Dubai, Day Seven: Home Sweet Home

Not much happened today really. I had a nice late morning flight which I made easily. I raided Duty Free for gifts (I'm so crap with gifts I had bought none till then. That in itself is further evidence of how I so need a wife). On the flight itself I had nice people seated around me and the time passed pretty quickly - having three seats all to myself helped. My parents were late picking me up due to irregular traffic and beefed up security around Heathrow, but I got out of passport control and customs easily enough and so had plenty of time to call friends now that I had access to my own SIM.

So what was the holiday like overall? Well to be perfectly honest, Dubai was pants. Apart from one or two unique (yet commercially created) features, there really isn't much for someone like me and my friends to do. On the other hand, the holiday itself was superb. There is no doubt that the people I had met and the wedding I had attended totally made the trip for me. Everything else was just a bonus.

I think that that's further proof that it's not the country that I'm visiting that makes a holiday fun for me; instead it's the people and what I do with them that does. Whether it's chilling in an ice cream cafe or juice bar with friends in Singapore, or being busy with wedding preparations in Bangladesh or Dubai, I'm sure to enjoy it if I have plenty of good guys around me. I guess that's a blessing.

I don't think that this means that I cannot appreciate a country for what it is, no. However if it wasn't for the wedding and everything that came with it, my experience of Dubai would have been close to that of my travel partners: not too fulfilling at all. So, my advice for Dubai in particular? Skip it, unless you have a reason (y'know, like a wedding or in order to meet fantastic people) to go.