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

January Roster

Just like that, 2020 is upon us! The past year flew by so quickly, and I feel like sometimes I just live waiting for the roster each month.

Whilst I haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions as such, I will try my hardest to make the most of all of my layovers, and get out and explore as much as possible!

As for this month’s roster, here goes:

  • LIS – Lisbon, Portugal
  • PEK – Beijing, China
  • SYD – CHC – Sydney, Australia & Christchurch, New Zealand
  • KUL – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • JED – Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (turnaround)
  • ARN – Stockholm, Sweden

Sadly I didn’t get a single one of my bids, but I did have my top bid month in December, so wasn’t expecting too much. Not my favourite roster I’ve ever had, but it could be worse!

I started the month (and year!) off with a flight to Lisbon – although it was quiet it was very long at just over 8 hours there. Having been to Lisbon on holiday previously, I had a quiet layover with a bit of browsing round the shops, although it was super busy with post-Christmas shoppers.

Next up is Beijing – a destination I haven’t visited in a while. I tried to swap this flight but with no success, so I’ll see what the rest of the crew fancy doing when I’m there. 

Following on from that is a multi-sector trip to Sydney and Christchurch. I also tried to swap this one as I’ve only just been to Sydney, and I’d rather do shorter flights, but there are so many swap legalities that it was impossible. Hopefully the smoke from the awful bushfires doesn’t get any worse. 

After my multi-sector down under, it’s back to Asia, with a trip to Kuala Lumpur. It’s actually been a year since I last visited, but the timing of this flight is not ideal – we fly through the night from Dubai and get there early morning.

Then I have a quick turnaround to Jeddah and back, let’s hope it’s uneventful. Once again not great timing – leaving Dubai at midnight and getting back at 8am.

My last flight of the month is to Stockholm, the one I’m looking forward to the most! I’m really hoping for some snow, as I haven’t been anywhere with snow yet this winter.

And that’s it for January 2020… I wonder where else this year will take me!

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

The Great Wall…been there, done that!


A couple of days ago I got back from Beijing! It was a relatively short flight on the way there, only 6 and a half hours, but it was a bit longer on the way back, just over 8 hours! I had heard some rumours about the flight and I can say they were definitely true…I think 99% of the passengers took their shoes off so lets just say the smell was not the most pleasant! Most of them didn’t speak a word of English either so there was a lot of pointing and guessing going on, but I survived (just)!

Once we got to the hotel, one of the girls and I decided to go to the market to do a bit of shopping! Can’t go to Beijing and not buy anything, so I picked up a new handbag. A girl can never have too many bags! 😉

The next day 6 of us had arranged for a mini bus to come and collect us and take us to the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City. We met downstairs bright and early and drove a couple of hours to the Great Wall. We got really lucky with the weather, the sun was shining and it was an absolutely beautiful day! Once we got there, we bought our tickets and got on a chairlift to go up!

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First view of the Wall!

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We spent about an hour or so walking along the Wall, going up and down a lot of steps! Of course we stopped every few minutes to take pictures as well 😀

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There were lots of beautiful blossoming trees all along the wall!

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Coming down a Chinese family stopped us to ask if they could have a picture with us, so of course we took one on my camera as well! 😀

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To come down we had to go on a kind of toboggan, which was great fun! Unfortunately there was a woman in front of us who was going really slowly so we had to keep stopping so as not to crash into her!

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Once we had come down our driver came and picked us up and we drove to the Forbidden City. It was quite a long drive and as we had all been up so early we all slept on the way! He dropped us off at the side and we walked around to the main entrance under lots of willow trees and next to a river, it was very pretty!

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We had a nice stroll around, but it was a public holiday in China so it was extremely busy! We were all feeling quite hot and tired so decided to head back to the hotel for a few hours sleep before the flight home.

Now I’ve got one more flight to Zurich before 10 days leave! After that I’ve got another 5 day Singapore Melbourne trip which I can’t wait for and I’ll also be flying to Lagos, Nigeria at the end of the month!