Dubai has fascinated me for many years, and it turned out to be quite different from what I had imagined. I had thought of it as quaint back streets, full of souks, with camels everywhere, and baking hot. In other words that Dubai would be quite old fashioned, and so I got a major surprise when I got there.

 

Firstly how westernised the airport was, so that although I knew I was in the Middle East, because of the few people dressed in traditional garb, apart from that all international airports are much like each other.

It took the lack of bacon at my first breakfast to make me realise I was in an Islamic country

We chose the Jebel Ali Hotel in Dubai really to break up the return from a vacation in Hong Kong. We chose it because we had seen a photo of the building work in Dubai[17% of all the cranes in the world!!] and we knew the Jebel Ali was a world class hotel outside the built up areas, and as it had a golf course we figured the cranes and building would be a respectable distance away, and we were very pleased with our choice.