On my way to Turkey, we landed in Dubai after our short stopover at Singapore. Another thing that annoyed me was that there were always people who got up from their seat as soon as the plane had landed to get their luggage from the overhead compartment, even though the seatbelt light was still on. I mean, what if the plane turned on its side, ha? Those idiots would end up like strawberry jam on the runway. Though it would teach them a lesson!
At Dubai, we were to stay at the airport hotel for a couple of hours until our plane to Istanbul landed. My mother and my brother were complaining about how hot it was in Dubai (39O C) but I told them that there had been hotter days in Australia (one was even 42oC!) but they still complained. It was at this moment that I started to curse the first and buisness class passengers on the plane (I flew in economy class). Those passengers got to be chauffered to their fancy French hotel, while economy class had to contend with waiting for a minibus to get to a dodgy hotel! I mean, if we had all been on a ship and the ship started to sink, they would be the ones who would get the lifeboats (like the Titanic).
The hotel room we got wasn't too shabby, except that in the bathroom there were only two small bars of soap, two small packets of shampoo and only three towels (one was already used alledgedly by the previous person who took the room). There was also no cold water (what did you expect? We were in an Arab country!)
At the hotel, they gave us coupons to buy a sandwich and a drink at the cafe. I ordered a beef sandwich, but the beef was dry and stringy. It didn't go well with the airline food I had eaten on the plane.
I swear, Arab people seem to be the most unhappy people in the world, at least that's what they looked like in the UAE. The only Arab that I saw who smiled here was th bus driver who took us to the hotel from the airport, after he gave us a pamphlet about a bus tour of Dubai. I mean, at passport control, the woman who was checking them was unhappy. When she asked us "How long would you be staying in Dubai?", my mother goes "Oh, only a couple of hours..." then the woman just stamps our passports as if nothing was said. Then this same woman then talked to another woman who was in another booth, a fellow worker stamping the passports of other passengers. They spoke in Arabic, and I had the feeling that she was talking about us. But before I could think more about it, the woman gave us our passports and we were then told to move on.
Another unhappy person was the security guard who worked at the hotel. I was in the lobby with my mother and brother, waiting for a couple of people (we met some Turks on the place to Dubai. They apparently lived quite close to us in Australia. They were pretty good. One of them even helped me with a couple of surd problems I had to do for homework. But one had this real annoying ...
