Flashpacker

I didn’t expect all of the pollution, the pyramids didn’t appear until late afternoon. The sphinx looked amazing though and despite the pollution and the hawkers it is a must see.

I have mixed feelings about dubai. Its an exciting but artifical place. Great hotels, excellent restaurants – the italian in the Radisson Media hotel (i can’t remember its name) has great food and wine. I went to a morrocan restaurant that was first class too.

What bothered me was the humidity – i went in June and it was awful. And the desperation – i sensed that a lot of people were there because dubai sells itself as a honey pot but now everything is so expensive, you can’t do anything there without spending money – that people are only keeping their heads above water.

I didn’t really like it – nothing is cheaper than the UK and soon they will be introducing a 5% VAT rate.

I will be going back soon with work, maybe I’ll change my mind.

I really liked it. I started in Jeddah which was quite humid and as you can imagine hot. Went to a great lebanese restaurant which had amongst other things brains, tongue etc on the menu. The locals were very accomodating and had an unexpected good sense of humour.

After that Riyadh, it was amazing to be in a shopping mall when the call to pray goes out, literally all muslims must go to pray or else they will get taken my the relious police (muttawa). Every quite shop door way will be taken by people praying in the direction of mecca.

The Kingdom tower dominates the skyline, a plane can fly through the gap at the top, unfortunately i was too knackered to go up there when i had a chance.

Every hotel room has a sign on the ceiling telling you which way the holy city is. Stayed in the intercontinenial in Riyadh and it was absolutely first class.

Its hot here but dry, the highest temperature hit 52 degree C!

I then drove across country to Hofuf and finally Damman. Its more relaxed here and only a drive across the causeway to Bahrain where you can have a drink.

Will be going back in the next few months and i want to explore further. A great interesting place.

quite dirty and the taxi drivers are insane.

just come back from two days ‘work’ here. stayed at the hilton which was absolutely superb. the stella tastes better here than the uk – it doesn’t have that chemical aftertaste.

the shops looked pretty good – lots of antique stores, modern furniture, art etc but unfortunately i didn’t have time to have a proper look.

a very pretty place it would definately be worth another look

Despite what many people say i found mallorca rather boring unless your idea of fun is drinking all day and watching sport. Palma Nova had a number of decent restaurants, magaluf wasn’t that bad and the aqua park was a lot of fun, pollenca and port de pollenca were pretty. Alcudia i didn’t rate for no other reason than i prefered palma nova. And don’t bother driving all the way to the light house a cap de formenter – the viewing point a few km’s from port de pollenca is far better.

Admittedly despite best intentions i didn’t explore Palma – that looked more like my kind of place but the chances are that i’m unlikely to return to get the chance.

A beautifully relaxing place. We had a stilt house in the sea, magnificent!