Iles de Los, Conakry, Guinea

I was recently rostered a 5 day trip to Conakry, Guinea, and Dakar, Senegal. Starting by flying into Conakry, a 9 hour flight from Dubai, staying for 48 hours, a quick 1 hour flight to Dakar, and then 24 hours there. I’ve decided to split this post up into two so you can experience both of the layovers with me!

The flight there was long but not too busy, and after a fairly short drive we arrived in the beautiful and brand new hotel right on the oceanfront in Conakry. After checking my allowance, in the local currency (Guinean Francs), I was now officially a millionaire! 😉

Since we had the whole of the next day to spend exploring, most of us decided to meet down by the pool to rest and relax after the flight.

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April Roster

It’s that time of the month again…roster day! It seems to roll around quicker every month, and we’re already over halfway through March, 2017 is definitely flying by!

Next month I’ll be starting with 10 days leave, and I won’t mention yet where we will be heading, but I will say there are some beaches involved! 🙂

After that my flights will be to:

  • BOM – Bombay, India (turnaround)
  • ZRH – Zurich, Switzerland
  • MEL – Melbourne, Australia
  • JED – Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (turnaround)
  • ZRH – Zurich, Switzerland
  • MXP – Milan, Italy

I hope you guys are still enjoying my month roster posts, and if there is anything else you’d like to see here on The Dubai Diaries, please feel free to let me know in the comments below!

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

Seaplanes in Seattle

I was super excited when I saw Seattle on my roster, it was my first ever flight to the States with Emirates and a city that I absolutely fell in love with. It has a certain charm that just draws you in and I hadn’t visited in over 3 years, so was excited to head back for the 2nd time.

Flight time from Dubai was around 14,5 hours, a little bit shorter than my previous flight to Houston but still very long! Luckily despite a full cabin in First Class we weren’t kept too busy (and having an extra crew member in first on ultra long haul flights is always a bonus) and had a good few hours rest in the CRC.

Around halfway through the flight, we were greeted by some stunning views of beautiful white snowy peaks. Somewhere over Greenland, where most of the passengers were fast asleep oblivious to the natural beauty outside, I sat with my head as close to the window as possible and just thought to myself how lucky I really am, to be able to witness these incredible sights.

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A Burmese Adventure: Mount Popa & The Final Sunset

For our final full day in Myanmar we continued our theme of waking early, and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before our driver arrived to pick us up from the hotel. We were off to Mount Popa, a volcano located 1518 metres above sea level, with numerous Nat temples and relics perched on top. The “Nats” are spirits that are worshiped in Myanmar in conjunction with Buddhism, and there are 37 “Great Nats”, most of which were supposedly human beings who met violent deaths.

The journey from Bagan to Mount Popa takes around an hour, although our driver added in a couple of stops along the way.

The first stop was to a small reservoir, where we stayed for a few minutes and saw the locals collecting water.

To be honest the water seemed very dirty, and I wouldn’t like to drink from it, but he did say they run it through a filtration system a few times before using it. Still, I would recommend using caution if drinking the tap water, as with most countries in Asia!

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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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