• About

Anita Go Travel

~ Life as a passport, one stamp at a time.

Anita Go Travel

Tag Archives: Flights

Travel mishaps on the way to Jordan

06 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by Anita in Jordan

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Flights, Transport, Travel, Travel Days

IMG_8066

The most delicious $45 breakfast I’ve ever had

Monday, April 7th. This was going to be a relevantly uneventful day.  All we had to do was bus back to Dubai,  take the subway to the airport, board our flight to Amman, pick up our rental car, and drive 3-4 hours to the red sea port of Aqaba where we would be going on a dive the next morning. As it turned out the day had something completely different in store for us.

It all started to go “tits up” (an expression that’s very English and for which I’m unapologetic) upon arrival at the Abu Dhabi buts station. It turned out that all of the public transport in the United Arab Emirates works on a card system, much like the orca card we have here in Seattle, you simply add credit to the cards balance in order to use it on public transport such as buses and subways. If you don’t have enough credit for the full fare of a particular journey, you have to top up the card in order to use it.  Which is all pretty simple, unless you happen to be at the Abu Dhabi public bus station, and you happen to be one Dirham short on each of your two bus cards.

Not only were none of the vending machines that allowed you to put credit on your cards working, but in order to purchase brand-new bus tickets, you needed to have cash, which we didn’t have since this was our last day in the United Arab Emirates. To make matters worse, there were no ATMs in or near the bus station, at least any that were working.

So we were facing a dilemma, which was growing worse by the fact that time was pressing and the first bus to Dubai had already left without us.  I did have the two extra dirhams that we needed, but no one was allowing us to pay the difference on the cards in cash. Each card essentially had 24 dirhams left on it and each of the bus fares was 25 to Dubai.

Getting super frustrated, Matt set off to find an ATM nearby while I improvised and try to find a way around the problem. As per usual in a foreign country, it was not the fact that the machines weren’t working, nor the fact that there was no ATM nearby, it was the fact that nobody seemed to offer any sort of assistance nor anything but a blank stare when I explained our predicament to them and asked for help and understanding.

Eventually, thinking outside the box saved the day. I explained our plight to a local who spoke perfect English. He sympathized with us, and essentially took our cards as payment for paying for two one-way tickets for us on the bus himself in cash. I was so grateful to him and eagerly motioned for Matt to give up his ATM search and join me on the next bus that was departing. It was already starting to get a little late.

Finally breathing a sigh of relief on the bus, it wasn’t until 30 minutes into our journey that I turned to Matt in horrified realization.  “Please tell me you remembered to grab our passports out of the hotel room safe?”

Matt’s eyes closed as he started swearing under his breath.

Next thing I knew, Matt had asked the bus driver to pull over on the side of the highway for us to get out and catch a cab presumably. While he was busy pulling our suitcases out of the luggage hold, a group of locals were exhorting me not to get off the bus because nobody would be able to pick us up on the highway! I expressed this concern to Matt, who logically stated that there was no point getting any further away from the one thing that was gonna enable us to get on a plane to another country that day: our passports!

So we disembarked the bus and I will forever have stamped in my memory the image of Matt carrying his luggage in the opposite directions of traffic on the hard shoulder of the highway from Abu Dhabi in the glaring midday sun. After a few minutes of walking towards what we hoped was a slip road, a taxicab pulled over only to inform us that it was against the law to pick up any individual on the highway! I guess he thought we were in some sort of physical trouble (which we sort of were) but it wasn’t worth €3000 fine that he would receive if he took us back to the city.

Great!

Ever less hopeful, we resumed our belabored walk back to the slip road, knowing full well that if we did not secure a ride back to the city within the next few minutes, there was no earthly way we were going to be able to check in on time at the airport.

The new Royal Palace in Abu Dhabi, under construction

The new Royal Palace in Abu Dhabi, under construction

Lucky for us, a pickup truck pulled over and a Sri Lankan man by the name of Rosita picked us up telling us he would take us to the taxi rank for the little town that we were in. So we threw our luggage in the back and got in. After elaborating on our story, Rosita made a U-turn and showing extraordinary kindness, declared that he would take us back to our hotel, an easy hour and a half out of his day!

An unplanned benefit to this predicament was our chance to talk to Rohita for the next 25 minutes about what life is like for him as a construction site supervisor and immigrant to the United Arab Emirates. He spoke of how the Emirati were a class of men all their own, neither requiring nor caring to follow any rules and laws of this state other than the ones that precluded them from drinking alcohol in public. There was never any doubt who was in charge, and for the most part, Rosita spoke of how immigrants were looked down upon, mistreated, and if they were lucky enough to also be female, perhaps not even paid the full $700 the average service worker made (for example staff at our hotel) a month. He did, however, speak with tremendous enthusiasm about his wife and new baby boy back home in Sri Lanka, very excited to be flying home the next week to see them again.

Thanking Rohita profusely, we jumped out of the truck — Matt grabbing cash from the ATM for what was going to be one of the more expensive taxi rides of our trip, and I ran into the lobby to grab our passports.

It was an hour and a half’s journey to Dubai airport, it was 12:45 PM, and our flight left at 3:30 PM. We might just make it.

Unfortunately, our taxi driver very much obeyed the speed limit (it would seem that many of the locals fear breaking any Emirati rules) and also insisted on making a stop to get gas despite having half a tank, more than likely to simply reset his meter which he didn’t want to go over certain amount.

Emirati Palace Hotel

Emirati Palace Hotel

We arrived at the airport with 45 minutes to go before the plane took off. Unfortunately for us, we as yet did not have our boarding passes and were told with very stern and unrelenting faces that we had absolutely no chance of making the flight if we hadn’t already checked in. There was no question we would’ve actually made the flight, it would simply appear that they had given our seats away since we had not checked in online before.

Lesson learned!

Feeling emotionally worn out from the anxiety of the day, we headed off to rebook our tickets and were lucky enough to be allowed to fly out first thing in the morning for only €100 change fee.  Of course it wasn’t the money that was disappointing, it was the fact that that was our one day to go diving in the Red Sea. But it couldn’t be helped, and so Matt and I sat down at Café Costa, grabbed a coffee and try to get online to find somewhere to stay the night.

We chose the Holiday Inn at the airport since we would need to be getting up so early the next day for our plane. By the time we got to our room we were ravenously hungry and didn’t really feel like doing much else in Dubai. We sat in the hotel’s bar and ordered a bucket of ice cold beer and some beef kebabs and tried to have a good laugh about the day.

 Snuggling up and finishing Lawrence of Arabia in bed seemed like a really great way to end it anyways.

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

anitagotravel

anitagotravel

Recent Posts

  • Climbing Mt. Rainier – My 8 year journey to the top – Part II
  • Climbing Mt. Rainier – My 8 year journey to the top – Part I
  • Ethiopia Part VII: Bahir Dar – The Ethiopian Riviera
  • Ethiopia Part VI: Lalibela and its Churches built by Angels
  • Ethiopia Part V: Journey to the Center of the Earth – The Danakil Depression

Categories

  • Africa
    • Benin
    • Botswana
    • Burkina Fasso
    • Cote D'Ivoire
    • Ethiopia
    • Ghana
    • Guinea
    • Kenya
    • Lesotho
    • Malawi
    • Mozambique
    • Namibia
    • Rwanda
    • Sierra Leone
    • South Africa
    • Tanzania
    • Togo
    • Uganda
    • Zambia
    • Zimbabwe
  • Asia
    • Cambodia
    • China
    • India
    • Japan
    • Nepal
    • Seychelles
    • Singapore
    • Thailand
    • Vietnam
  • Australasia
    • Australia
    • New Zealand
  • Central America
    • Belize
    • Costa Rica
    • Cuba
    • Guatemala
    • Honduras
    • Nicaragua
    • Panama
  • Europe
    • France
    • Italy
  • Middle East
    • Jordan
    • United Arab Emirates
  • North America
    • Canada
    • Mexico
    • United States
      • Washington State
  • Opinion Articles
  • Semester at Sea 2001
  • South America
    • Argentina
    • Bolivia
    • Brazil
    • Chile
    • Colombia
    • Ecuador
    • Peru
    • The Galapagos
  • Uncategorized

Tags

Adventure Sports Animals Archaeological Sites Art Artisans Beaches Biking Camping Caves Charity Christmas Churches Cities Climbing Culture Cycling Dancing Desert Diving Flights Food Geology Health Hikes History Independent travel Indigenous People Kayaking Monkeys Mountaineering Mountains Museums Opinion Pieces Personal Public Transport Religion Reverse Culture Shock Safari Sailing Snorkeling Solo Travel Tours Townships Transport Travel Travel Days Trekking Tubing Villages Volcano Volunteering Waterfalls Women

Recent Comments

Anita on Climbing Mt. Rainier – M…
Elle Mclees on Climbing Mt. Rainier – M…
Anita on Climbing Mt. Rainier – M…
evejakubowski on Climbing Mt. Rainier – M…
TsiTsi McLure on Take Me to Church – Chimaniman…

Archives

  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • August 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • September 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • May 2004
  • April 2004
  • March 2004
  • February 2004
  • January 2004
  • December 2001
  • November 2001
  • October 2001
  • September 2001

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Anita Go Travel
    • Join 162 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Anita Go Travel
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...