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.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

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 are held every five years, and there have only been

Search This Blog