DUBAI, HERE WE COME

I yesterday mentioned that we would be taking Fall trip to Dubai, long delayed from last year by cancellation of our world cruise that stopped by there for the World Expo. Unfortunately that attraction is over, and the next World's Fair will be in Osaka in 2025.

The Dubai stop came by accident this time. After not doing much of anything for 2.5 years, we did take a short 7-day cruise throughout the Hawaiian Islands in May. I thought it was a bit too early, for the pandemic was then fiercely spreading through our state. We came back healthy

We then thought, why not a luxury cruise that will not cost all that much. Today, I will be sharing with you this grand journey that will attempt to bypass spots of high COVID activity.

But before doing that, I will just recap what we had on our previous schedule:

We were all set to participate in the World Uchinanchu Festival on Okinawa, which opens at the end of October.
Then we thought we'd stop over in Japan for a two-week Japan Rail Pass train trip to see the fall colors.
This self-designed tour then saw us boarding the Diamond Prince from Yokohama to Singapore.
After a few days, back to Honolulu.

That was the plan six months ago. Well, Japan has had the highest number of new COVID-19 cases for now about a month, and Okinawa has usually had the highest number of cases/capita of any prefecture. Japan still does now allow individual tourists. So this time we'll bypass that country.

We found a not terribly expensive Regent Seven Seas Explorer cruise from Dubai to Singapore. Dubai was an attraction for me, as I've been there before, and was amazed at how this sweltering desert now has the tallest building in the world, plus, the largest shopping mall in terms of area (1200 shops, 5-star hotel, 22 cinema screens and 120 restaurants, serving as the gateway to the Burj Khalifa, that tallest structure). The largest shopping center in terms of visitors/revenue is actually CentralWorld in Bangkok, close to where will be staying when we have a stopover on the way to Dubai.

You wonder why anyone would want to fly to and through Dubai International Airport, but it is the busiest airport in the world for the Airbus38 and Boeing 777, with the largest airport terminal. Handled 88 million passengers in 2017, #3 to the airports in Atlanta and Beijing. As new as this airport is, Dubai is building Al Maktoum International Airport to become the largest with 220 million passengers/year. Hartsfield-Jackson only serves slightly over 100 million passengers/year.

And why not, but Dubai announced plans to build Dubai Square, which will become absolutely the world's largest when opened. Not only size, but:

Its size and design will be styled after famous shopping districts across the world like London’s Oxford Street, Los Angeles’s Beverly Hills, Paris’s Champs-Élysées and Tokyo’s Ginza, to name a few. This palm-lined avenue will be covered by a glass-panel dome

Close by will be the proposed Dubai Creek Tower, to be much taller (4412 feet???) than the one coming up in Saudi Arabia (3281 feet), which will top Burj Khalifa (2717 feet) when finished.

Well, in any case, for those who wish to join us on this upcoming adventure, here are the details:

About the November 21 to December 12 Regent Seven Seas Explorer cruise, click here to explore. You can still negotiate. We checked, and the 21-day cruise from Istanbul to Dubai is sold out.

One more sidelight, Conde Nast Traveler revealed the worst airports for delays and cancellations. If we went east from Honolulu to Dubai, we would have traveled through a couple of them...on at least two, and maybe with three, overnights. I hate to fly east, so found a very comfortable western itinerary.

Coming back from Singapore involves an overnighter, but more worrisome, if you read my blog yesterday, is that this country, like many of the major ones in Asia/Oceania (Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand) are leading the world in most new cases/capita. At the beginning, we only have a one-hour stopover in Seoul. In any case, hopefully the next three months will see a pandemic decline, for we don't leave Hawaii until November 12.

I end with some info about commercial jetliners.

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

OSAKA EXPO: Day One

Well, the day finally came for us to go to the Osaka Expo. We were told ahead of time that the long walks would be fearful, giant lines will need to be tolerated just to get into the Expo, with those ocean breezes, it would really be cold, and so forth. Maybe it was pure luck, but we avoided all the above warnings We had a grand day, and are looking forward to Sunday, our second day at the Expo. So come along for an enjoyable ride. Our hotel is adjacent to the Tennoji Station, a very large one with several lines. We upgraded our Suica card and caught the Misosuji red line towards Umeda. Transferred to the Chuo green line at the Hommachi Station. This Osaka Metro train took us to the Yumeshima Station at the Expo site. It was a very large mob leaving the train and heading to the entrance. Took only a few minutes to get to the entrance. This mob was multiplied by at least a factor of ten of those already waiting to enter. However...

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP on THE ECONOMY and OTHER MATTERS

President Donald Trump said this weekend: Is not joking about a third term . Which is better for the U.S. than he unilaterally just becoming a dictator. Will absolutely deliver on his massive reciprocal tariff plan on April 2 . He dubs it Liberation Day. Reasserted that the U.S. would 100% annex Greenland . Will ban refugees....except for White South Africans . Guess from where comes Elon Musk? If so, how many refugees has so far expressed interest? 67,000 . Will approve Canadian firm, The Metals Company, to mine the deep seabed , circumventing international law, drawing denouncement from 40 countries. Lethargic help to Myanmar recovering from the damage caused by a 7.7 earthquake. USAID cuts reduces our ability to provide assistance worldwide. Very angry and pissed off at Vladimir Putin for continuing the Ukraine-Russia War, a first for Trump, who has been giving the Ukraine house away. From the New York Time...

Search This Blog