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.
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.
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