James Getting out of Neath and into The United Arab Emirates

The Journey!

This is our first blog entry, written by James and based on my journey to my first destination: Abu Dhabi.For those who are not aware, I decided to leave the 'pretty s***ty city' in Wales two weeks before the boys and spend some time with my Aunty and cousins in Abu Dhabi.After two weeks of relaxing by the pool, plenty of sleep, a variety of delicious food and particularly a low consumption of alcohol (certainly by my standards), I will then advance onto meeting the boys in a wild and crazy city that I think they call Bangkok.It could be stated that my time in Abu Dhabi is merely 'the calm before the storm' (only joking dad, chill out!)This blog is about me getting to Abu Dhabi, in one piece!

I left Wales in the early hours, on the 16th January and travelled to Heathrow airport by national express bus.The journey up was fairly long and I found myself feeling overly excited but at the same time a little nervous.The idea of going away to all these amazing places was great (to be honest it was brilliant, f*&king amazing!) Although the realization that I wouldn't be home for seven and a half months gave me a few butterflies! The combination of the two, along with the addition of Pink Floyd blasting in my mp3 player, resulted in me not sleeping a wink for the entire journey! But who cares, you sleep long enough when your dead or so I've heard.

Arriving at Heathrow at 5am, with no sleep, was a seriously daunting experience; the place was huge! I suddenly had a weird feeling, similar to what you feel when you're a child and lose your mother at Tesco! Although this time I was in London and my mother was in Neath (oh yer and I'm now 21 as opposed to 5) I just froze and wasn't sure where to look or what to look for! I then progressed into nervously laughing my t*** off, purchased a funny named coffee from Starbucks and jumped into an escalator in hope it would take me somewhere more recognizable.Luckily it did.This was the floor where you checked in and to my relief there were many pretty petite women walking around in British Airways uniforms.Putting on my lost school boy face and innocently flapping my eyelids I approached one of them; she was only too happy to help, she electronically sorted out my ticket and was generous enough to push me to the front of the que where you check your luggage in.However, the overweight and solemn looking security guard who was checking the hand luggage didn't seem to fall for my innocent looks and proceeded to gave me a full body search before letting me pass.After an overpriced cooked breakfast in departures, a mini aeroplane meal (accompanied by a few cheeky Heinekens) and a s*** in-flight movie, I was descending onto Abu Dhabi.

Abu Dhabi airport is considerably smaller than Heathrow and it was rather simple to workout where to go.A small wait for my backpack to come through on the rotating luggage belt and I was on my way, or so I thought.With the rucksack securely on my shoulders and the small hand luggage under my arm, I was confidently leaving the arrival suite.Then as I was walking out, the Arabic security guard, dressed in what resembled military uniform called me aside.I was taken into a small office and thoroughly searched; they emptied my rucksack and even searched all the pockets of my shorts (which were inside the bag).I had now been searched departing and on arriving, I think it was fair to say that my innocent looks were something that I must have left with the pretty British Airways dolly bird.These guys must have thought I had the look of Tony Montana from the extent they were searching me (and this was my first bloody flight, I only have another 8 around the world).Anyway, around 15 minutes passed, my rucksack and its contents were allowed through, and so was I.But just as I was leaving the Arabic guard started to look in my hand luggage.Abu Dhabi is an Islamic city, and Muslims have certain views about how women should look and in my bag were a copy of both 'zoo' and 'nuts'.The front of 'Nuts' had Jennifer Ellison with her (very big) rack out and 'Zoo' sported the sexy little blonde chick from Girls Aloud, wearing nothing but a thong.The eyes of the security guard popped out (I couldn't blame him Ellison's boobs were quite alarming).I knew that this type of magazine would be frowned upon in an Islamic city such as Abu Dhabi and expected them to be taken off me.However, the guard, to my amusement continued to look through them in a way that led me to believe that maybe he had not seen a pair of t*** before!He spent a few minutes on each magazine, put them back in my bag, smiled and I was away.

My first destination had been successfully reached and my aunty and cousins were there to greet me!!