Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Hong Kong

With a tearful and a cheerful eye, we are now embarking on a big journey. 😓🙂 4 days in Abu Dhabi, 2 days in Dubai, 3 days in Hong Kong and then off to Australia, the other side of the world, for six months.🌎

The farewell was very difficult for all of us, because we have never been separated from our families for so long.. 💔 but it's good that we have reached the age where we have mobile phones, internet and FaceTime, so we don't feel so far apart. 🕰📱

After months of preparation, we finally started on November 28, 2017. Since you can't fly directly to Australia, we decided to make a few stops along the way. Following Jan's trip to Abu Dhabi and Dubai five years ago, we wanted to experience a real desert and visit the tallest building in the world together.🌅🏙

The flight from Hamburg to Abu Dhabi was very exciting, first three hours to Istanbul and then another four and a half hours.🛫 With a time difference of three hours, it was 3 a.m. when we arrived. After almost falling for a fraudulent taxi driver 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏽‍♂️, we had to search for our accommodation first. A friend of ours (who used to live in Abu Dhabi) was kind enough to arrange a place to stay for the first two nights. In the middle of the night, we searched for the house with the help of the taxi driver, but initially without success, as you can't enter street names in GPS in Abu Dhabi. When the phone number didn't work either, we almost panicked a little. Where should we go in the middle of the night in a foreign country if we can't find our accommodation? 🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏽‍♂️ "Luckily," with the help of the nice taxi driver 👨🏾‍✈️🚕, we found the house, or rather the villa, where a man opened the door for us in the middle of the night, and he even spoke German. So we were at the right address and overcame the first hurdle right away. 👌🏻 In addition, we were welcomed very warmly, and Monika, Jens, and Boy made a real effort to make us feel comfortable.🍇🍉☕️ We had a really nice room in Arabian style. After a bit of sleep, Monika took us to Abu Dhabi city center for lunch. From there, it was about half an hour by car.🚗

On the first day, we decided to buy a 3-day ticket for a "hop-on-hop-off" bus.🚌 This allowed us to get off at many sights and get back on the next bus whenever we wanted.🗺👍🏻 The city is truly impressive with its huge skyscrapers right by the turquoise sea. 🏙🌊 We also visited the 8th largest mosque in the world, the Sheikh Zayed Mosque, where we had to cover ourselves according to the Muslim faith.👳🏻‍♀️👳🏽‍♂️🕌

On the next day, we visited Yas Island with our bus, where the famous Formula 1 racetrack is located. 🏁🏎 On normal days, you can drive around the racetrack by bike or on foot, but we were even luckier☘️. That day, racing cars were driving on the track, which made it even cooler, because you don't see that every day. 😎 With a view of the track, we treated ourselves to the best burger in the world (recommended by Jan), and it was really worth it. 🍔 In the evening, we checked into our hotel for the next 2 nights. Once again, thanks to our friend, we got a discount for the Marriott hotel, so we had 2 nights in a room where we could have run a marathon🏃🏽‍♂️. On the roof on the 25th floor, we had a wonderful view of the city.🌃

The next day, we had our desert safari that we had already booked in Germany.🏜 We were picked up from the hotel and drove straight to the desert. After our guide let some air out of the jeep's tires, we were off: driving through the desert, up and down hills, almost like a roller coaster ride🎢. We stopped at camels where we could take photos🐫. Then we went to a large square in the middle of the desert where there were about 200 other people. There, you could go sandboarding🏄🏼‍♀️, ride quad bikes, ride camels, dress up traditionally👘, get a henna tattoo, smoke a shisha pipe😗💨, or simply enjoy a barbecue on a huge carpet with cushions at low tables🍛🍱. It was a really beautiful day and the money was definitely worth it!🌞

For us, the next day continued to Dubai, unfortunately the journey there was longer and more exhausting than expected, because the over 30 degree heat and the large backpacks really took a lot of strength😴. After a long search, we finally arrived at our hostel. Well, Jan and I are really not the most organized people, but THAT was just plain disgusting🤮. The bathroom in the hostel had never been cleaned, the toilet was covered in pee, and there wasn't even any toilet paper. The sink had water with something vomit-like in it and the whole bathroom was covered in mold🤢. Our room (fortunately relatively clean) consisted of just one room with a bed, without a window. 🛏 But of course, we survived that one night as well. In the evening, we took the metro to a beautiful beach promenade, as the Arabs were celebrating "National Day" and we wanted to watch the huge fireworks over the sea.🎉🎆

On our last day in Dubai, we visited the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, with over 900 meters in height. It went up about 128 floors in less than a minute and the view from up there was overwhelming!🌇 In the evening, our flight continued to Hong Kong. ✈️ There we had a small room with a bathroom all to ourselves. In the evening, we had delicious sushi with a view of the Hong Kong skyline.🍣🌃 We were surprised that we hardly noticed the smog.😷 The next day started with a city tour of Hong Kong. We took an original tram from 1888 to the highest point in Hong Kong, Victoria Peak ⛰🛤🚞Then we went to an old fishing harbor where we took a short boat tour⛵️. In the evening, we went shopping for cheap counterfeit brand clothes at the Temple Street and Ladies Market🛍💵.

On our last day in Hong Kong, we visited the traditional Chinese Nam Lian Park, where we saw huge temples with Buddhas (one Buddha, several Buddhas?!)🗿🌷🙏🏻.

Now we're off to Melbourne.🇦🇺 I'll try to upload something here at least once a week.😇

Best regards to Germany♥️