The Dubai Diaries
My life as a flight attendant in the Middle East!

A Burmese Adventure – Yangon, Myanmar

I found myself with 5 days off in a row after my trip to Houston, and with a bit of planning decided to head to Myanmar. Emirates started flying to Yangon (and the flight then continues on to Hanoi) a few months ago, so it was an easy decision, and at under 5 hours quick to get to from Dubai.

My friend Kirsty arrived a few hours before me from Hong Kong, and was waiting at the airport as I arrived. I managed to get a few hours sleep on the flight, so after a quick stop at our hotel to drop off our bags and freshen up, we made our way out to the city.

Yangon, also know as Rangoon, the former capital of Myanmar, is the country’s largest city with a population of over 7 million, and also has the highest number of colonial buildings in the region.

Most of the colonial buildings are located in downtown Yangon, and we strolled through the streets admiring the mix of old and new, as well as some of the typical Burmese streets.

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March Roster

As I mentioned in my previous roster post, we all now get our rosters quite a bit earlier, which is lovely as it means you can plan the month ahead a bit more.

Although my bidding seniority is quite low in March, I’m pretty happy and quite pleasantly surprised with my roster for next month!

I’ll be heading off to:

  • SEA – Seattle, USA
  • HAM – Hamburg, Germany
  • HKG – Hong Kong
  • ZRH – Zurich, Switzerland
  • DOH – Doha, Qatar (Turnaround)
  • CKY – DKR – Conakry, Guinea – Dakar, Senegal

I’m super excited to be heading back to Seattle, as I’ve only been once before and I loved the city. You can read about my previous trip here, and see what I got up to. Any tips for anything different to see or do this time would be much appreciated!

I’ve also been to Hamburg a few times before, and my old school friend Georg lives there, so if he’s not working hopefully we’ll be able to catch up.

As for Hong Kong and Zurich, if you read my blog regularly you’ll know that those are two destinations that I love and have flown to fairly often.

I’m also happy that I’ve finally got a new destination – it’ll be my first time visiting both Conakry and Dakar. We actually get 48 hours in Conakry so I should have plenty of time to explore, and then 24 hours in Dakar.

I also have another string of 5 days off, but so far I have no plans and might just take some time to relax in Dubai!

P.s. Follow me on Instagram & Twitter for more day-to-day updates of where I am in the world! 🙂

The Dubai Diaries at home: Miracle Garden

I’m currently on tourist duty in Dubai as my boyfriend’s family are over for a couple of weeks. Although his parents have visited before, we decided to head out to visit the Dubai Miracle Garden.

It was my second time visiting this desert flower garden, which is made up of over 109 million flowers, and spread over 72,000 square metres. I visited with my sister Lizzie, her boyfriend Jarett, and my friend Kirsty’s husband Dan, who was visiting Dubai at the time. You can read about that trip here!

This time we headed out to the Miracle Gardens just after lunchtime, and despite the weather not being great (it’s been grey and cloudy, with temperatures barely reaching the 20’s for the past few weeks!) and it being a weekday, the tourists were out in full force!

Since the gardens are only open from October – April due to the high temperatures in summer, now is the perfect time to visit. The whole layout has actually been changed completely since the last time I visited, and I have to be honest, I preferred it last year! The whole area just seemed too spread out, and not as many interesting sculptures this time.
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48 Hours in Athens

I was very happy when I saw Athens on my roster last month – it is usually a turnaround flight (and a fairly long one at that, around 4 hours each way), and I was rostered it as a 48 hour layover!

The flight left Dubai around 7am, so an early start, as we have to be in briefing 2 hours before departure. The flight was actually 2 sectors, first to Larnaca, and then on to Athens. We only had 1 passenger in first class on the way there, and he closed the doors to his suite and instructed us to let him sleep as much as possible – a very easy first sector!

After landing in Larnaca, most passengers got off, and after a quick job by the cleaners we were ready to board the next set of passengers. Only 38 in total – on the whole plane! As you can imagine that sector went by in a flash, and it’s only just over an hour to Athens.

We are usually 15 crew on the 777, and usually a pretty good mix of nationalities. However on this flight the Greeks were out in full force, and there were only 4 of us who didn’t speak Greek! Once we arrived into Athens, it was a fairly long drive to the hotel, but on the plus side we were staying in the city rather than by the airport.

After a quick nap a few of us (non-Greeks!) met up for some dinner. One of the crew had given us a huge list of all sorts of restaurants and bars to try out during the layover. We headed to one of them for some delicious dinner, and called it a night ready for some sightseeing the next day.

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Freezing in Oslo

My roster this month took me back to the beautiful city of Oslo, Norway. I visited last year in April, and you can read about that trip here. I’m not entirely sure why I decided to bid for Oslo in January, possibly the coldest month of the year, and as well as that the sun sets at around 3:30 – 4pm!

The flight there was just over 6,5 hours, and at the last minute changed to a 2-class aircraft, which meant no first class! Myself and the other first class crew had to work in economy, which certainly made for an interesting change from first class!

We spotted some beautiful snowy scenes out of the window, which got me excited to land in Norway.

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