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

Shanghai Nights

My second flight working in business class took me all the way to Shanghai, China. After leaving Dubai in the middle of the night, we arrived in Shanghai absolutely exhausted! A couple of hours nap in the comfiest bed in the world (on par with the crew hotel in LHR!) soon sorted me out, and I met 3 other crew downstairs in the lobby for a drink.

It was one of the girls’ birthdays so we decided to head out to the Bund for some dinner and drinks. On recommendation from the concierge we chose a place called “Bar Rouge”. When we got there we stopped to admire the gorgeous view across the Huangpu River, including an awesome flower wall!

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October Roster

Ive just got back from probably the best trip ever…. Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires! Obviously a post (or two) will be coming with lots of pictures, but first I thought I’d put up my October roster!

Exciting times as I’m now officially a “Grade 1”, working in the business class cabin. So here goes:

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Exploring Shanghai

So yet again I have managed to go way too long without updating my blog….woops! As I was importing my pictures from my most recent trip to São Paulo I realised I had a whole load of pictures from my flight to Shanghai in January, and I haven’t even written a post about it! So São Paulo will have to wait a little, and first I’m going to write about my wonderful time in Shanghai.

The flight going out is not very long (compared to the way back), lasting around 7ish hours. However it leaves Dubai at around 3 o’clock in the morning, which generally makes me feel very tired and confused as to what time it is when I arrive at the hotel! I can’t actually remember what we did in the evening, so I think I must have just fallen straight to sleep!

The next morning a group of us headed down to enjoy the breakfast buffet which surprisingly was smaller and had less choice than the time before! But who’s to complain, full up and ready to go we split into 2 taxis and drove to the Underground Market. What we hadn’t really thought about was that it was Chinese New Year’s Eve and almost all of the shops were shut! Not to be stopped by that though we all managed to come away having haggled for our money’s worth with some new handbags (the other girls) and a new purse (for me, after nail polish leaked all over my last one)!

Two of the girls decided shopping was far too tiring and headed back to the hotel, so I and the other two hopped in a cab again to go and visit the Yu Gardens.
When we arrived we were greeted by some beautiful temple-style buildings and hundreds of people! I guess everyone was off work for the holiday and they were out in full force with their families. Everywhere was filled with awesome decorations for Chinese New Year which made it a little bit more special!

ImageImageImageImageThe whole square area before entering the actual gardens was filled with decorations.ImageImageImageTo get to the gardens you have to go over a bridge, and all along the water they’d put up scenes from different films etc, there was even one with the Seven Dwarfs!ImageImageImageInside the gardens there were lots of different pathways and secretive holes in the wall that you could go through to find other parts.ImageImageImageImageImage

After the Yu Gardens we headed back to the hotel to have a little power nap before getting ready for the flight home (about 10 hours). As I was getting ready there were fireworks going off all around the city, and whilst flying as it was approaching midnight the whole city was lit up with hundreds and hundreds of fireworks, definitely one of the most amazing things I’ve seen from the sky!

There’s so so much more I want to explore in Shanghai, but at the moment I’ve still got a lot of destinations that I haven’t been to that I’d like to go to as well! I’m just waiting for my March roster to be published, I’m supposed to be on reserve (a month of not knowing where you’ll be going!) but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll skip it! 

 

P.s. If you want more regular day to day updates of what is happening in my life, follow me on Twitter and Instagram @rachelwwilson!

 

Back again!

So I have just had a nice 12 hour catch up on sleep after my last couple of flights – I got back from Chennai, India last night!
I was rostered for this flight with one of my lovely batchmates, Cully, and as she lives near me we got on the bus together to go to HQ before the flight. We were sitting waiting for the gates to open when I got a call, telling me that the aircraft configuration had changed and they wouldn’t be needing me, so were putting me on airport standby for four hours! I wasn’t really that bothered, so I went and had a coffee and waited for my standby to start. Once I signed in and sat down, I got called literally straight away for a flight. Turns out they had put me back on the same Chennai flight!
Luckily on the way there it was only 2/3 full, so was not too bad at all. On the way back the plane was completely full, so we were rushed off our feet! There seemed to be at least 10 call bells going off at once at all times, and there was always something to do! During the meal service we ran out of the vegetarian option and the passengers at the back who didn’t have a choice were getting quite angry at us! 
Luckily the crew were awesome and we all worked well together and had fun!

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Chennai Airport from the back of the plane!

Before my turnaround to India I had something much more exciting…Kuala Lumpur! The flight there was pretty busy and demanding, and every other passenger wanted pot noodles instead of the meal service, but I didn’t really mind as I couldn’t wait to get to Malaysia! Once we arrived we got the bus to the hotel (which was beautiful!!), checked in, had a quick shower and met downstairs for dinner. By this time it was about 11:30 already, but about 8 of us took taxis to an area full of street restaurants and chose one. I had some pad thai which was pretty tasty, and everyone else tried some other kind of Asian dish! 
After dinner we had a walk along the street and headed back to the hotel. The next day Cully and I met up for breakfast…and yes, I did abuse the buffet and eat as much as possible! 
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After breakfast we met up with 2 of the other girls and headed out to Chinatown to do some shopping! We had originally planned to go to the Batu Caves, but decided we were too tired and wanted to do some shopping instead! 
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All of us managed to buy something – bags, scarves, watches etc! I bought a gorgeous blue Celine bag! (Unfortunately not the real thing…but who can tell! :D). After shopping we went back to the hotel to put our stuff away, and walked to see the Petronas Towers. They used to be the tallest buildings in the world and are very impressive, especially at night when they are all lit up! We didn’t go up, but we did take some obligatory tourist pictures in front of them!
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We wanted to get a massage before going home; one of the girls decided to stay at the hotel, so we walked to a Thai massage place and went for the 90 minute full body massage!! It was quite nice, but Cully’s lady kept burping which we could all hear through the walls! We also got asked if we wanted “special special”….which we still aren’t quite sure of the meaning of, but we definitely did not want it!
Coming out of the massage place it started to absolutely pour, so we got soaked getting in a taxi back to the hotel! It was only about a 5 minute walk but we would have got so wet walking back that we had to get a taxi! The driver however had no clue where he was going and we had to get out halfway through, cross the road and get a different taxi!

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Once back in the hotel I went to bed to have a nice few hours sleep before the flight home. I ordered some room service and had it in bed before getting ready to fly back home to Dubai!

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Room service in bed….club sandwich is always a good choice!

Now I have 3 days off (although it is 2pm already and I’m not dressed yet…so today doesn’t really count!) and then I will be off to Zurich! Have to say I’m very excited to be back in Europe and possibly see some snow! I’m not sure if I brought any winter clothes with me when moving here so I might have to wear lots and lots of layers!

Next months roster came out yesterday as well ….and it’s amazing!!! I only have one turnaround to Karachi at the end of the month, and I’ve got a trip to Singapore – Melbourne – Singapore, Milan, Shanghai (2 day layover!), Munich and Dublin! Especially excited about the Melbourne, as my cousin has just moved there for uni so I’ll be meeting up with her as soon as I get there!

Now time to get dressed and pop over to headquarters to get a few things sorted out, and then enjoy my days off!