Recently Turkish Airlines stopped direct flights from Osaka Airport on Friday nights, which used to be a great way to work a regular day, get on a plane, sleep, and wake up in Europe on Saturday morning ready to sightsee. Fortunately, we found that Emirates Airlines has a similar flight, departing for Dubai on Friday night at 11:25 pm. Lucky for us!
I worked a regular workday on Friday, watching the weather and the train system to make sure that nothing would interfere with our plan to go to the airport. After work I went straight home, changed clothes, turned off all the automated systems in our home, wrapped our toilet in Saran Wrap, and then dragged our suitcase off to the station. It was very hot and humid, and my clothes were pretty sweaty by the time I got onto the air conditioned train to Kobe. I met up with Kuniko at the station, and she had already bought bus tickets to the airport and had also gotten a couple of cold beers for the hour long ride to the airport. A cold beer on a sweaty Friday night just before a long vacation is a very delicious beer indeed.
Once we arrived at the airport we were surprised to find that check-in was available, and luckily they checked our bag all the way to Tbilisi, which would make our life easier in Dubai, and free us up for more convenient sightseeing during our layover. After checking in we went to find some dinner at one of the restaurants in Kansai airport, but at 9 pm shops were already starting to close. It was a little surprising to go into each restaurant and be told that there was no food available even though we were in a busy airport, but I guess Japan goes to sleep early. We managed to get some sushi as a last order in a restaurant, and then finally walked out to the gate to sit around and wait for the flight.
It was our first time on Emirates Airlines, and I was pleasantly surprised. The design and lighting of the plane was suitably exotic, and they played Arabian pop music when we were boarding to make things even more interesting. The crew was truly international – they boasted that they had crew from eight different countries and they spoke sixteen different languages between them. Very impressive. The food was quite good as well, even though we were eating “dinner” at around 2 am Japan time. I got a lot of sleep on the flight, and the darkened cabin even had tiny LED “stars” in the ceiling to create a nice sleeping atmosphere. We arrived in Dubai after about nine hours, at around 5 am local time.
Dubai’s airport was huge. It is hard to describe the scale of the airport, and later we found that we were only in one of the three terminals. They used buses to move people around between areas, and when we were walking we were walking a lot. I enjoyed the glitz and polish of the airport – it felt a little like a Las Vegas casino with all the flashy gold and jewels everywhere. Still tasteful, but right on the border of gaudy.
Since we had about five hours to kill we figured we’d head out to do some sightseeing. Immigration and customs were cursory and soon we found ourselves looking for transportation to Burj Khalifa – the tallest building in the world. The metro system was closed until 8 am because it was Saturday, so we used a taxi. The driver knew exactly what we had in mind and drove us through the dark city for about twenty minutes until we arrived at the park surrounding the tower.
As soon as we stepped out of the air conditioned taxi we realized it was hot! My camera lens fogged right up, and the humidity was oppressive. I couldn’t believe that this was the temperature even this early in the morning. We just came from a muggy summer in Japan, so we were not overwhelmed. Still, I could feel that we were in the desert of the Middle East and not in Asia anymore.
The tower itself was as impressive as it should have been, and we took endless pictures of it, around it, and in front of it. There weren’t many people around so it was easy to cross streets and look around as much as we liked. The area around the tower was under serious construction, and later we found that most of Dubai is under the same conditions. They continue to build huge buildings and develop their infrastructure, hoping to vitalize their city before their oil runs out in 2029.
After exploring the neighborhood around the tower we walked underneath the pedestrian walkway (that was closed due to the early hour) until we reached the metro station. We waited there for about half an hour until the first train arrived, and then we headed off to Old Dubai.
On the train we could start to see some of the social stratification in the United Arab Emirates. There seemed to be a worker class, mainly in construction, and they looked Indian or Sri Lankan. The women tended to stay separate from unknown men and some train compartments were separated into women only areas, even within the same train car. Kuniko got a lot of attention (not sure if it was because she is Asian or because she is a woman), but I don’t think we felt like it was unsafe at any time. Mainly it was interesting for us to see a completely new culture. The trains themselves were very modern, made in Japan (by my company’s competitors) and operated without any staff from a central location.
Once we arrived at Old Dubai, we felt much more comfortable. This area of town was lined with shops, restaurants, and apartments. The social class was a little lower than downtown, and it looked like a comfortable and more fun place to spend time. We walked through on our way to a sightseeing spot in Kuniko’s guidebook, but it turned out to be a bit of a bust. Too touristy, not very authentic, and anyway mostly closed due to the early hour. We enjoyed just walking through the neighborhood. I think we’d be happy to spend more time there eating and looking around.
We took the train back to the airport, and mistakenly arrived at Terminal 3, when in fact our flight was leaving from Terminal 2. The staff explained that there was no free way to get from Terminal 3 to Terminal 2, and our only option was a taxi. We went back out to the taxi line and were assigned a luxury black taxi, and we could hear the disappointment in the driver’s voice when we said we were only going to Terminal 2. Still, it took a long time to get there, and again we could feel just how big the Dubai airport was. The taxi ride turned out to be expensive and used up the last of our dirham that we had prepared for the short visit. Inside Terminal 2 we had a little more time to kill so we went for some coffees at a Costa Coffee cafe. We ordered a Shawarma wrap to go along with it and we were pleasantly surprised how good it was. Kind of a middle eastern burrito, we hoped to have more on our return to the United Arab Emirates at the end of our trip.
The flight from Dubai to Tbilisi is only three and a half hours, flying straight over the Iranian desert and Tehran. We flew on a low-cost carrier called “Fly Dubai”, and since it was an LCC we had very low expectations. We ate and drank before boarding, and just napped and slept during the flight. We’ve had some experience with LCCs before, but apparently nobody else on the plane did.
I had never seen so many people ordering food and drink, complaining about this and that, and generally causing all kinds of problems for the rather stressed-looking staff. I imagine the job turnover at this company is pretty high. But soon enough we were descending on Tbilisi, and people could see the light at the end of the tunnel and stopped complaining so much.
We got off the plane, walked through a slightly dark airport, and then went through customs easily. We were relieved to see that our suitcase had made the trip along with us. We walked right through customs and were ready to get started with our vacation in Tbilisi, Georgia.
