Dubai (Dec 2004)

Back then, the Dubai taxi meters jumped at 50 cents per click! We learnt quickly to take buses.

The shopping malls in Dubai are huge. Top row 1st pic is Mercato Mall. 2nd row 1st pic is the Egyptian themed Wafi City Mall. You should try the Abra ride (top row 2nd pic) while in Dubai. It is near the Spice Souk (top row 3rd pic) and Gold Souk (2nd row 3rd pic). If you like luxurious living, why not drop by Burj Al Arab (2nd row 2nd pic) for a drink or high tea?

Wild Wadi (3rd row 1st pic) water theme park is near the Burj. You may also like to check out the Hard Rock Cafe (3rd row 2nd pic) in Dubai. The Jumaira Beach Park (3rd row 3rd pic) charged 5 Dhs per entry.

My travel experience

Let us take a break here before I upload more travel photos..

So, how do we travel?  We started our Europe trips with guided tours and later realised we could easily get around, as long as we can speak English and have a map to guide us.

In 2003, we started our Europe tour by joining the Trafalgar tour group in Rome for a grand Italy tour (http://exotic-italy-notes.blogspot.com/).  Our local travel agent booked our flights separately for us after confirming our tour package.  We "discovered" the ease of internet flight booking in 2004 and booked our subsequent flights with the most economical airlines thereafter.

In 2004, we took advantage of an airline's (Emirates) promotion of providing discounted hotel stay on transit and extended our vacation to that country (Dubai) after our main tour with Insight Vacations in Egypt.

While booking flights, we realized the conveniences of hotel confirmation. We started reading hotel reviews on http://www.TripAdvisor.com.

We made our most "daring" trip by booking only return flights and the first 3-night hotel stay in Athens, Greece, during Summer 2006. Majority of the trip was really free-and-easy, when we booked our next hotel stay via internet or phone the day before we travelled there. The Lonely Planet - Greece guide helped us a lot in Greece. We missed our ferry once and had to extend our stay at one of the hotels for extra nights. We were lucky there were vacancies, although we had to change rooms.

In Japan (2007), we foresaw possible language problem and pre-booked all our hotel stays. It is important to bring along a printed copy of the confirmation email, together with the hotel's address and map (if possible). Our travel guide for Japan was Rough Guide - Japan.

In all our trips (both guided and free and easy), it is useful to bring along at least 1 guide book (either borrowed or bought). During the free time for guided tours, the guide book referred us to some interesting side-places for our extra photo-shoots. Our favourite guidebooks packed with photos, illustrations and maps are from the Eyewitness Travel Series.

We learned during our travels to always be patient with others and always have a sense of humour. Time is at our disposal since we are on vacation.

I hope the photos inspire you and the Travel Guides help you on your next trip to the country. :-)