Hello! Arrived in Dubai this morning. Very good flight although didn't sleep on the plane as per usual too excited about the films and free drinks & food! Managed to bring our flight to Africa forward one day so we could save a bit of money, might end up changing it again now as Dubai is costing! Got to hotel about 7am and slept until afternoon, when lorraine started being noisy which meant she wanted me to get up! Very comfy beds but the rest is not so good - we booked a hotel at the airport and although it is probably better than a lot we've stayed in its still not great! We dont seem to be near anything and today looked for a tourist information for 2 hours and still didn't find it, everyone we asked looked at us as if we were crazy! Naturally we were starving but had trouble finding a restuarant open as its ramadamadingdong! Thank god for burger king as managed to get hands on chicken royale, werent allowed to eat it in the restaurant though because of 'the rules' so practically ran back to hotel to devour it! Lovely!! We attempted to go to the hotel pool but it is bad also, with scum in, the buildings around us are so big that no sun gets in so no sunbathing either!! And we're paying 25 pounds each for this privalege! Anyway, hopefully news will be better in the next few days as we try sand duning and so some sights! x Postcard continued... On our first day aside of sleeping and attempting to explore the local area (which turned out to be little india), we treated ourselves to room service! Extravagant you may think, but it was cheaper than leaving the room so we nestled down into our fishfingers (unfortunately not birds eye!) and chips and watched some bad tv! The next day we were slightly more adventurous and went on the dubai 'Big bus tour' buses just like the London ones! After a bit of a mare and a wait in a taxi trying to find our nearest stop we were off, us and a whole 2 other people! We saw the historic buildings of Dubai, which are still only about 100 years old, passed by the local shipping areas and learnt a great deal about how rich Dubai seems to have become. It boasts the Burj Al Arab, the only 7 star hotel in the world, the creation of the '8th wonder of the world' palm island (that can be seen from space!), another group of man made islands created to form an aerial view of the world map -Rod Stewart has bought the UK already!, tonnes of amazing 5 star hotels, the largest indoor ski resort in the world (apparently), they are creating the largest shopping centre and tallest building in the world to be completed by 2008... so it's all go! The beaches looked amazing though we didn't experience them as the buses were quite infrequent. We explored one of the few shopping centres open before 4pm during ramadam and found all our fav shops! Oh england we misss you (a bit); oasis, debenhams, dune, toppy shop ... Anyway the next day was a painful trip to the post office - very boring and then a trip to Wild Waddy's water park, where we met up with an old Uni bud of Lorraine's, Eve has been living in Dubai for a few years so we all had a good splash around and got a few more wedgies than we bargained for! The water park over looked the Burj al arab, very impressive. After a good catch up a turning a bit prune like we called it a day (thanks Eve!). Unfortunataley we didn't make it out to see the night life but we hear from Eve and Steve (another uni mates brother living in Dubai) that it's pretty good. Thanks by the way for all the tourist info! Our final day was spent enjoying our hotel room and amazingly pressed laundry! Followed by a desert safari! We were picked up at 3pm and taken on a dune safari in a 4x4. Our tummies were doing many a flip and a spin! Unfortunataley one 4x4 behind had some poor lady being quite ill into a bag with her friend capturing it all on video, thankfullly we were hard core! We reached our final location for sunset a skipped he camel ride in favour of a go with the shisha pipe! And were kept entertained by others dressing up in local costume (the chinese of course!). No music, booze or belly dancing tonight though due to ramadam but did try the local dishes lorraine even tried chicken tikka on a skewer -very adventurous! (Note from Amelia - never let Lorraine get out of going to an indian, she now officially likes curry!)