It was an obscenely early start, the taxi was booked for 7am, it was our Ladyboy spotting friend from the day before.  Breakfast at the airport consisted of the new holiday favourite, but with a twist. This time a Tuna toastie rather than sandwich, number 77 on the menu for your notes.  The flight to Dubai was decent, no problems.  I watched the film Seventh Son with Jeff Daniels, Julianne Moore and the lovely Alicia Vikander…  It was a touch cramped for my liking, I’m not sure why they didn’t watch the film on their own TVs.  Still, I wasn’t going to turn away the company.  We arrived at 1pm and the airport was surprisingly quiet, we rushed through, caught a cab to Hotel Rowana on Jumeirah Beach (100 AED = £18 at the time of writing).  I soon remembered why I disliked getting taxis in Dubai as everybody drives like lunatics.  The motorways consist of seven lanes (at the time of writing), that’s seven lanes of cars driving as fast as possible, tailgating right up each other’s arses, overtaking, undertaking, total mayhem.  Surprisingly, we made it to the hotel unscathed.  The hotel was in a good location, ultra swanky and plenty of Ferrari’s parked outside, we were in our element.  We checked in and to our delight were told we had been given an upgrade, excellent news.  We got to the room to discover we only had two beds, but there were three of us.  What were we upgraded from? A single?  We complained and Ruby Bill was given a rock solid fold out bed, which he was happy about.  He was even happier when he found out we had no Wifi, either we weren’t allowed or we had to pay extra.  It was disappointing.  All the excitement of the outside of the hotel had been tempered by the disappointment of the inside of our room.

We decided to have a nose about the rest of the hotel and get some food.  Entering the elevator we were confronted by a fairly sub-mediocre looking man, well he was no oil painting, who was flanked on both sides by two stunning tall blonde women wearing skimpy outfits and holding balloons.  There was some giggling and whispering, possibly in Russian, but we didn’t want to annoy the other people in the lift so we quietened down. Trying to avert our eyes we stared at the ceiling hoping the lift would get to whatever random floor we were getting off at as quickly as possible.  The lift stopped at level 3, this would do, we left the elevator with our tails between our legs.  Here we were, the Rosso Bar, looked nice enough. I polished off the biggest Calzone they had and washed it down with a £9 pint of lager.  After filling up on food and drink we needed to stretch our legs, we stretched them into the 46C heat outside…We tried to walk but it was too hot, we stopped at every air conditioned cash point we could find, which was pretty much every few metres.  We couldn’t handle the heat any longer, we popped in an old friend, the Hilton Sports Bar.  It was Happy Four Hours!  Only 28 AED a pint (£5.50 at the time of writing), so we had four pints each to celebrate.  We had inexplicably got our drinking groove on in one of the few countries where it’s almost illegal to drink, well, you can only drink in the hotel bars and you can’t be seen drunk in public.  The Speakeasy Bar at the Ramada Hotel was next on our hit list.  A few Heinekens were consumed in here, an acoustic act played, but once they finished we commandeered the jukebox, cranking out the tunes.  Our popularity with the bar’s other patrons soared, peaking with Tom Jones’ Help Yourself.  Everything was right with the world.  We arrived back at the hotel at 3AM a little worse for wear, a slightly dubious thing to do in Dubai.

Green Cardamom Pods, Bruised

It was the morning after the night before and we all had hangovers, not the best start to the end of the trip.  The best way to shake off the hangover was to go outside in the forty odd degree heat and completely dehydrate, that would sort us out.  It was simply too hot, forcing us back into the air conditioned ATMs whenever we saw one.  If viable we could’ve spent all day inside an ATM (although there probably wouldn’t have been enough money in one of these to pay for one of those Russian escorts), but we spotted Bob’s Diner opposite, it was possible to make it across the street without being in the heat for too long.  It was like the sequel to the old eighties arcade game Frogger that never got made.  Instead of Frogs trying to get to the other side of the road while avoiding getting hit by traffic, this would feature three out of shape grown men trying to get across the street without collapsing of heat exhaustion, while also avoiding pedestrians and traffic.  That game would’ve been a sure fire hit, anyway, we made it to Bob’s Diner, no lives lost.  It was an authentic American Diner right in the heart of Dubai and very nice too.  The free refills of Coke and Sprite were a god send and went down a treat, as did the obligatory Philly Cheese Steak sandwich.  Ruby Bill and myself were feeling slightly better by this point, but Pat Rambutan was struggling, he headed back to the hotel.  The Hilton Sports Bar felt like the right place to watch Malaysia All Stars v Liverpool in a friendly.  It was a dire game, we battled through it by drinking one apple juice, two pineapple juices and one random Amstel.  The match ended 1-1.  I’m afraid to say that after an epic holiday we went out with a massive whimper, an early night, as we did have to be up at 5:30AM.

Dessert Figs, Coarsely Chopped

Out of bed with no hangover at 5:30AM, taxi at 6:45AM, flight at 9:10AM.  Unfortunately the flight was delayed by one hour and ten minutes due to a passenger putting their bag on the plane but not putting themself on the plane.  According to the pilot that person would be put in prison until the plane lands at it’s destination.  Hopefully that’ll learn them.  Even though we were grumpy at the delayed flight, Matthew the air steward was impossibly happy for the whole flight.  Maybe his holiday was just starting but ours was drawing to a close, we landed back in Blighty at 2:30pm, signifying the end of our Asian adventure.