First of all, happy valentine's day everyoneeeeeee! Today was definitely my most interesting valentine's day.

To start off we headed to a huge New Zealand café next to the beach! It was called the Lime Tree Café. It was soo awesome because they even had little posters of tikis and things like rocky road slices! It's definitely worth checking out :) had a delicious sundried tomato and haloumi cheese toastie with a banana and berry smoothie. Nom.

We then headed off to see the beach. It's really cool how many different seas we've managed to see! From the Pacific to the Atlantic to the Baltic to the Aegean as well as the Persian Gulf. The beach was really beautiful and the sea was an amazing colour! I was also surprised to see heaps of people in bikinis. Dubai's liberalness is truly shocking to me.

Our next stop was to the Palm Islands thingy that I'm sure you all know of. It's like manmade islands in the shape of a palm tree if you see if from aerial view. It was far, far, far larger than I expected and was covered in many more buildings than I ever had imagined. In my mind it was just a little villa per palm tree leaf - but no. It's absolutely smothered in full on apartment blocks, hotels, and so on. It was VERY impressive. And of course at the end you have the huge and beautiful Atlantis hotel.

We hired out some bikes (with great difficulty) and then when for a beautiful cycle along the perimeter of the outer crescent of the islands! It was a really hot day - I reckon around 25c but the skies were blue so it was very pleasant. It was also the first time I've used a bike in seriously over five years. I used to cycle a lot in England but then when we've moved to New Zealand it just got way too intense with the huge frickin mountains in every direction. So it was great to jump back on and do our sightseeing a bit differently!

We got some great photos of the islands including ones with views of downtown Dubai with the Burj Khalifa and also the Burj al Arab. Downside is that I actually got burnt! Whoops. It's weird to think my friends back in Poland and Canada are still dealing with snow and freezing temperatures meanwhile I'm cycling in shorts and getting a sunburn just a few hours flight time away.

After being totally worn out and overheated from our awesome bike ride, we decided to do some glow in the dark mini-golf! This was in a weird mall-like thing that was the shape of an Egyptian pyramid - with a crazy roof covered in hieroglyphics and ancient Egyptian style statues all over the place.

The glow in the dark mini golf was really fun. A bit of competition always ensures a great time! Unfortunately I lost, but it was still awesome. I've kept our little score sheet for my scrap-booking-in-the-making :)

So that marks the end of our time in Dubai. I'm actually really sad to be leaving because this place had impressed me beyond any level I could have predicted. Of course I still have a lot more to learn, but just from my five days here I would say it's the super classy Middle Eastern equivalent of Vegas - if you think of it in terms of the sheer enormity and extremeness of everything - the buildings, the fountains, and so on. It's also a lot classier since you're expected to respectful of the customs when it comes to things such as dressing a bit more conservatively than you might see in other hot places in the world, and things like getting off your face drunk is totally unacceptable. So I really like it here.

It's also been amazing experiencing a totally new type of culture. So far we've done tropical islands, massive cities, and extreme cold and so on - but this is my first time experiencing life in an Islamic country or even in the Middle East. It's really good that we've been lucky to have such great experiences and learnt a lot just from being here for five days.

I really want to emphasise how grateful we are Luke and Becs for putting up with us! It has totally shaped the amazingness of our time here and we appreciate everything you did for us - whether it's shouting us a dinner, driving us around for some sightseeing or taking us for some glow in the dark mini-golf :) Really looking forward to see you both when you come back to New Zealand with your little fig :D

Tonight we leave for Thailand. This is also going to be a bit of an interesting experience because we don't really know what to do! We have planned just one nights of accommodation (out of four) so we are going to just turn up and make some decisions last minute! It's more than likely we'll spend a few days in Bangkok and then a few days on some island - likely to be one that is 5 hours drive and a 1 hour boat trip from Bangkok.

Hope you all had a great Valentine's Day - Just eight days now! Xxxxxxx