Dispatch from Abu Dhabi
I'll be posting notes as I complete them. Hope everyone enjoys them.
Dec 13th 2008 Abu Dhabi
The Trip Starts
What a day, I guess technically it's two days, which would explain why I am so wiped out. My itinerary took me from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Dubai, the latter portion of which is a good 15 hrs on a plane - and I've still got the Dubai-Khartoum leg to go! The good news is that my return trip to San Francisco is going to be direct from Dubai which knocks off about 5.5 hrs from the return.
As usual I'll be just noting down some observations from my trip, to give a taste if you will, of the surprising sandwich that travel can be. I'll try to be brief this first time since I am so loopy, though. San Francisco airport was a blur. Frankly the only remarkable thing about it was the fact that I got singled out for a random screen (random) and got to go through the "puffer" machine. I'm not sure precisely how this machine operates in screening you for dangerous materials/weapons etc, but it basically puffs 7 air jets at you briefly as you stand in a booth that looks like it should transport you to the surface of an alien planet. The jets are hard enough and fast enough to make you jump slightly, which I did. The overall feeling is one of being groped in an elevator and I emerged from the booth feeling slightly dirty.
LA was more interesting, mainly due to my aggravation with it. My luggage had been checked through all the way to Dubai but for some unknown reason I couldn't get a boarding pass for the second leg of the trip. So I was forced to leave security, make my way to the international terminal and get into the check in line for my flight on Emirates. The line itself could have been for a flight to Mumbai or New Delhi judging from the faces I saw. Parents, squalling children (was I the only person on the flight without a small child?) and pot bellied Indian-American Princesses abounded, leaving me with a sense that I was on the wrong flight. I was immediately noticed (flagged?) for my lack of luggage and called to the front of the line and after assuring the agents that I had checked my bags through to Dubai, I was given my boarding pass and given the opportunity to wander.
LAX was a blur of mustachioed women and incongruities (like the one jam-packed security line only 50 yards away from the one completely empty security line; or the Aeroflot economy class counter), and I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to do anything other than call my brother and some friends and twitter a little. I discovered far too late that my seat assignment was completely wrong and as I got onto the plane realized with horror that I had been sent to the back of the plane and wedged in a middle seat between a fat man and an accountant. Rather these were the designations I gave the two men flanking me, since one was fat and the other looked like a old bookkeeper who had never managed to advance at his firm. Fortunately there was some last minute shuffling with another man moving to a different seat which left me with a little more room.
The flight was uneventful except for all the turbulence, and I managed to sleep some which was a blessing. The only thing I could honestly complain about was the mass of children running up and down the aisles, crying, singing loudly and generally making me wonder why there are no FAA rules for this type of terrorism. I traveled a lot as a child and I don't ever remember myself or my siblings being this badly behaved on the plane - at the airport was another story, but you get my drift. Needless to say, I was grateful to be on the ground when we arrived and even more to see my aunt in the arrivals hall.
Dubai has changed significantly since the last time I was here 4 years ago, and if possible it is even more shiny and new than before. The terminal we arrived in alone was such a mass of gleaming stone floors lit by LED lighting that I imagined that it must have been completed about an hour before our arrival. The rest of the city at night seemed to be an oversize, illuminated forest of construction cranes, beyond which one could make out the lights of skyscrapers in the distance. The Dubai real estate market has suffered with the global economic situation, and all the major projects seem to have ground to a standstill in the absence of credit, but it's hard to tell from the road. I'll spare you a treatise on the economics situation of the Emirates though, in favor of a less visible problem.
All along the roads leading in and out of the urban centers are large areas that appear to be container storage yards. Upon closer inspection you see that the containers have light seeping from them and are apparently outfitted with ventilation fans. That's because they are makeshift "temporary" housing for all the laborers that it takes to keep this place constantly under construction. The signs from the road say "labor camps". I don't think anyone here realizes how terrible of a term that is.