With a connection in Dubai on our way home, I figured, why not, let's stay for a couple nights at the land of extravagance. We didn't have much time here, between arriving at 1 AM and leaving at 5 AM a day later, it left 1 full day to check things out. After walking around and looking for the textile souka, we quickly realized how hot it is here in the desert, just like Vegas on a nice August afternoon. So hot that we saw a squirrel putting suntan lotion on his nuts.

Forget that, we're going indoors, and spent the rest of the day walking around the many malls and shops, indoors and air conditioned of course ! It's a big and busy city -- I don't have anything extraordinary to say about our 1 day here, other than . . . everything's extraordinary here. Tallest building in the world, one of the largest shopping malls in the world, indoor skiing & penguins, etc etc. We made our obligatory stop at the Burj Khalifa, soaring at 2,717 feet tall, with the world's fastest elevator at 40 mph.

At the Dubai mall, it was pretty cool checking out the arabic stores with local artwork, persian rugs, arabic clothing, and then all of a sudden, "Hello MomSir !! " Holy crap, there's Filipinos working everywhere here too ! Deja Vu ? ? Love them and their hospitality, so no problem, just surprised me when I was talking to all the Syrian/Arabic people and then out pops a Flip !

We ended our brief time in Dubai with a nice dinner and music at Khan Murjan, where we had some terrific baba ganoush, as well as Moroccan & Egyptian cuisine. The business class lounge here at Emirates and their Dubai hub is outrageous, the biggest I've ever seen. In fact, you board the plane directly from the lounge, straight into the 2nd deck of the A380 plane. It's one of the longest flights you can take non-stop, at 16 hours. But it's all luxury with Emirates -- they really do it well.

This marks the final day of our "Off the Face" 53 day journey. We've done well -- no missed or cancelled flights, no illnesses or injuries, and we even still like each other after all this time ! It's been a wild experience, from 0 degrees on arrival at Johannesburg to 112 degrees in Dubai (how do you pack for that range ?), from the luxury of Emirates to the dilapidated shared busses in Lilongwe, from underwater creatures while scuba diving in Philippines to the safari animals in Zambia -- an awesome expedition.

As I explained at the beginning, I enjoy keeping a blog/journal of the experience, as so much would get lost without documenting it, and it also can be fun for others to follow at home. Going back and reviewing the stories, and watching the videos again, it brings back all the memories.

If you want to see any of the videos, here are the links (I've been watching them myself a few times, as it's fun when I have idle time):

Video #1: Thailand & Myanmar: https://vimeo.com/225094016

Video #2: Philippines: https://vimeo.com/226474660

Video #3: South Africa https://vimeo.com/226904958

Video #4 : 500 Elephants https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEe2lCwwag4

( password is harrakavideos ) copy & paste the links

This concludes the "Off the Face" journey, and to me, it certainly has been an epic one. Thank you for following along with us, and I hope you've enjoyed the ride ! We're boarding our flight home in 30 minutes, so we'll see you soon !!!!

Robert & Haley