This week, I visited Dubai in the United Arab Emirates for the first time. From the beginning, I knew this trip was going to be interesting based on who was traveling with me. I couldn’t actually count of course, but I’d say 15%-20% of the people flying with me were construction workers, military contractors, or maybe even mercenaries. Actually, my first thought was the Ultimate Fighting Championship was staging a match in Dubai. The size of these guys, their bicep circumferences, and their tribal tattoos really did scream cage-fighters, but the khaki bags, fat black digital watches, and military-style boots hinted these folks weren’t flying for Ultimate Fighting. They were absolutely not the heads-down, acne-riddled late teens / early twenties soldiers with new boots I see all the time on their way to bootcamp or their first deployment. These were older, serious people. The two next to me in the plane were on their way to Qatar, working as military contractors for the US Army repairing war-damaged equipment.
Because this trip was rather suddenly decided, I hadn’t really read much to prepare. I was originally supposed to go to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but that changed when I was in London earlier in the month. Dubai is nothing like what I anticipated Riyadh to be. Once off the plane, I breezed through Passport Control and actually walked right by Customs. There was no documentation to fill out on the plane, and just a single, quick line at the passport desk. From the point at which the plane landed until I was standing in front of an ATM to withdraw Dirhams for my taxi, I believe it was less than 30 minutes (I didn’t check a bag).
Conversely, departing Dubai was a completely different story. I had to pass through the first line at X-Ray & metal detectors to get to the second line at check-in/ticket counter. Then I had to pass through a quick third line to show the boarding pass so I could stand in a fourth line at Passport & Immigration Control. After that, there was a fifth line for X-Ray & metal detectors to proceed to the gates, which was followed by a sixth line just outside the actual gate. Once through the sixth line, I was finally in the gate area waiting to board. For Delta, this means waiting until they call the boarding zone, and one last seventh line while waiting to board. I was in lines one through six from the moment I arrived at 9:15 PM until I entered the gate area at 11:15 PM for my 11:45 PM flight. I didn’t even have time to shop for souvenirs.
The flights to and from ATL were non-stop, each more than 14 hours in the air. Neither of my standby-to-upgrade requests cleared, so I was in coach in both directions. I was lucky to have a bulkhead seat on the way to DXB, but was in a standard coach seat on the return. The flight back was really the more difficult of the two red-eyes, because I was up at 7 AM local time and working at the office until 4 PM. I did the math in the taxi to the house at 7:30 Thursday morning. I realized I last got out of bed at 11 PM Tuesday night Atlanta time (there’s an eight hour time difference between Dubai and Atlanta).
Getting to and from Dubai was certainly easier with non-stop flights, but I can’t say it was an easy trip. Should I ever return, I now know more of what to expect when traveling.
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