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The last couple of days have been a bit of a blur but we finally arrived in Kota Kinabalu last night. Thursday night we landed in Dubai and jumped in a taxi to hotel. The driver was friendly though and only flinched slightly at our unusual way of gaining entry. The drive thru Dubai was a bit of aneye opener. The city is all less than ten years old and looks like it was designed by architecure students on E who had been told to really push the envelope of building design further thanit had ever been pushed. I loved it, the whole city looks like a set from Bladerunner.
We got up early the next morning as Kitty was itching to get in the pool. By 9am we were picked up by our driver who we had booked to take us on a desert Safari. We were expecting to have other people on the 4 hr trip into the desert but it was just us. By lunchtime we had ridden camels around a traditional desert camp ( bit touristy but hey, we that's what we are here ) and boarded down steep dunes ( like skateboarding but less painful when u fall ) and had 4 wheel drive safari up and down the steepest dunes imaginable. You kept thinking No way, he'll never go down there.... and he would. Back at the hotel we met up with an old friend, Mohammad, who stayed with us years ago when've was a language student years ago and he took us on a tour of Dubai with it's many oppulent wonders: a giant manmade chain of islands inthe shape of a palm tree, ornate mosques the size of the Isle of Dogs, 7 star hotels built like a sail and a shopping mall the size of Bath.
Friday night we joined the flight to Brunei and met Pieman on board, as arranged, finally landing at 10am and lept into action on a tour of Brunei in a mini bus. the cheerful tour leader kept reminding us that Brunei was really small and had zero crime. She kept telling us this like a parrot with alzheime She told us again as we drove past a police station with what did look like a splendidly sleepy policeman on guard outside the entrance. We opted for the full works and were next treated to a tour of the water village... The biggest in the world, I couldn't help thinking that there's probably very good reasons why most peoe tend to live on the land ; dryer, less smelly, easier to park the car, walk the dog etc but it was pretty cool.
The last flight to KK was a short one. twenty mins after taking off we were coming into land. 30 mins after landing we were swimming in Pie's illuminated swimming pool. It was heated by the sun all day and was a gorgously warm 29c at 11pm at night. Dj and Kit delighted in the fact that it was just about home time from School back in the UK and tomorrow was a recovery day with nothing to do except chill which was actually tricky to do in 33C. More soon x
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