Arabian Nights

I used to grow up reading The Tales of the Arabian Nights. When you’re a kid, Moorish and Persian princes and heavily perfumed silken screens sound terribly romantic. So I had really wonderful notions in my head when I trotted off to the Middle East for the very first time in my life and was I disappointed? Not at all!

We were really lucky to be hosted by an important person which meant being met at the door of the airplane by a chauffeur driven car straight into the special airport lounge! For someone who has only ever traveled economy class, it was pure heaven, especially since I was very quickly relieved of my terribly heavy carry-on bag! What’s the airport lounge like? It’s all about plush couches (no hard Teak Chairs for you, no Sirree!) wonderfully cool air conditioning in the desert and a person who keeps coming round to serve you deliciously cold drinks! Ah…I could get used to this life!

The Middle East is an amazing place. It’s very very rich from the oil, tourism and construction and the women there only ever wear and carry designer! I was really quite surprised at how glamorous they looked even though they are covered from head to toe in their black abaya. One of them secretly showed me what they wear underneath and it’s surprisingly sexy, lacy and tight!

It was a really nice eye-opener trip and a little taste of how some people are really different from you and me. It made the crazy flight schedule (overnight on a plane), the long transit and the lady who fell sitting down on the escalator which made all of us tumble all over her like dominoes which resulted in a really painful cut on my colleague’s hand almost worth it!

More coming up soon…