Saturday 24 January 2015

From the Coral Sea to the South China Sea
(Part 2)

An update from Dubai

It's two o'clock in the morning and I'm in the Emirates Business Lounge in Terminal A of Dubai Airport. I caught the EK040 from Birmingham Airport which left about right time at 13:25. The aircraft was a smart Boeing 777-300, registration A6-ECZ. It should have taken 6 hours 20 minutes to Dubai but, mainly because of a headwind of about 40 knots, we were around one and a half hours late into Dubai. Dubai airport seems to have expanded again since my last trip through. There's now driverless rubber-tyred 'trains' between the three terminals that accelerate at a cracking pace. There was quite a bit of walking before and after the train. According to the signage, it takes 12 minutes to walk from one end of the Business Lounge to the other end! I'd had a meal on the inbound flight (I had a very decent grilled turbot in butter sauce with rice and carrots as the main course) but I was ready for a small bowl of minestrone with a small baguette before I located the business lounge and the Samsung machine I'm using. I had some trouble getting into Google - the browser is Internet Explorer and I got locked in a loop with Microsoft telling me what a wonderful experience the new Explorer delivers before it reluctantly dumped me into Bing.

View from the Business Class lounge in Terminal A at Dubai.

Shortly, I'll make my way to gate A8 for the 03:15 flight EK354 to Singapore which is apparently a 'Code Share' with Quantas. The wonders of modern air transport still impress me, but I don't have the stamina I once had.

More when I'm able. You can find all the posts on this trip here.

My pictures

Dubai Airport, U.A.E. (pictures from this and other trips).