Sunday 18 September saw our final departure from Asia and we headed from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai in a fairly orderly fashion - queue, queue, queue, stress, run, collapse with a minute to spare into our seats... then wait an hour on the plane for everyone behind us in all the queues to make it to the plane. We left an hour late and arrived 10 minutes late - via every bump in the sky between Malaysia and Dubai - but it shows they can catch up time when they have to. We have a new slogan, courtesy of one of our dearest friends in the world "We don't mind spending money - but we don't like wasting it." One of the ways we ensure we don't do something daft when we travel is to treat ourselves to the least expensive private car transfer we can find after long flights. A train/bus/cab is fine for short flights, but after a long flight (6+ hours) we cannot emphasise enough how stress-free it is to have a man with a sign with our name on it waiting patiently to spirit us to the hotel. We particularly like using Mozio - have used it twice now in Dubai, though it's a world wide site, and very cool indeed. Despite travelling almost constantly, our wonderful housesitting life means we don't stay in hotels often - so it was a lovely treat to reach The Crowne Plaza Dubai Deira and be greeted like old friends. Never, ever underestimate the power of belonging to a hotel chain's rewards programme - in this case the IHG group. We were belatedly celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary and they upgraded us from a club room to a suite that was actually larger than most of the places we've lived in. Whilst tuckered out from the flight, we were wide awake and after splashing around in the big bath tub and using as much bubble bath as possible, we hit the pool. The heat in Dubai is intense, but thankfully dry and by 5 pm shade was just starting to encroach on the pool area. The water in the pool was over 30 degrees and that kept us amused until 6 pm when it was time to get gussied up and head to the Executive Club Lounge for evening drinkies and nibbles (all inclusive in a club room rate). Nibbles in this case turned out to be very substantial - or "dinner" as we like to call it. Chicken satay, salmon quiche, seafood dim sum and pasta amongst other delights. We headed to bed by about 10 pm... which felt like about 1 am... the joys of jetlag. James was wide awake and pottering by 3 am - thank heavens for the suite and the separate living room. Once we were both finally up and at 'em, we decided against the breakfast in the Club Lounge and went instead to the Crowne Plaza's signature restaurant - Spice Island. We're not quite sure why, as it's normally an extra charge, but we've apparently charmed the correct birds out of the trees and were invited to take our breakfast in the restaurant during our stay. Wow. If I ever had to eat in just one place again - this would be it. Huge variety - keeping the Europeans, Asians, Indians and Arabs all happy. Still no actual pork products though... a bridge too far here in Dubai. But the Turkey Bacon was divine! Eventually we rolled out of the restaurant, gathered up our bits and pieces and headed down the road about 10 minutes (schlepping) to the Dubai Metro. Ahhhh... modern, air-conditioned, fast and a day pass turned out to be 22 dirhams each (about A$7/€4). No queues at the ticket machines so we stood there and did a few sample ticket searches and figured out the day pass would definitely be worth it - just a return ticket to the Dubai Mall was going to be 16! So then to the next part of our challenge. Not getting cash out. It's only 3 days. Breakfast, afternoon tea, dinner and drinks are included at the hotel. Dubai loves credit cards - so we decided to give it a go instead of guestimating how much we might need then ending up with dirhams to cart around for months. So we bought our metro day passes on our Visa and off we went. The metro proved interesting from the get go as they have a pink cabin (or 3) on every train. Strictly for women and children only. The fine for stepping over the dividing line and standing in the wrong cabin is 100 dirhams / A$35 / €25 approx. So I stood in the pink cabin with a bit of space around me (and occasionally a seat) and James stood on the other side of the line - essentially in the sub-continent. The vast majority of Dubai's working class seems to be Indian and they dominate the landscape and seem to be doing an amazing job running the emirate. There were a few brave tourists on the metro (not that bravery is needed) but most seem to take taxis and sit in traffic for long periods. That's one thing that James knew and I didn't. Dubai looks small on the map but is massive, huge and enormous in real life. On our first stopover, just the one night back in May, we stayed in the old town - Al Rigga, the Gold Souks etc. Our current hotel is in Deira - which 13 odd years ago when James came with the Navy, was the city. Now it is the old city - and Dubai has marched down the coast to the mega malls and condo towers of The Dubai Mall and then on and further to the Dubai Marina. These are huge distances even on the fast and regular metro - and by car are reached by highways with 6 lanes (either side). I know it's oil money and so forth... but feats like this are apparently impossible in Australia (even a fast, clean, air conditioned train!) After being wowed just by getting there we jumped off at the Dubai Mall stop and then took about a dozen travelators in a row to reach the mall by airconditioned undercover walkway. (It's early - only 10.30 am - but already in the high 30s). We later figured it was about 10 minutes if we walked fast and took every travelator... but our first trip took about 30 minutes - so much to see out the windows along the way. We eventually reached the Aquarium and went to pick up our 2 for 1 tickets. There is a battle for the spending dollar here at the moment - if you pay with Mastercard it was 2 for 1 (we saw another sign for a water park... 25% off if you pay with Visa). There had been a mix up and all sorts of nuisance buying the tickets online, so one of the staff actually came from the office to greet us and from that moment on we were VIPs - total cost in the end was A$13 each - but we were treated to the glass-bottomed boat ride, fish feeding, underwater simulator, and that was on top of the regular aquarium tunnel access (longest in the world, of course) and the underwater zoo. We were blown away by being so up close and personal with the sharks and sting-rays etc in the aquarium and then saw one of the largest crocodiles in the world in the zoo.  "King Croc" himself. We weren't even at the mall for shopping and there was so much to see and do - including the Dubai Dino. A huge dinosaur skeleton that was found in Utah, USA and now lives in the Mall. We didn't know it was there until we tripped over him during our meanderings. We still find it fascinating to see the Arab men in their full white regalia (which actually looks very cool and comfortable... albeit a bit difficult to keep pristine). The trials of jet lag and travelling eventually caught up to us and we dragged our sorry selves back to the metro and home to the hotel for a couple of hours of lazing, air conditioning and using the bath tub. Four months without a bath tub is around 3 months and 29 days too long - so we really mounted an offensive against the hotel's towel and bubble bath supplies. We had considered having dinner in Spice Island tonight - as they do a 50% discount for in-house guests on their international buffet. But we took one look at the food on offer in the club lounge (included!) and decided it was more than enough. We ate, we drank, we considered going out again to see the dancing fountains... then common sense prevailed and we went to bed and conked out. By Tuesday morning the miracle stopover cure was starting to work (for every hour of time difference - allow a day to recover. Seems about right.) We got up relatively early and hit the breakfast buffet (which keeps us going until we have have a coffee, biscuit and an apple in the lounge in the afternoon). Then it was down the road to the metro and off to the Gold & Diamond Park. James bought me a pair of earrings from this monument to bling about 13 years ago. Sadly they are languishing in a box at the bank awaiting our brief return to Sydney next year. Meanwhile it was a great walk around to see 100s of jewellers all in one spot. I even tried on a €20,000 necklace and earring set just for kicks and giggles... fabulous! But the white gold, sapphires and diamonds weighed a tonne. The classic saying in any of these stores when you enquire is "Don't worry about the price! - that's when the negotiations begin - doesn't matter if you are spending $50 or $50,000... Must admit, and this is rare, I was actually too tired to walk around the whole diamond park complex. We moved on, with a bit of a plan, and it was back on the metro and further down the line to the Dubai Marina Mall. Given the weight of our luggage, shopping is not on the agenda, not even a little bit, so we scooted through the mall and checked out the Marina Walk (about 200 metres of the 7 kms stretch) to get to the Dubai Ferry Dock with 15 minutes to spare. The ferry was a great chance to have a sit down and enjoy the views of the Burj al Arab hotel (the big, sail one) on the coast. Took about an hour and a half of cruising up the coast - Dubai to the right of us and Iran just over the Persian Gulf/Arabian Gulf to the left of us. The fast catamaran covered the distance in good style and then we took a right and headed into the Dubai Creek - even passing the hotel we spent a night in last time - The St George in the old town near the gold souks. With all our nipping about - metro, tram and ferry we are feeling very local after just two nights here. It was back to the hotel for a coffee and a snack in the lounge (remember - no cash was our target here in Dubai - so transport has all been on the credit card and we're not eating outside of the hotel!) We chilled out for a while then hit the club lounge to do screeds of printing and check in for our next flight (having a printer available is always the height of luxury). Then at 6.30 pm on the button we started our evening eats and drinks and were out and about again by 7.30 pm. Apparently along with the entire population of Dubai. Only doing things after dark is a luxury with limited time available, but it's obviously what the locals do. The metro was packed, the walk to the Dubai Mall was packed but we made it to the Dancing Fountains with a second to spare for the 8.30 pm show - wow!(ish) I came ready to be excited - but it just didn't seem as good as the Bellagio fountains in Vegas... but we had done our research and knew we had to turn right and walk to the front of the Burj Khalifa (AKA the tallest building in the world). From there the view would be better - and it was. The 9.00 pm show was WOW! Definitely bigger, better etc than Vegas. Not to mention looking up at the Burj Khalifa sparkling like the Eiffel Tower (though obviously much, much, taller). We slept well our final night in Dubai (which is very unusual for me at least... but our flight wasn't til 1.30 pm on Wednesday - so no excuse for lying awake and stressing out about alarm clocks). With our final breakfast done and dusted it was just the challenge of last minute packing (where oh where can we stash enough hotel bubble bath/shampoo/moisturiser etc to keep us in the style to which we've become accustomed???) It was a jolly long travel day in the end - 8 hour flight, an hour to get luggage, ATM cash, and wait on the coach then we left Dublin at 9.30 pm - arriving down in the countryside at 11.45 pm (which, as far as we could figure was about 3 am Dubai time and heavens know's what on body-clock time). It was so very good to reach our Irish home by midnight or so - a ham and cheese sandwich and that was us, we crawled into our big, cosy bed and dead to the world for quite a few hours indeed. A huge 3 days behind us and we're already enjoying the chill and fog of Ireland.