UAE

I'm back in India at work. I spent 3 days in UAE (Abu Dhabi and Dubai) and 1 day traveling it seems.
Flight to Mumbai:
Not bad. Taxi to Bang airport fairly easy. Finding flight fairly easy. Flight to Mumbai not bad. Weird landscape below. Green, brown and light gray areas. Strange how they contrast. Mountains are sporadic and narrow. Like spines poking up from the surrounding plains. Strange how there seems to be no rhyme of reason to how they were formed.
Landing in Mumbai...wow, look at the slums! Shacks right next to the runway about 100 yards. And a bunch of them. Mumbai looks advanced, until we fly over this part of the city. Wow. Poor people all over the place.
Mumbai airport...crap. Old, dirty, two airports actually. I have to take a shuttle to the international terminal..about a 15 minute ride. Pretty dumb, and time consuming especially since they don't have info or signs declaring this is the case. In efficient, to say the least. Dirty airport, falling apart.
Flight to Abu Dhabi:
Took some evasive action from some storms. Sharp turns, cool. Night travel, not much to see. Music was working, movies were not. Flying over the desert is dark, but blue/green rivers are below...turns out they are roads. Straight and well lit they look like rivers. Lights in the distance from several towns.
Abu Dhabi is lit up. Hazy too. What the heck? Is that pollution? Weird.
Nice landing, I hate landings. Small airport; immigration was easy for me. They must not like Indians cuz they herded them elsewhere (were they shot? who knows...). Taxi man came to me on foot. Escorted me to money exchange and then his nice cab. I thought perhaps he wasn't a cabbie, and took me for my kidneys (beer soaked as they must be). Told him "Millennium Hotel" and he started driving. He tried to make small talk, English was broken and talked about how many people are moving to UAE. Chinese especially, "displaying their crazy legs". He was nice and funny. Hates traffic. But I noticed it's really nice. WIDE roads, lane discipline!!! No horns. Very nice. I fell in love with the city before I stepped foot into it.
Super nice hotel. Abu Dhabi has so many buildings, so much construction. Amazing. Nice lights, nice people...there's a Chili's, KFC, MacDonalds, Burger King...and Mountain Dew!!! Gulp.
Brooke was happy to see me, or happy to see some one other than co-workers...and I don't blame her based on the ones I met the next day. We talked then went to sleep.
Day 1:
Had a huge breakfast buffet. Pancakes and syrup! Beans, eggs, juice, waffles, the works. Met Sarah...woman, just shut up. Brooke has enormous patients with her. Screw that!
We thought about going on a desert safari, but it was booked and i just wanted to relax. so we went to another hotel's nice pool. It's hot and HUMID here. Ick. Like 99% humidity. Pool was warm, but nice. I got a bit pink. Alcohol is only served in hotels and resorts, so luckily there were pubs next to the pool in the courtyard area. Nice.
At night we took a "dinner cruise" in the bay on a boat. Pretty cool. Not the best ever, but nice and relaxing. Woman, just shut up. Dammit, she's weird. Brooke has had about enough of her, and this one guy who thinks he's funny. He ain't. Food was seafood and meat, served on flammable little serving boats (see pictures, later).
Came back, went to sleep.
Dubai:
Rented a taxi for 10 hours to drive to Dubai and around the city. Highway is straight. wow. Took about 1 1/2 hours. Dubai has so many new buildings, and so many more under construction. HUGE buildings. I feel small. In India, you're apart of everything, no space, no tall buildings. Here is a land of Giants. Cool. Saw the indoor ski lift and slopes (from the outside). It's huge. Saw the SailBoat hotel (Burj al Arab), set foot in the Persian Gulf (very warm and nice). Had lunch in a hotel, found a very nice ALE beer. Fuller's London Pride! Nice. I miss ales. I had two.
Then I went to another hotel to their rooftop pub to see the Palm Islands (man made islands I saw on the history channel). I thought if I could get up high enough I could see more of them (3 palm islands, one "world" island...look them up). Brooke and Sarah went to the Gold Souk (market). I was wrong. The palm island is HUGE!! My god, it's big. Not only that, but the buildings are huge. Most are under construction. It's a whole new skyline. Jeez. It's big. I can't believe it. I was hoping that when the girls came back, we would have time to drive out onto the island. Guess what, our driver was Indian!! No concept of time. Unbelievable. We didn't have time to drive out. I was sooo close. Dammit! Indians....unreal.
To wrap up. Flight back was ok, watched Rambo..the new one. Landing was soft in Mumbai. Airport still sucks, they bumped up Bang flight 1/2 hour, I had to run to the shuttle and then check it...only to be delayed by 20 minutes. UAE was a refreshing change from India. In Bang, taxi driver was horrible. Honked way too much, even for India. And slow! I just wanna sleep (have been up for 25 hours).
Got back. slept for a couple of hours. Went to see Detgen. She blessed me with AC, quiet, and a movie...and beer. Slept there.
Back at work.
Pictures will come shortly.