Our One Day Dubai Trip

I live in Jakarta, Indonesia at GMT+7. It takes about +/- 16 hours if you want to go to Europe from Jakarta. As a first timer, it was quite pleasant for me to go by Middle East airlines, such as Emirates. It means that we would transit in Middle East around 8 hours after leaving from Jakarta before continue to Europe. What a great time to rest and straighten your feet anyway.

We were going by Emirates last time when we went to Europe. It took some time for me to decide which airlines to pick, however, given the price and time that were suitable for us, we chose Emirates. We would like to book Jakarta-London return tickets and apparently there were several alternatives regarding the time.

We were thinking that it should be nice to arrive in London in the morning. One of my traveling tips is to have an overnight flight and arrive the next day in your destination. Therefore, we chose to take off from Jakarta in the afternoon, transit in Dubai at midnight, and continue the flight to London at dawn. For the flight back trip, we saw that there was an alternative that we could do a stop over in Dubai.
Actually it was an impulsive decision to put Dubai in our itinerary. Additional one day in Dubai costed us more than it should be. We had to apply Dubai visa as well as book the hotel. We also had to prepare another itinerary. However, we never knew that this one additional day was really worth.

Dubai!
We arrive in the morning in Dubai, around 8.00 am in the morning, after 8 hours direct flight from London. The immigration was empty and the process was fast. After that we took taxi to our hotel, Holiday Inn, which was near to the airport. The reason that I chose hotel near airport was because we would be having our flight in at around 11.00am the next day. Therefore, I believed that we better stayed at airport area.

Actually that morning in Dubai, we felt really exhausted. Almost 3 weeks of being what-so-called "backpackers" in Europe we truly needed resting. At first, we wanted to explore the city by monorail, however, things changed because of we were tired and sudden change of weather from less than 20 celcius degree in Europe to above 30 celcius degree in Dubai! Finally, we booked two packages of tour instead: one is for 2-hour Dubai city tour, one is for Desert Safari.

We had a car (sedan) to pick us at 11.00 am from hotel for Dubai city tour. It was a private one, only two of us. The driver drove us to some of tourist photo spots in the city. Some of the places that I recalled were Dubai Marina, Dubai Museum, Jumeirah Mosque, Atlantis Hotel, and the beach with Burj Al Arab as background.  However, apparently this kind of arrangement was not really into us.
The other tour package in the afternoon was more fun. We were picked up at the hotel at 04.00pm with a four wheel drive (a Pajero, if I am not mistaken). Other than us, there were one couple, that later became our facebook friends and we were still keep in touch until now.

The car started its dune bashing once we arrived at the desert. We were so thrilled inside the car. It was like you were riding a rollercoaster. This kind of attraction lasted around half an hour until we were landed on a spot whereas we could see the best view of the desert while the wind is playing our hair. After dune bashing, we were brought to the place in the desert with several attractions coming: camel riding, henna tattoo, buffet dinner, and belly dance show.  Our desert safari tour ended around 9.00 pm and we were taken back to the hotel.

The next day we woke up, packed, and went to the airport to catch our flight at 11.00 am. Finally, we ended up our Europe + Dubai trips. We felt that all our efforts were paid off. We could enjoy Dubai as well as we enjoyed Europe. Therefore, here another tip of travelling from me: Do not be afraid to improvise as long as you can handle it.

Cynthia

Somewhere in the desert (This is the photo that was taken in 2010, the first time we went to Dubai. Next photos were taken in 2014, when we have 3 days stop over from our trip to Holyland)

Burj Al Arab at night.

Aquarium inside of Dubai Mall. I have not been going to Jakarta Aquarium opened in Neo Soho, therefore I still can't compare.

Crowding people around Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa area. Waiting for sunset.

Sunset in Burj Khalifa area. Burj Khalifa is one of the tallest building in the world.