Friday, November 12, 2010

Of Dubai, Again


So on our way back "home" to Kabul, we had to go through Dubai again. We had planned to stop for a night this direction (unlike on the way out of Kabul) -- it's pretty hard to avoid, and therefore Uncle Sugar was paying for a night of hotel for us. Since the Government has a ridiculous system of official rates that they'll pay for hotel in each city, we had no incentive to pay any less than the maximum the government would shell out. In the case of Dubai, that gets you a pretty nice hotel. We were staying at Raffles, which came recommended by colleagues. We arrived and found we had been upgraded to a completely ridiculous suite - the above is the living room, there were also two balconies and two bathrooms in addition to the bedroom, which was in itself what you would get at a normal hotel. It was the poshest, biggest hotel we've ever stayed at.

The only downside? Due to our friends at Ethiopian Airlines cancelling/delaying flights again, we arrived at 3:00 in the morning, and had to leave at 10:00 to catch our flight. So we didn't get to lounge around in all the chairs in our huge room. You'll no doubt be relieved to know that I took care to use both bathrooms, to make sure taxpayers got their money's worth.

2 comments:

Dan said...

Reminds me of when Lori hooked me and Em up with a sweet deal at a fancy-pants hotel in Rome. It was really swanky, but a long walk from the train station on the last night of our trip, so we were utterly exhausted when we got there. We went to dinner, but then we mostly just lounged around in plush hotel bathrobes watching '80s music videos on Italian MTV.

Dan said...

It also reminds me of the Vegas hotel room Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd stay in in "Knocked Up" - "There are eight different kinds of chair in this room!"