PAUL

Well we have arrived in Leeds, England and are beginning to settle in and sort things out. There'll be more on all things English in the coming entries, but first to our journey here.

We left Brisbane on Monday aboard Etihad flight EY473 to Abu Dhabi. Thanks to everyone who came to see us off, called or sent a farewell message. The first leg of our flight was to Singapore and we made good use of the in-flight entertainment systems with a wide range of movies, tv shows and games to choose from. We think our neighbour on this flight may have been a slight alco as she wasted no time enjoying the complementary bar. We had about an hour and a half in Singapore (Changi) airport, where the sights included water features (something slightly foreign to us obviously), security guards with semi-automatic weapons (no photos of these guys), and a cactus garden (see photos, Cactus).

The second leg of our journey to Abu Dhabi went well after we sorted out a minor seat mix up with an Arab gentleman. We were served more good food (certainly by airline standards) and then got onto the business of sleeping (thanks to beck for the inflatable neck pillows). When we landed in Abu Dhabi the captain left the forward view camera on for everyone to watch which we thought was pretty cool (this hadn't happened on the first flight but did again on the flight to Manchester).

Upon landing we boarded a bus, which took us to the door of the airport terminal. We managed to get a taxi with relatively little hassle and got taken to our hotel in the city for 65 dirham (around AU$20). It was about 12:30am local time when we got to our hotel and discovered our fancy bathroom with "options" (see photos for explanation). With the sleep I'd already had on the plane and the out-of-sync body clock I didn't sleep past 4am at which point I took some photos out the window of our hotel room.

Our stay included breakfast at the hotel where we had a choice of cereals, french toast, chicken meatballs, sliced turkey, veal sausages, croissants as well as all types of fruit. We enjoyed breakfast with an Irish engineering graduate who was at the end of his travels having left for a bit of a world tour following graduation (sorry beck forgot to grab contact details :p). He told us that his taxi driver had said the rain we were having (yes you read correctly, rain) was the first decent rain in Abu Dhabi for 2 years and that everyone was very pleased about it (except for us). He also said that George Bush was going to be there that day but we think there was a slight misunderstanding and that he had already been to Abu Dhabi and was then in Dubai (which we were thankful about as we heard the city centre was almost completely closed off during his Dubai visit).

After breakfast we got our (large) backpacks and suitcases and headed downstairs to sign out and catch a taxi. After trying unsuccessfully to hail a taxi in the rain and morning peak hour traffic, the hotel offered to call their hotel taxi driver, Mr Ali, who would take us around for the day. We dropped off our luggage at the City Terminal and then went on a bit of a tour seeing the Abu Dhabi seaport and then headed down to the Emirates Palace Hotel. This place was something else! We weren't sure if we would be allowed through the gates at first but somehow Mr Ali got us through. The grounds for this place are absolutely enormous and we didn't even see the back of the place, which we are told, are even bigger again. We took a bunch of photos and we've put a selection of these up in the photos section.

Next on our list was the recently built Marina Mall where we left our taxi driver as we explained we couldn't afford to pay him to wait for us. Mr Ali told us that all the land along the North West edge of Abu Dhabi as well as the "marina district" was recently reclaimed land i.e. was underwater 5 years ago.

Our first task at the mall was to call an Aussie who we had been put in contact with and lived in Abu Dhabi (but who was busy that day so we didn't end up meeting up). Unfortunately, our international calling cards, which came free with some travel things we bought, didn't work and so began our quest to buy a phone card. We visited 4 different shops I think each telling us we could buy from the next shop. Eventually we had success and could make our call and then went and had lunch at, wait for it….IKEA. Yes there is an IKEA store in Abu Dhabi (see photos for the proof), which offered the cheapest lunch (if not the healthiest) by far. Other points of interest in the mall included FunZone (which, for those of you who remember it, is like Brisbane's "Tops"), the ice rink and snow park (which is a skiing slope) being built inside the shopping centre and the unexpected frequency with which we encounted lingerie shops in this Muslim country (we think around 1 in every 10 shops).

We left the mall in the early afternoon in search of the "historical village" where we could see and learn traditional crafts but were thoroughly disappointed not to have any luck (we think maybe it hasn't been finished yet despite being in the guide book as this was the case with the snow park). In the process we walked around in the rain and took a bunch more photos, much to the amazement of the locals driving around in their warm, dry cars. One thing we did learn about Abu Dhabi is that it isn't set up for rain as there's almost no drainage for the roads and so half the fun of getting around was negotiating puddles and trying not to let the cars spray us as they drove through them. Oh the pedestrian crossing lights have no button to press (we did figure this out, though possible not quite as quickly as you might have expected, blaming jet lag). Eventually we conceded defeat and went back to the mall to dry off and make new plans. We got in a taxi and asked to go the Cultural Foundation, which is a museum type thing, but the taxi driver didn't know where it was. So there we were, I'm navigating, without a map, to a place I don't know the location of, in a city I've been in for a total of 16 hours, with a driver who hardly speaks English and wouldn't pass a driving test in oz I'm sure, with Li in the back hanging on for dear life as we weave in and out of traffic narrowly missing (though I couldn't tell you how) the white van merging in front of us (which makes a return guest appearance in the next taxi ride). Eventually we got out of the taxi somewhere in Abu Dhabi and asked the nearest hotel where we should be headed. They told us it was about a 10 minute drive away and having had enough of walking in the rain and not wanting to be ripped off by another hotel taxi driver (peak hour again you see), we decided to call it a night and head off to the airport. We finally managed to hail a taxi (after being rather rejected by a number of passing taxis) and headed off to the airport. The taxi ride was certainly an education as the taxi driver told us a number of things; Muslim men can have up to four wives as long as they can provide the finances for each family to live, having a Philippino girlfriend is a complicated thing for a taxi driver from Abu Dhabi and the music we were listening to was about 50 years old and "very romantic". We had another close call with a merging white van (possibly something to do with driving 120 in a 100 zone in the rain, nuts!) and were very glad to have made it to Abu Dhabi International Airport alive. We had one more funny moment when the security guard checking boarding passes asked Li why she was flying to Cairo (well I thought it was funny, I think Li nearly had a heart attack then and there). Arriving at the airport at 6pm meant we had just over 8 hours to wait until our 2:15am flight to Manchester. We managed to find somewhere to have dinner and have decided to boycott all Costa café franchises from now on after we paid 35 dhr (about AU$10) for a toasted sandwich and milkshake, which we shared. The wait in the airport was incredibly long especially as the "non-smoking" area, which are areas sectioned off with glass, had no ceiling so the smoke simply wafts over the top and into the relatively small airport. We eventually got on the plane to Manchester and after some more food went straight to sleep in anticipation of the beginning of our UK adventures.