Well, the suspense is done, you obviously know that today is our last day in Oman and we are headed to the UAE! So now you know that this is the destination we had to pay twice for because of our cancelled flight out of Khasab, and also the destination that our flight attendant told us to skip in order to spend more time in Oman. Well… sorry! What we reaaaaaally wanted to do was take a bus from Muscat to Dubai… but my partner’s visa wouldn’t allow for that. We were explicitly told we need a flight in and a flight out to qualify for the Hayya Card visa. Well… neither here nor there. Time to get back to the story!

Well, our flight was pretty early, so we left the hotel almost first thing in the morning and went to catch the A1 bus to the airport. On our way there a taxi driver stopped us to try to negotiate a price, but we ignored them, but the reason we tell you that is that it delayed us exactly 2 minutes… To get to the bus stop we have to cross underneath the road using an underground pedestrian passageway… and as we come out… the bus goes by. Oh. No. The next bus is in 30 minutes. Oh. No. We need to be at the airport in about 45 minutes to one hour. If the next bus is late at all… we’re done for. Especially since both times we “went” to Khasab the line for immigration was huge.

Alright, my partner decides to wait exactly 40 minutes, and if the bus has not arrived then we will take a taxi. They keep passing by and honking at us to know if we want to take one or not, so not like it will be hard to catch one.

Well.. after some tense waiting at exactly 37 minutes or so, the bus arrives. Luckily for us it’s super early in the day and there is almost no traffic. And there are almost no people waiting for the bus along the route, so we get to the airport pretty quickly. Check in quickly and then rush to immigration. Zero line. We cross without any issues and then we get to take the Muscat airport in again. Luckily for the people who don’t like to read so much, we have new pictures from the airport that you haven’t seen before. Picture one, the palm industry; you can see all kinds of things that the palm tree is good for beyond “just” dates. Picture two, bridal preparations; before an Omani wedding the bride prepares by gathering all kinds of jewelry and trinkets into this sort of chest in anticipation for the wedding when she wears it all. Very interesting.

Well, not a lot of time to wander around, but we already have done more than our fair share anyway. We are a little sad that we can’t get a bunch of Omani products when we leave because my partner’s suitcase is already overfilled… but it would have been nice to get some dates, soaps, or other handmade things from Oman. So interesting! You can tell that we really enjoyed our time here. At least we hope so, if not, we really enjoyed our time here (cancelled flights and all!).

Well… time to take off and leave Oman behind! This was a new one for us… we booked with Fly Dubai, which we have previously used when travelling through the region years ago. But when we got to the plane we arrived to Smart Wings, a low-cost Czech airline flying from Oman to Dubai, haha. Well, off we go! The plane was absolutely packed. My partner had the very last seat right beside the Fly Dubai representative, who’s seat I took for this picture.

And then in an extremely quick flight, we had landed in Dubai. As we came in the people were separated between those who had visas or could get visas on arrival and everyone else. The line was still pretty long and slow (and it didn’t help we were last off our plane full of people), but once we made it to the front it was extremely quick. Stamp and our free SIM card and we were in.

(Just a quick aside that you can skip if you want. We don’t remember if we have said this already or not, but an interesting thing for our flights so far have been the free SIM cards that we receive. In Qatar we passed immigration and there were two telecom companies waiting there for us with free SIM cards. We were allowed two, so we took one of each. In Oman they gave us the SIM card for free as we were still flying and we had to register it ourselves. And in Dubai the immigration themselves gave it to us when they returned my partner’s passport. Very interesting. If we remember correctly… Qatar was unlimited for one day (calendar day) on one card and 2022 MB +2022 minutes +2022 text messages for 48 hours on the other card. Oman was 1 free GB for 24 hours. Dubai was 1 free GB for 24 hours. These were great because they gave us a local number as well which was useful for the free wifi on busses, metros, and stores).

Then it was a quick bus ride to the nearest metro station (annoying that Terminal 1 has a metro station right there but there is no free connection to Terminal 3 where we landed) and then the metro to our hotel. Very quick and easy after getting our Nolcard (public transport Dubai). We absolutely love public transport, as you may have already noticed from past posts.

Then it wasn’t even 4 pm yet, so off we go. A LOT of walking today… but we did some quick sightseeing around Dubai. The nice thing about Dubai is that it is pretty much a straight line by the coast, so if you move in that general line you are bound to see some things. Which we did. This is me heading out into Dubai.

You can see the Burj Khalifa off in the distance in the background, the tallest building in the world. Eventually we would like to make it there. Let’s see if my partner’s legs make it that far, hehe.

First stop, the Dubai Frame.

HUGE. What else can you expect when it is the largest picture frame in the world? It is supposed to frame new Dubai in the direction we are showing, and old Dubai in the direction behind us. You can still see the Burj Khalifa off in the distance. Alright, let’s try to get in and to the top!

We go to the first gate, it is only to the park around the frame and not the frame itself. But the public park is paid, weird. I don’t remember ever seeing a paid public park before. Eventually we find the gate to go into the frame. Two hour wait time. No thank you. We would like to see other things. We will come back earlier in the day to see if the line is shorter, let’s just take a commemorative picture instead, even without going up.

Then we just continued walking towards the Burj Khalifa (easy landmark to aim at) looking at all of the tall buildings. Eventually we will have to do a photo dump on Instagram of just “the buildings of Dubai” because it is full of them and some look pretty interesting. But the next very interesting buildings we saw were these. The Museum of the Future with the Emirates Towers behind it. As you may recall from our breakfast with the Mexican-Dutch family, we can’t get tickets to the museum. Next time.

Then the sun started to go down, but that didn’t deter us from crossing this massive road that we believe runs through all of the Emirates and going to the Emirates Towers.

It was very nice to be under the Emirates Towers, there were gardens and places to sit and eat and things like that… and a bunch of these running around! So crazy!

And then we made it. We’re at the base of the tallest building in the world.

And then it was into the Dubai Mall. Insane. We had already visited this place once when transiting through Dubai, but that was much, much later in the night, and not during a festive period. So we were not used to seeing all these people packed into here, but mostly outside because of something special we will tell you about in a minute or two. First, enjoy these pictures of the mall.

The mall itself is home to many, many high end brands and is a shopping destination for many people around the world (the signs inside were written in Russian, Mandarin, English, and Arabic) and Dubai really promotes itself as a shopping hub, but the mall is also a tourist attraction in its own right because of what we will show now. There is everything here.

An aquarium. Insanely big. And a massive dinosaur.

A skating rink.

And waterfalls.

Then it was outside for the Burj Khalifa and a fountain show. It’s crazy to think that all of this area is really a desert when there is water absolutely everywhere. The fountain shows were cool, of course. We filmed two of them, without pictures. But we will put up some screen shots from the videos. And not only were there fountain shows, there was also a laser show on the Burj Khalifa itself.

And, as you can see, it was absolutely packed with people. PACKED. But we just waited and stayed in place long enough to get a good spot to be able to watch the shows.

Then it was time to head back to the hotel on the metro. We don’t want to stay out too late tonight, tomorrow is New Year’s Eve after all! So we will likely be out and about until very late. Even if we didn’t really want to or plan to be in Dubai for New Year’s Eve (we planned to have moved to another country by now, but we were in Oman longer than expected, as you know) we will try to make the best of it! Good night from Dubai!