H: Dubai is a pretty stressful place.

We crossed over the border today, and no sooner as we got accross to the UAE side the big malls start. Which suited us fine, as we needed a toilet stop and somewhere cool in the heat of the day for the kids to let off some steam. The change in country was very noticeable as there were far fewer people in traditional dress and some of those that were had accompanied the robes with baseball hats or by wearing sunglasses inside...

It took us forever to get through the UAE border town which set us back an hour or so. We also hadn't booked anywhere to stay which is the start of a reasonably knackering 36 hours! We thought we could just drive in to Dubai and find somewhere in the area we wanted which is what we would usually do but we should have realsied that was going to be tough. Firstly we were in a car so stuck with driving and trying to find parking. The city is HUGE, incredibly busy, little on street parking, accommodation isn't cheap and we didn't even really have a map to get us in to the area that we wanted and it was already 5 o'clock.

After finding a parking space and using our only UAE coin to buy an hours of parking we agreed to meet in half an hour. G took Leo off in search of somewhere to stay and I stayed with Ben who decided he wanted to pretend to drive the car. So I sweated it out in a hot car with Ben and watched the clock tick well over the half hour meet up time, and way past the end of our parking ticket and there was no way to contact G to tell him to hurry up. I then realised the car clock was 15 minutes fast and clearly had been for the past 2 weeks but we hadn't realised.

G returned with two not-cheap options, we took the more expensive one that gave us a bit of extra space and G dropped me at the hotel and went off to find a car park. I then had another hairy wait in the hotel lobby with two extrememly hyped up kids who had spent 7 hours in a car and now had energy to burn - but in a much posher hotel than we would ever normally stay in.


Neither of us were that keen to spend long in Dubai but one day was probably too short to fit everything we wanted or could afford to see in. Again we decided to leave the hire car and take public transport out to the Atlantis so we could experience Dubai the best we could in 24 hours. We had no buggy so set out for the day with just one child carrier, thinking Ben could walk and we could carry him when he got tired. But the public transport wasn't that exciting - we could have been at any tube station in London, it took forever to get out there, and the metro out to the Atlantis didn't start anywhere near the tube line. So we ended up trying to find our way on foot, by which point Ben had fallen asleep so G was lugging a dead weight. There were no footpaths, no road crossings, we had to climbing up the verge, past roadworks, find our way out of random hotel grounds and then through a half built car park in the heat, constantly getting lost and more and more knackered.

We collapsed in the air conditioned metrol station and caught the metro out to the Atlantis which is on the palm and has got a really awesome view. We pulled in at the Atlantis station and realised that we probably couldn't afford to do anything there and it was already 12 and there were other places we wanted to see. Plus we wanted to try and get back to see the fountains at the Burj for 1:30. So we got back on the metro and retraced our footsteps, this time missing the actual footstep part in favour of a £2 taxi.

I am not really that impressed with the tube planning of Dubai. Firstly, who would put an emergency button on the tube right at childrens height? The man at the other end didn't really care for my appology and told me in future it must only be used in emergencies. Secondly, wouldn't you expect the tube to join up with the metro? Although maybe we are the only cheapskates to care about this?

Then the stop at the Burj Khalifa must honestly have been over a miles walk on travelator walkways to Dubai Mall, when we then had to negotiate the shoppers to make it to the fountains at the Burj. Maybe I am only complaining cos these kids weigh a tonne and we were cutting it fine to see the fountain show and piggy backing Ben gets tiring pretty quickly. But if the stop is called Dubai Mall, is it wrong to expect it to be at most five minutes away? We made it - just in time to see everyone coming back inside. We had missed the fountains and the next show was 6pm.

Extremely knackered, hot and tired we collapsed at Coldstones and had an ice cream. We realised we were back in our usual travel situation on 'Western Days' when we feel like scruffs who have teared about the city and then finding ourselves surrounded by lots of clean smelling nicely dressed people. We let Ben and Leo run around a bit and then picked them back up and started the slog back along the 10km walkways to an extrememly packed tube. We then caught the water taxi back across the river to our hotel which was awesome and I wish we had spent more of our day doing that - fresh air and more traditional life!

Back in our room for an hour, kids showered, packing started and we set back out, this time in the car, to go back to Dubai Mall to see the fountains. Learning from past mistakes G downloaded a map back to the mall which got us there, but not without some pretty hairy moments on four lane roads where lanes dissapear as quickly as they arrive and the Emiraties don't half like their overtaking...

The fountains were amazing, more impressive than at the Bellagio (where I have spent hours stood watching their fountains) and with hindsight were always going to be better in the dark than in the day so we were probably always going to waste our time this afternoon trying to get there!

We were back at our hotel room by 9pm, having not started any packing up and with a 5:30 wake up call the next morning.

Very little sleep later, majorly aching from the walking and carrying of the day before, we were at the airport waiting to meet our friend again at 6:30 to get our bags that she had stored for us back from her. 6:45 came and went, the number we had for her didn't work and we had no internet to messenger her. At 7:00 we didn't think we had that much choice to go up to departures where fortunately we got a voicemail saying she was late but on her way.

We met her at 7:15 and with 90 minutes before our flight we raced to check in to find that they weigh in total at Dubai (rather than weighing each piece and rounding each item down as they do in Bimringham) so we were 10kgs over. So here we started pulling things out to go into our hand luggage while the woman told us we need to hurry up as we were late to go through security. Oh and at this point Ben and Leo were not cooperating with standing still.

We hurried through security, through the gate and collapsed onto the plane. This last day or so has definitely been more like the travelling experiences we are used to! Neither of us are ready to leave, it has been so great to be on the road again and tiring-ness aside, taking Ben and Leo on our travels with us is pretty awesome :)

H: Yep another normal day. A good one, but not funny or nightmareish or disastrous. This trip is going pretty smoothly eh?

H: Today we hiked. It wasn't too long. It wasn't too short. It wasn't too hot. It wasn't too cold. There were no midges, mosquitos or mud. Nor freezing tents, bad food or altitude sickness. It was just a nice hike :o)

H: Well it happens every trip and it's probably good we got it out of the way - our bank card got stopped and so with two hours until we had to leave with R150 in our pockets (must learn to get money out well in advance) we made an emergency call to Halifax. Well we tried to. The internet connection at our hotel wasn't good enough to use skype, the phone card G ran out to buy lasted long enough to say hello to the lady answering the phone and then cut out. Next plan was to use my mobile phone with £7 credit on it. That got us through security and all but sorted before the credit ran out. With an hour to go I set out to find an internet cafe to try skype.

Next problem - internet cafe full and even if I waited he wasn't sure skype was installed. Luckily he had a heart of gold and lent me his mobile so I could call using skype. 5 minutes and a number of security checks later Halifax kindly inform me that there is no problem at all with our cards and that it must be the ATMs we are using. Twenty minutes to go I am walking as quick as I can in nearly 40 degree heat, trying 2 failed ATMs before finally finding one that works.


We set off south to spend a night in a desert camp. We pulled up outside the office to find a group of people already there and waiting. As more arrived it became very clear that we were by far the youngest there - their average age must have been over 60 and I am guessing there must have been at least a few that were slightly dissapointed to find two young children were going to be going with them!

The car we had rented wasn't a 4x4 which meant we had to be driven in a jeep with one of the owners, which initially we were dissapointed about - the driving in Australia had been a lot of fun. But seeing the dunes and a couple of other people's cars get stuck we realised we had probably made the right choice.

The camp was awesome - simple palm huts surrounded by desert and they had kindly put us way at the back so we had plenty or space for Ben and Leo to tear around in. Unsurprisingly we ended up with sand absolutely everywhere and putting suncream on turned out to be a good exfoliating treatment.

Once they were in bed we could sit outside under the stars and enjoy complete peace. Come morning we were up on camels walking through the desert. Leo particularly enjoyed it - he was asleep within a minute and missed the whole walk :)

We have loved it but it is particularly special to see Ben and Leo enjoying it. A host at the camp even said how well behaved they were which is a compliment I doubt we are going to hear very often.

This trip is going to be way too short...

H: Having filled our car with 44 litres of fuel which set us back a massive £7.50 we set off down the coast to Sur. A much nicer drive than the Dubai-Muscat drive had been, through kilometre after kilometre of desert.

We plucked up the energy for a slog in the heat at Wadi Shab, one of the few rivers we have seen here. And then on to Sur, a far far nicer little town with so much life on the street and lots of friendly locals. I keep expecting them to try and sell us something or take us to see their shop but that's not happened at all. They seem to love the kids and Ben has changed from being really shy, to yesterday walking up to a man we were talking with, leaning on his shoulder and start blabbing who knows what to him but definitely something about Gan and Gannat (Gran and Grandad). It's gorgeous to see.

The main challenge in this town was getting Leo to sleep in a bed. The cot they provided was tiny and no good as soon as a child can sit, let alone climb. So we put a mattress on the floor, stupidly next to Ben's bed, and spent the next 45 minutes trying to get him to stay in bed and to stop trying to climb onto his brothers.

Travelling with kids is great but definitely, and not surprisingly, more tiring! We used to sit and read for a bit, or come back to our hotel and enjoy some air con (if we had splashed out for it) for a while to get out of the midday heat. But unfortunately that's not working for us now - we tried that yesterday but the kids went wild cooped up in a room. So a fun trip but not at all relaxing!

H: The Grand Mosque was beautiful, an intricate complex of buildings, a huge prayer hall and finally it feels like we are travelling.

H: It's been ages - it's nearly four years since we last visited a new country and it's two years since our disastrous road trip in Australia. But having had a couple of years to save up a bit and for the nightmares to fade, and not put off by a road trip in extreme heat, we set off for Oman.

We broke our flight back from the UK to NZ in Dubai, dropped some of our bags with a friend who lives there, waved bye and went with the bags we needed for our travels to the car rental place. Here we discovered that the car we had hired was far too small to fit everything in so had to ditch the buggy. Shame it wasn't a couple of children but buggy probably the next best thing.

With everything squeezed in, tired from an overnight flight, three hours overdue breakfast and a five hour drive ahead of us we set off to find some food. Armed with one of those useless summary car hire maps we attempted to find our way to a supermarket to buy breakfast - not that easy a task.

Navigating out of Dubai however was much easier and soon we were on our way through pretty nothingy landscape to the UAE-Oman border, crossed over (no bribery or missed stamps here - things have started well!) and continued onto the even worse road to Muscat. For three more hours we drove in a straight line, no scenery but endless houses and shops all surrounded by tall walls.

Eventually we got to Muscat, tired, in the dark, and overdue tea. Very unusually for us, G had booked a hotel for the first three nights. But apart from knowing its name, he knew nothing else - no address, no phone numbers and to be fair, even if he had an address, we had no map. So way past tea time we admitted defeat and stopped at a mall and used Costa's free wifi to get the directions.

After a good nights sleep, we tried to keep to our traveller roots and left our hire car at the hotel and caught a local bus out to the corniche. It's pretty hot going, in 40 degree heat and fielding two small kids but local transport has often been one of the best ways to get a feel for a place and this journey didn't dissapoint. Ben ended up sitting between a guy and his box of chickens while crammed in a little minibus. Fortunately unlike Asia these minibusses are airconditioned :) We came to pay as we got off the minibus to find someone had already paid for us.

Muscat wasn't what we had hoped - we thought it would be a pretty city with lots of open space and street life. Instead it was a massive urban sprawl, with no life on the streets as everyone is either behind the walls or in cars. I guess the heat is more intense than some of the other places we have been but the wealth of the country is also different to anywhere else we have travelled before.

Really looking forward to getting out of the city and seeing more rural Oman - we must learn that cities are not really for us!

G: Still a few hours to go until we head to the airport and for once we are packed and all set to go in plenty of time. Thanks to everyone we've seen / spent time with on this visit for an awesome time. See you all again soon! H and G xxxx