Brace yourself for your Dubai re-entry

Dubai re-entry
Operation LongVac is nearly over! Passenger numbers at Dubai International airport have swelled as families return from extended summer holidays, and the traffic on the roads is building up again.  Arriving in Dubai after a prolonged stay away is the only time you see the city through a tourist’s eye. You walk through the cavernous, marble-floored airport, with its glass elevators the size of your first apartment, wall of water and endless shopping, and appreciate how clean and modern it all is. 
If you’re wearing jeans, they’ll stick to your legs within half a second outside

The extreme heat and humidity slap you in the face as you exit the airport, reminding you just how hot the desert gets in summer, even in the middle of the night. If you’re wearing jeans, they’ll stick to your legs within half a second outside, and you know you’ll be peeling them off your calves later (Dubai re-entry and jeans are like a bad marriage). Then you pile into a taxi and tell the driver where to go. He’ll nod in that Dubai way which could mean he knows the exact route or hasn’t got a clue. In the latter case, you’ll find yourself playing navigator to someone inclined to disbelieve every direction you give him.  After the smaller, residential roads of your homeland, Dubai’s twelve-lane highways seem supersized, the lit-up cranes Orwellian. And don’t be surprised if you see more cranes working in one place than you’ve ever seen before, an army of giant derricks towering above a huge construction site that popped up while you were gone. Next, there’s just the small matter of getting the kids over their jetlag and finding your sand legs again – because transitioning from one country to the other is never as easy as you think it should be. For the next few days, Dubai re-entry shock will mean everything looks almost right, like wearing contact lenses in the wrong eyes. Welcome home!  Tip: Suffering from Dubai re-entry blues? Please consider reading my new book, Distracted Housewife in Dubai DIARY, for some laugh-out-loud entertainment. Available on Amazon as an ebook (for a Kindle or iPad with a Kindle app). The links are to Amazon.com – just switch to whichever region’s Amazon store you use to purchase. Thank you! Customer Review:
A brilliant book detailing exactly what life in Dubai is like. If you have ever lived in Dubai, you will recognize all the different characters in the story and you will laugh and laugh (and maybe even recognize yourself!)
School runs, Dubai brunch, valet parking...Marianne gets it so perfectly right in a fun and humorous way. Even if you’ve never lived in the UAE, this book will give you access to life as an expat and the trials and tribulations that go along with it. It’s a lovely and easy read!

The airport run

I don’t know about you, but the school holiday/Christmas combo wore me out – if I’d propped my eyelids open with cocktail sticks, I would still have fallen asleep.

And as BB’s school goes back a week later than nearly every other school in the world, I decided to take him home to his grandparents in England so they could do some advanced babysitting.

So here we are – in chilly Surrey (it’s 7 degrees and I arrived in flip-flops!), having got here by the skin of our teeth.

Suffice to say, our tickets – which were meant to be confirmed, weren’t – so standby it was, again. We tried four different flights over 24 hours, which involved lots of waiting (and you know how painful this can be with a small child in tow – personally I’d rather sit on those cocktail sticks), plus trotting backwards and forwards to the airport in a taxi.

On day 1, after our first crack-of-dawn attempt to get away, the taxi driver didn’t quite get that all we’d achieved that morning was an airport breakfast, and from the yawning I was doing presumed we’d just got off an international flight. So I went along with it. Later that day, we had afternoon tea at the airport too.

On day 2, after an even earlier start, the boarding pass fairy smiled on us and, with less than 45 minutes until take-off, we set off on a high-speed chase through passports and security to the gate – me dragging BB and our bags along at speed past Dubai International’s endless bling bling stores.

While everyone else settled down to enjoy a good movie, BB and I watched the map and counted down the minutes. "Look, Mummy - the front of the airplane has reached England. Are we in the front?"

The airplane, of course, was parked in the furthest-away spot, in the overflow parking by the airport fence, and we had to get to it by bus. As BB whined about how long the bus ride was taking – with eight hours of playing Tray Up/Tray Down, Light On/Light Off on the actual flight to go – my mood plummeted further.

The final hurdle was a seating problem. Having got the last two seats, BB and I were sitting in separate parts of the aircraft – and while I would have loved someone else, and even paid them good money, to sit next to him, this obviously wasn’t going to work. So I enlisted the help of a kindly cabin boy to ask passengers if they wouldn’t mind moving.

The shuffle that ensued resulted in a young man being left without a seat and, it was at this point, that my over-tired, over-active mind whirled into action, with visions of BB and I being deplaned.

“She doesn’t look like a terrorist,” I imagined the other passengers thinking, as I pictured us being marched off the aircraft. “Surely not with a child. Maybe they’re drug mules. No, the mother must be drunk. That’s it! She’s drunk – and in charge of a small boy! Disgraceful!”

Thankfully, my nice cabin boy returned and found the young man a seat – and we were on our way.

And so that’s how my relaxing break began. Just don’t get me started about the flight itself!

Dance breaks out at Dubai airport

Now I know why we spent a long afternoon at Dubai International airport the other day – I think I was meant to be part of this Flash Mob! How did I miss this? It’s brilliant!

Double deal: On having two homes

There’s something I should reveal about expats in Dubai: we lead double lives.

Most of the year is spent in our adopted country, the place where we’ve made good friends, the kids go to school and we work, have pets and own a 4by4. And you can feel perfectly happy and settled there, until July – when you realise you could probably fry an egg on your car so off you go on your long summer sojourn to your other home.

During this time in the motherland, I’m always reminded just how much I love seeing family and old friends, how much I enjoy cooler air, greenery, more effective customer service, and people who understand what I’m saying.

There’s an initial period of adjustment, of course. A kind of reverse culture shock, where you have to get used to looking the other way to cross the road, taking a brolly ‘just in case’, knowing only two people in your childhood town and feeling a bit disconnected. But once you’ve settled in, your old life fits like a glove (helped along by the fact you’re there in summer not winter and everyone’s happy to see you after so long).

This means that, however much you enjoy the country you’ve moved to and also call ‘home’, returning to it after an extended holiday always evokes mixed emotions. As the plane takes off, you look forward to getting back to your own space, re-instating old (and easier) routines and no longer living out of a suitcase.

But there’s also sadness at leaving and guilt, too, because you’re taking the kids away from loving grandparents and extended family. You know you’ll miss family get-togethers and that Facebook doesn’t make up for not being there in person when things happen at home.

The exhilaration and impossibleness of cramming a year’s worth of socialising into one or two evenings with your oldest and dearest friends also leaves you wanting more.

Unless you’re a frequent flyer who jet sets regularly from one home to another, transitioning from one country to the other is never as easy as you think it should be.

Dubai International Airport: The first clue that everything's super-sized

Landing in Dubai after a prolonged stay away is also the only time you see the city through a tourist’s eye. The cavernous, marble-floored airport, with its elevators the size of my first flat, wall of water and endless shopping. The heat and humidity that hit you as you step outside. The crazy drivers on the six-lane highways and, outside our compound, the sandy dunes that stretch for as far as the eye can see, punctuated by desert shrubs and the odd tree.

Seeing camels by the roadside is a novelty again – as is coming across a bus shelter that looks like this:

Comfort zone: One of the city's air-conditioned, enclosed bus shelters, although if the air-con doesn't work they tend to turn into roadside ovens

The contrast between the two countries couldn’t be greater and it takes a few days to reacclimatise – to get back in the saddle. But soon it should cool down, and with some precious memories from the summer and the kids back to school today after the epic 11-week holiday, it feels good to be home with DH.