studded bottle openers. The palace in Abu Dhabi apparently is more opulent.

But it was a good 5 days down there and got a few thousand Alitalia frequent flyer miles. They're probably one of the best airlines out there for their frequent flyer program. It takes very few points to fly a long way.

The following week I cruised off to Paris for some more training, which I'll cover another day.