Dubai

So it's almost been a full 4 months in this long distance relationship - with the difficulty of keeping up that kind of relationship, we decided to reward ourselves by visiting each other in very nice places. Paris was our first destination (over the holidays and New Year) and this time around, W chose Dubai. It was about a 12 hour there and 15 hour back flight, which actually wasn't bad when you consider hours of your own movie watching time and comfortable seating.

I landed in Abu Dhabi at 8am and got a chauffered car to take me the 1.5 hours into Dubai city to our resort. It was a gorgeous place, where you get your own apartment in a villa (village of villas). The reception area opened up to a tanning/pool part, with restaurants lining the property until the beach/water. One of the popular places to go out, Sho Cho's was on our resort, and a few really good restaurants with thai and lebanese food.

We spent a lot of the time just catching up and tanning on the lawn chairs, meeting a bunch of W's friends and seeing the city and trying out a local place called Buddha Bar. I got a nice tan, and got to observe a culture that I thought would be radically different from what I knew, but it turns out Russians are all over the place as either business barons or escorts - felt a lot like Poland!

I don't know if I could live there, cause of the distance from my family/friends and the incredibly unbearable heat during the summer (up to 50 degrees C, my God)... but I would definitely want to visit again and add a lot more to my list of things to do, now that I know what to expect.