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

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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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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