So yesterday night, the guys were faced with a minor dilemma. To road trip to Dubai or not to road trip to Dubai. They had the option of flying, but would they bail and take the easy way out or would they brave their way through another 12 hour drive? As it turns out, they came to the unanimous decision that this is a roadshow and not an AIRshow.

So guys and girls were separated again, except that this time we were missing Farah, who for some incomprehensible reason was unable to get a visa to Dubai and we had Beshr, one of the guys with us, because he was unable to get a transit visa through Saudi. He had to (was more than happy to) accompany us by plane.

Little did we know, however, that our seemingly smooth 40-minute flight between Doha and Dubai would not be so smooth. It started off with the usual rushing. It was 3:50, take-off at 5:00, and we were just rolling into the air-port.

Once again, the Qatar Airways check-in counter was not so happy with us. In addition to his suitcase, Beshr was hauling a Podcast station, an X-Box and 2 bags of clothing. So we sat there and began redistributing everything so they would let us on the plane.

After we checked in, we even managed to stop by the duty-free and do some shopping. “You have 5 minutes in the Duty Free,” Nadia announced. Yes we like to test our luck.

When we finally made it to the boarding gate, there were several sighs of relief, and you could tell how stressed out we were as 3/4 of us passed out instantly on the plane.

But the chaos really began upon arrival in Dubai.

To be fair, really it was self-inflicted. After we went through customs and claimed our baggage and EXITED the airport, we decided it was the appropriate time to look up the whereabouts of where we were staying.

Beshr was complaining…”Ma32ouuulll?? Who does that? You guys could have printed out the address before we left the hotel!” At which point, Nadia joked: “Beshr, welcome to traveling with the girls.”

So we crossed our fingers and prayed for internet, and were really happy to discover that there’s free wireless at the Dubai airport.  We needed internet to be able to go through Nadia or Sarah’s mail to get the address.

So Nadia took over Beshr’s i-Pad, and Sarah his i-Phone, and they both began tapping away.

Sarah wasn’t being able to figure out log-in. “You’re just not an I-person, Sarah,” Beshr teased.

At this point Sarah seriously considered hurting Beshr as we had been lugging his stuff for 2 hours across 2 different airports.

Get this! The best part. The girls had to SEARCH for the EMAIL that had the address in it. This actually took 15 minutes. We didn’t want to call anyone and risk looking like the biggest idiots ever.

So finally when we found the email, Sarah began to jump up and down. We still had to call the cleaning lady who would be opening for us.

This involved purchasing a SIM card, which involved exchanging money, as well as reading a booklet of instructions on how to use the SIM card which we didn’t do, which involved purchasing a 2nd SIM card.

By the time we got through to the cleaning lady, we were all ready to be as far away as possible from an airport.

We were ushered towards a “Ladies Taxi” by an Indian woman in a long pink abayah and traditional Khaliji headress. Once we got the clearance that it was OK for Beshr to ride in the pink vehicle as well, we began to load our stuff into the car.

The ladies Taxi women tossed the bags into the trunk like pancakes. We had to remind Beshr to help out, and really it didn’t make that big of a difference.

Voum, voum, we were off, and the Ladies Taxi driver was darting like an agile bird between cars…and yelling at those in her way.

We got off at the wrong villa, but luckily the right one was only 2 doors down. We were being graciously hosted by Rasheed Al Balaa, Net2Ventures, and it was like we were on Star Academy.

The rush to claim rooms began as I chased Nadia, Beshr, and Sarah with a videocam. Using the excuse of being three girls staying in one room we chose the most spacious and glamorous one.

Then we decided to take a tour of the facilities open to us on the compound: a pool AND a gym. After having open buffet 3 times a day in Qatar for 3 days we really needed the exercise, but of course we fooled around on the machines for a total of 3 minutes, then went back to the apartment and raided most of the food our hosts left us.

At 1 AM, we decided to go for a swim. Beshr guilt-tripped me. “Nour, I am not going swimming, so you can’t. You have to do your blog post now.” And to be honest that is actually why this blog post got done :)

So after Sarah pressured Beshr into stopping the guilt-trip,  we put on our swim suits and ran over to the pool, I with a camera in hand. Nadia was first to plunge into the water. I could tell from the way she gasped that it was cold and that she was lying when she said it wasn’t. Sarah followed soon after.

I just skimmed the surface of the pool a few times with my toe and decided it was unwise. But unfortunately the second I put my camera down, I felt a force from behind pushing me right into the freezing water.

We lasted for fifteen good minutes in the water before heading back to the apartment. The guys still hadn’t  arrived. In fact, the guys finally rolled in at 5 AM. I was the only person awake by then. They immediately scavenged the left-over pizza on the table.

And Omar interrogated me about when everybody slept. I downplayed how late it was honestly. They had only gone to sleep a half hour earlier, and this was despite Omar’s notification by sms that everyone was to be up by 9 AM the following day.

The guys asked us where to take their luggage to (haha, we got 1st dibs!), and then got to work immediately.

Right at this moment, it is just me and Wael who are awake, each working on a different blog post. It’s 5:30 AM in Dubai by the way. :)