Greetings From Dubai Airport

we are in the lounge at Dubai airport with the sun high in the sky,thankfully the lounge here is somewhat better equipped than the aspire at Manchester which may aspire but fails miserably.the flight out on Friday was fine as far as the service and aircraft were concerned but it was nearly two hours late in part a knock on from Thursday snow in the UK and then we lost our slots and ended up stacked above the gulf in the early hours.I nearly got led to a pirate taxi ,quickly realised something was wrong and found the proper rank and queue the traffic into town was heavy for the middle of the night and it was three am when I got to bed with aircraft movements through the night,ear plugs were worn.
martin arrived in the morning pretty jaded from the overnight flight we met up at the monorail metro stop. the monorail is a tourist thing which is at the back of an empty car park well hidden the tourists get dropped off at the doors which I missed and hobbled around the place twice following the poor sign posting.  the SRT up is a lot of investment and carries you over the famous palm leaf development which in reality is a building site and ugly. the monorail tuns to a hotel and fun fair you were meant to get off there,we got out and changed ends so I could get a better video on the way back,its expensive more than a day ticket to travel by all other modes around the country. when we came out they demanded the souvenir tickets back for recycling so why the bothered putting pictures on them who knows,they aren't going to budge on it so martin had to buy another one way ticket to add one to his collection. the metro system is automated and gets around fairly swiftly with windows either end and with a bit of polite squeezing in you can get to a great video position and as the day drew on I got some very good footage.
the Dubai tram goes nowhere in particular to another nowhere in particular partly coveted by metro and interchanges are hard work on stairs etc when maintenance or indeed building still seems to be in progress. some stations on the tram have over zealous jobs worth's over filming but none as bad as the deira palm bus station where tourists are I was informed allowed just one souvenir photo of a but because it is public transport. the are neoplan and Chinese deckers lots with all over contra vision adverts plus artics.
we had dinner in a local Arab restaurant iyr hotel being far from the tourist get to area and much else but it was cheapish. we got a taxi to the airport which was cheaper than buying a bus ticket how strange. they have gold tickets to access better seats on the trams,the ordinary ones are very comfortable and the possible journey white short how strange once again. a rather nasty little fascist state which will probably fall to the Isis state one DAT,we noticed that Emirates noe have their name large on the aircraft underbelly.
waiting for the flight to Dhaka,a three day nationwide hartal is underway at present  which ends early Wednesday morning which means we have just one day I. Dhaka with normal segues plus a full day in both Chittagong and Khulna the rest being travelling days with a little time for other things.the nationwide blockade continued and there have been more buses fire bombs and islamist fundamentalists shot in a fire fight with the police,all sounds good fun what ho!