A sandy kind of land

So 2011 marked a fortunate year in terms of travel. I was lucky enough to head back to the deserts of the Middle East – Dubai. My parents had relocated there at the start of last year, so packed my bags about a week before Christmas and jetted off to be met later by the rest of my family – my brother Brendan and his wife Nikki as well as my two nephews – Oliver and Fraser.I stopped in Singapore for 24 hours and stayed at the Swissotel (seriously amazing property) the staff were extremely friendly and the property is conveniently located on top of a mall – not a bad way to spend the 24 hours by myself! I arrived in the evening so it was naturally humid and raining. Singapore is actually one of my favourite Asian cities, it is extremely clean and the people are simply lovely. After having my fill of shopping I popped over to Raffles Hotel which was made famous by the ‘Singapore Sling’ Cocktail, in their ‘Sling’ Bar – definitely a highlight to add to your stay in Singapore! The bar has this amazing English-Asian influence and has beautiful palm frond fans floating gently backwards and forwards. This is also the bar they encourage littering at, they give you a whopping bowl of peanuts with their shells still on and as you eat them you throw the shells on the floor… I felt really naughty. A few hours later I was off to Changi Airport again, this time for my connection to Dubai, whilst waiting I had bumped in to an old high school friend on his way to London. Small world huh!

Arriving in the evening in Abu Dhabi my parents greeted their weary daughter with open arms and off we trekked to Dubai (an hours drive) after showering and settling down I was ready for my much anticipated sleep!

Dubai is a melting pot of races, nationalities, religion and beliefs. You walk through one of their many glitzy malls and you’ll hear an array of languages and accents. So, girls being girls Mum and I hit the shops fairly hard on my first day there, we were racing around and the sales had just started too as Dubai’s shopping festival (I know, right!) was just about to begin – this is where they import celebrities (Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and a questionable celeb – Kim Kardashian) to come and endorse shops and malls and funnily enough people travels from all sorts of weird and wonderful places to snap up the bargains!

We went out for dinner a fair bit, the wide selection of cuisines are delicious and very healthy as they are heavily influenced by the Mediterranean style of cooking.

The rest of my family followed a couple of days later and we were very excited to see them all, they also arrived late in the evening so waking up to greet them was a lovely gift! I had also just received another shopping buddy – my brother! We visited Marina, Dubai and Emirates malls and even managed to squeeze in last minute shopping until 10pm on Christmas Eve. The first day they arrived we jumped on a ‘dow’ cruise and went up and down the waterways, taking in the skyline of the incredible Middle East!

Christmas Day was spent as a buffet feast at the Pullman Hotel – we had a lovely expat group with around fifteen of us Aussies all sitting together. The food was delish and as per normal a food coma had hit us, until we found the chocolate dessert room. Everything in this room, including the plates was made of chocolate – BLISS!

We spent the following day on the famous “Palm” in Dubai with a group of family friends and their extended group of Pommy mates they had met from their 12 months of living there too. We of course, had a Boxing Day test! The Poms ended up beating us and I soon realised that I unfortunately did not inherit my Dad’s or nephew’s cricket skills! Oli was in his prime, chasing after every ball and being a fabulous Wicky!

Apparently this was the active part of our trip! We did the Ski Dubai on the first day and then the two boys did Ice Skating the following evening in another mall! Definitely recommend doing the skiing – how many times can you say you played in the snow whilst being in the middle of the desert huh?

The following days we spent relaxing, shopping and eating! We popped down to Deira (Little India) and did a lovely day of cheap shopping (all of the knock offs are here, so it’s definitely worth a visit!) Another area to go to and is really interesting – Dubai Museum. After having our fill of shopping we jumped on another boat – this time an ‘Abra’ and off we went up and down Dubai Creek – this “creek” is bigger than the Brisbane River… Apparently there is no such thing as too big here!