Day 1 - Lisbon - Dubai

Dear all,

 

It is not easy to wake up early, when you are exhausted from demanding weeks at work and you are axtually with lack of sleep. Anyway, the excitement of our larger trip so far left us a smile in our faces and go to the airport.

My father gave us some help to carry the bike boxes to the car and drove us to the airport! Cheers dad!

Marta & my father after carrying the first bike box

The airport was very very empty, as there was a(nother) strike on TAP, so quite a lot of flights were cancelled.

TAP check in almost empty

It was our turn to head to Emirates checkin and get out boarding passes for our flight to Dubai.

Peter Lamb & Marta queing for check in

Almost there

When we got to the check in counter, I thought that everything would go smooth, but well, I think that lately it is never that smooth! The lady asked me for how long are we staying there. I responded that we have our flight back in about 5 weeks, but we are going by bicycle to other countries. She asked for a proof for it and I said that we do not have, because we are travelling by bicyle. She replied that Marta only has a 15 visa on arrival, so if we do not have a proof that we leave the country meanwhile she does not allow us to check in! Gosh! Well, we fortunatly bought a flight from Cambodja to Singapore, so we do have a proof that we are leaving Thailand! She asked the supervisor, they were not really sure if we will have problems in Bangkok, but we got the boarding passes to Dubai and Bangkok!

We were the last passengers to be checked in and we still needed to go to the oversized luggage to drop our bikes.

Bikes dispatched all the way to Bangkok

The lady on the oversized luggage told me right away: "I do not think thwt that HUGE box fits the scanner, and if it does not you cannot take that luggage"! I replied, with a smile: "Good morning to you too! It does fit the scanner, I came last weekend to measure it, and it should fit!" Well folks, it was tight tight, but I still had about 1 centimeter margin! :)

Peter Lamb & bike boxes

Well, it does fit the scanner, but there are some curved luggage belts just after the scanner, so we needed to carry the bikes through a corridor and 2 or 3 doors till a storage hall, where they would come to take the bikes later on!

Uff, all of that cannot be called really smooth, lets go through security and catch thst flight!

We bought some Port wine for our couchsurfing host in Dubai. Afterall he saved us from a night slept at the airport! When we were about to pay, there was a lady in front of us with quite a lot of goods to pay and an Asian guy that despite of having arrived there after her, was quite in a rush to catch his flight so asked her if she would mind to pay for hist things before her. Well, the guy was really nervous that he could miss his flight so he was first. She asked him where he was heading and he said that was going back home to Singapore, so he really needed to catch the flight to Dubai! He left the store running, we waited for that lady to pay her things, we payed ours, and went slowly to the bording gate! Jesus, there are stressed travellers in this world!!

We reached our gate, number 46, and our beautiful bird was waiting for us! Good to be back on the B777-300 ER! What and enormous plane! Our ride reg number was A6-EGR.

Our B777 that will take us to Dubai

Martita with our boarding passes to Dubai

Boarding the plane took quite a while but soon it was our time to head to Lisbon's runway 03 and have a powerful take off! It never stops to amaze me how this super large jets fly!

Bye bye Tejo river!

Flight to Dubai takes around 7h15, so there is time for a movie, for a nap, for blogging, for testing the camera, for being bored, for having some dinner...

The flight was very smooth, passing through Spain, Algeria, Tunis, then heading towards Malta, Cairo and Saudi Arabia. It was nice to spot Riyadh from up high. I've been there with my colleague Rui Vaz last year working for about 3 weeks, remember that mate? :)

Well, Dubai's airport is quite crowded, so we have been in a holding pattern for about 1h40 minutes, which means that our flight was delayed and we only reached our gate at 2AM.

I immediatly called Jihad, our couchsurfing host in Dubai, apologising for our delay and to say that it would be more than fine for us to stay at the airport in case he was still at home, as the following day would be a working day! His first words were: "Welcome in Dubai! We are waiting for you outside". Woow, you gotta love this hospitality!

Our story with Jihad is quite simple: We decided not to send couchsurfing requests, as we would be landing in Dubai after midnight. Anyway we left a message in Dibai's main page saying that we would arrive that day and maybe some kind soul would like to host us and save two experienced couchsurfers from a night slept at Dubai's airport. After three hours or so we got a message from Jahid saying that we have found a host! Great news!!

We got out of the plane as soon as possible, went through immigation and found our way outside the terminal building! Some great 27 degrees were welcoming us into Dubai!

Jihad was outside, in his car with another couchsurfer that he was hosting. His name is Vaidas, a 28 years old traveller from Lithuania, that started his trip around the world 4 months ago, trying not to catch any flight! He just got into Dubai coming from Iran ( by boat) and will stay a couple of days more, trying to get his India's visa. He is then to Oman, trying to work for a month or so in a scuba diving school, getting a diving certificate and a place to sleep and some food in exchange for his work there. Well, 4 months of travelling and plenty of time ahaed, on a tight budget, makes you feel jealous, right?? :)

Jihad is a super friendly guy, born and raised in Jordan, studied and worked for a while in the UK and is living now in Dubai for about 2 years! His couchsurfing spirit is great, super welcome and looking on his profile, yes, I found a lot of similarities between him and myself!

Well, we headed to Jihad's place, chatting all the way there where we continued for a while more! Super nice to talk to these guys!

All of us were tired about 4 AM (local time), so a crash on his living's room matresses seemed like heaven for us!

 

That's all for now folks!

 

Best,

Peter & Marta

 

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