Dubai (Tues 31st March - Saturday 4th April)

Arrived in Dubai after a short one hour Gulf Air flight from Bahrain. We have been staying at the Novotel in the Sheikh Zayed Road part of the city. This is the last leg of our trip and we could not have picked a more extraordinary place to finish our journey. Although it has suffered quite a lot from the recent recession it still gives the impression of being one big construction site. There are developments going on everywhere. Best way to describe it is by giving some statistics.

·Maybe an exaggeration but they say one third of all cranes in the world are in Dubai

·30 "5 star" hotels are currently under construction (not sure who for)

·The world's largest Mall is just being completed.

·80% of the population of 1.5 million are ex-pats (mainly Indian) working in the service or construction industry

·The world's tallest building "Burj Dubai" is still under construction

·Probably the fastest growing city in the world.

We went on our usual open top Big Bus trip around the city. It is quite expensive at 200 Dirhams (£40) each but it turned out to be value for money. One day we took the Blue Route which tales you along Jumeirah Beach where most of the main developments are. We stopped off at the Atlantis on the Palm, a big luxury complex that includes the "Lost Chambers of Atlantic" which is a rather pretentious name for an Aquarium. We got off again at the Mall of the Emirates just to see the Indoor Ski Slope. If you stayed on the bus, the complete journey would have taken about 5 hours - far too long - partly because of the size of the city but also because of the dreadful traffic jams which slows everything down.

Next day we did the Red Route which is shorter and takes you round the Dubai Creek (river) that runs through the older part of the town. This includes a one hour Arabia Dhow Cruise down the Creek. This was not so interesting and we were happy to spend the rest of the day by the hotel pool.

On our last day we spent a few hours at the Madinat Jumeirah which is a beautiful hotel, shopping and entertainment complex. The souk (market area) is a bit of a tourist trap with prices about double anywhere else but still a good place to to buy some last minute presents. You can also get very good views of the iconic "7 star" ? Burj Al Arab hotel which is set on an artificial lake not far away. It was a great place to end our stay in Dubai and a fitting climax to our trip

However I would not like to live here. The only way to get around is by car/taxi but the traffic would drive me crazy. You need to be fairly well off to live here (a few celebs have bought property here) but to be honest its not really my kind of place.

On Saturday (day 203) we caught a British Airways flight for the 7.5 hour flight to Heathrow. Fortunately the flight was on time and we managed to catch the British Midland connection to Edinburgh arriving Saturday evening 29 weeks after we first set off.