Were you doing the wobbly head thing? :-(
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They can be soul destroying. There have been several times I have spent 3 or 4 hours sitting in the lounge at Dubai, on my way home from a long and hellish week of work. Alone, exhausted, aching, and nursing a nasty lager, 12 hours into your journey and still 12 hours from home, I will admit I have been close to tears on a number of occasions.
:nod: I remember waiting for a flight at fück o'clock in the morning from Changhi where the booze wasn't even making a dent and I was finding the stupid little river they have running through the airport really fücking irritating. And - if I can say this without sounding racist (hint: I probably can't) I was really sick of being surrounded by chinesers.
I was at a low ebb.
It can be incredibly lonely while at the same time there is a tremendous hatred for the fact that you are surrounded by people with no privacy.
I always take a shower in the lounge, just to give my poor aching feet a soak. And just to sit in the shower room on my own for a while. It helps, but I still feel like killing someone.
OK, but it IS Wahabbi and it IS an autocracy. So my point stands.
Flogging for adultery and stoning are legal there. Homosexuality is punishable by death.
Being the most liberal gulf oil state is very much the equivalent of boasting about being the world's tallest dwarf.
Yeah. It's also crawling with fücking Australians, which doesn't help.
The river was really bothering me for some reason. I think the simulacrum of nature only served to emphasise the ersatz sterility of the whole place and the unreal, unsettling nature of the whole experience of commercial air travel.
Some truth to that but it's an overstatement, it isn't that bad from what I've seen.
Interesting side note, you know how the BBC always called ISIS, the Islamic State but virtually never uses 'Daesh'? Almost like they don't want to offend them.
In the papers in the UAE they are almost exclusively referred to as Daesh. I always find it fascinating reading their newspapers, most illuminating. Before I steam into the lagers and mojitos at the swim up bar, of course.
UAE :cloud9: