I usually try my hardest not to travel in Ramadan as it takes a toll on a person and I honestly can’t justify breaking my fast during these short trips in the Gulf. This one came up urgently as I had to go to Oman for the day full of meetings and they started from early in the morning with three meetings in total.
We came in on the Oman Air flight the night before and staying at The Chedi hotel. After my last stay I don’t think I want to stay anywhere else in Oman but sadly the restaurant closes at 10:30 pm and we arrived around 1:30 am. But the hotel was comfortable as usual with only about 50% capacity it was relatively empty but we didn’t get to enjoy the resort much other then relaxing because we were fasting. But the weather was amazing between 23 to 28 degrees, with mild humidity which wasn’t too bad, it was very pleasant. As soon as we were done we relaxed at the hotel for about an hour and half before heading to the airport to catch our 7 pm flight back, the best part of the hotel is their very good policy about late check out. The next time I go to Oman I plan on renting a car and getting a little lost, I’m curious about a few different places there.
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Singapore has to be one of my favorite cities, my first visit was last year and this time we went for work and I enjoyed every moment there. We took Emirates airlines since it fits our schedule, and I slept on both flights to Singapore and from Singapore, the flights to Kuwait is a short 50 minutes duration so not enough time to sleep. And on the route to Singapore they use the new Boeing 777s which have very comfortable chairs, I basically slept for 7 hours straight, from the plane taking off until it landed which is perfect in both cases and kept me going the first day there and when I got back to Kuwait. We were only there for about 2 and half days, some work got finished and we still had a lot of fun, Singapore is one of my favorite cities to visit. A very diverse culture made up of Indians, Chinese and Malaysians, the main language of the country being English and everyone is extremely nice. I think they have the best public transportation I have seen period, and when you get in a taxi cab they always have a story to tell and some of them are insane which makes the ride that much more fun.
The last couple of days I have been going from meeting to meeting at a ridiculous rate not even being able to enjoy the beautiful weather while I was in London. British Airways are on strike so I took Royal Jordanian, and I had a meeting in Amman on the way back. I have to say that I was very impressed with Royal Jordanian, the service was fantastic and the planes are brand new, pricing is decent, but the airport is a old.
Getting into London Thursday I met up with some friends but I was still busy with work and my phone wouldn’t stop ringing. I wanted to see a movie at night but I was too damn exhausted that I passed out as soon as I got to the hotel. The next day I had meetings in the early morning onwards but I managed to get some time later in the day to go see one movie, but the weather was amazing in London and everyone was outside walking around. I didn’t realize how much I have missed London it’s been a while since I’ve walked around, then I realized how long its been since I took a long vacation. The stay in London was too short and too busy with work but I managed to get a lot done, then headed to Amman for one meeting then back to Kuwait.
The last few weeks have been a hell of a lot of work, I haven’t even had a chance to catch up the emails or the usual daily tasks. Its meeting after meeting, running around for all the different tasks, meetings in different countries, last minute confirmations. What kills about last minute confirmations is that your not sure about flights or other schedules, so you have to make quick decisions. Going to Bahrain on a last minute meeting which I have been trying to get for two weeks was hectic since I just got in the car drove to Bahrain early morning and came back for a little work at the office then home, as soon as I sat on the couch I passed out only to transfer to my bed and continue my sleep. I don’t like things piling up, I want more time during the day, even late nights at work isn’t helping to catch up. What really annoys me is seeing my RSS feeds pile up, I enjoy taking my time reading them, but reaching 1000+ is a task to bring down, and I haven’t been able to watch any shows or anime because of this. I want things to calm down a bit, I also want to pause time for 48 hours so I can catch up on normal time.
The past week I have been between meetings in Oman and Emirates and between planes all over the GCC. Its always a new experience and exhausting at the same time, it was supposed to be Oman only then as soon as I was in Oman I got a call for a meeting in Dubai/Abu Dhabi so I had to change my flight plans.
Surprisingly a lot of flights to Oman were full and Oman Air had inconvenient flights so I couldn’t take them. Emirates and Qatar Airways had horrible times, the best flight times were Gulf Air so I took it. The transit through Bahrain was decent because Gulf Air have a decent lounge and fast internet so time flew by as I was sitting there. With the diversion of flights I had to take a flight from Muscat to Dubai and that was insanely full, I barely managed to get on the Oman Air Flight to Dubai which was only 37 minutes. Then the flight back to Kuwait on Saturday is via Wataniya Airways my prefered airlines. This has been a cocktail of flights and airlines, so many damn meetings I was exhausted. Oman is always an interesting experience and this time around I did something a little different then usual to make it a different experience and relaxing even with all the work.
Flying all over the place for a week is exhausting, I don’t mind traveling for work but this past week took a lot out of me. Luckily now that is done and hopefully I can make some progress with all this work.
I had a four meetings packed into one day, trying to keep it as efficient as possible, from the moment I land then I would have enough time to eat and then head out back to the airport and take off again. That was a ridiculous mistake on my part, I have done a lot of day meetings and back in the same day, never have I done four long meetings in one day. By the time I was heading to the airport I was too tired to car and too dizzy to pay attention to anything, I just wanted to get home and pass out at the end of the trip. I was so tired I stretched out on the Wataniya flight back and passed out before take off and woke up as we were landing, why can’t we land with the backs reclined, it makes no difference at all. The one comfort is knowing that as soon as the plane arrives I exit the plane and get in my car and drive home in less then 5 minutes.
Going to Egypt I had about three meetings to take care of, two the day I arrive and one the next morning, its one of those compact trips, all in one shot. I took this trip because I had to have this one meeting, and then other two just piled on. I knew one thing when going to Cairo, to ask for the VIP service at the airprot which is $100 for arrival and departure, and your travel agent can arrange for it, you have to ask for the VIP terminal. You walk through and sit on a counch while you wait for your passport to be stamped and your bags to come out, but in my case I only had one carry on, so out the door I went, I was outside within 11 minutes from departing the plane which is fantastic.
I have a simple rule when in Egypt, I only stay at the Four Seasons Nile Plaza, this rule is there because I have suffered food poisoning every time I eat anything outside, but staying at this hotel I can order any food in mind and I’m sure its safe. Even when I had a dinner meeting I said that I’m not hungry and kept drinking water, as soon as I got back to the hotel I ordered room service, I have had too many bad experiences to take a risk. Too much work to do in Kuwait, so I flew back the next afternoon to get back in time to eat some food, and I passed out the whole flight back because I was so exhausted from this short trip and waking up early.
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Took the Wataniya Airlines flight to Bahrain at 7:50 am for an 11 am meeting, landed around 9 am and rented the Primo Limousine car service to take us around for the two meetings and then back to the airport but for a late night 10 pm flight back. Every time I go through the Bahrain Immigrations I enjoy how nice they are and they are always joking around, this is the one airport they are nice to everyone coming through.
We headed to the Ritz since our meetings were two minutes away from it by car. We had some tea and check our meeting point and presentations before heading in. Also the Ritz is a rip off, a 2 hour internet card is 10 BD which is ridiculous, plus the standard room with tax was for 200 BD which is insane. We headed to the meeting, then lunch at the Indian restaurant in the Ritz then the second meeting. Then off to the airport after some relaxing, we got there around 6:30 pm and I assumed it would be open by 7:30 pm but I was mistaken they only open the check in counter for Wataniya an hour and a half before the flight and so we were waiting with those going to Hajj until it opened. But by 8:30 pm we managed to check in and went to the Dulan lounge which is the first time I stay there and I have to say its amazing, probably one the best I have seen. One thing I do enjoy is that Sheikh Sa’ad Aiport is very easy to enter and leave from without any issues, and as soon I did I got my car out of the parking and heading home.
(I almost never drink coffee but I was only on a few hours of sleep so I had a tea cup filled it with Arabic coffee to wake me up)
Now this was an interesting trip, we had some meetings to take care off and we have postponed them for a while. We had to go to Sudan and so after some time we arranged it, three of us to go to the meeting. Only one of the three has been there before, I didn’t know what to expect and the funny part is that we were required to get a visa to go to Sudan, I honestly don’t know why.
Two options we had for flight were Emirates or Qatar Airways, and so we decided to go with Emirates since it was a shorter lay over. As we got to the connecting flight, the plane was one of the oldest I have seen from Emirates, an Airbus A330-200, even my seat rattled during take off and the guy next to me brought two bags of McDonalds to bring to his family as a gift. We landed after about four hours of flying, turns out the airport doesn’t have any tubes that connect to the plane, you take the stairs to microbuses that they pack full of people and herd them off. Immigrations looked like Friday market, people were piling up and some of these guys were pretty funny. As soon as we got in, we had our bags with us, and we walked out. We had dollars with us that we exchange for the Sudanese Pound, then we headed out, the parking lot is basically a dirt lot and nothing more, we drove to the hotel, took us about 10 minutes we saw nothing on the road. There were a lot of foreigners at the hotel, we decided to stay, eat and sleep because of the meeting the next morning.
We woke up, had breakfast, and went to the meeting. The first thing is that you can not find your way around Khartoum, the city has no main streets and traffic lights mean nothing, you have to take a crash course in tactical driving. We had our meeting, then met a friend from Kuwait who just got married, and one thing that we were amazed by is that Sudanese are some of very nice people. There aren’t a lot of towers in the city, one or two are being built and most buildings are one or two floor buildings, the streets are basic, the only paved one is in front of the government buildings over looking the Nile River. All I knew about the Nile was that its a very dirty river in Egypt, but in Sudan its a beautiful glimmering river, an amazing view with very nice people. When talking to a few Sudanese they were telling me that the reason people don’t seem to know how to drive with rules because cars have only been recently been made easy to purchase from the general public and they have made a truce in the south. An interesting people, they seem to be very nice, things have improved and they have learned to live with their embargo, it doesn’t help that their government has some issues but I’m not even jumping into that.
When we took off at the end of the day it was probably one of the worst experiences I have had in an airport in a while. They check you in, check in your bags, check that your on the flight, pretty much everything else manually, they manually do everything on paper, that took a while to do, I didn’t realize that it would take so long to check each person in, and you had to pay a fee to leave the country which I found to be pretty funny. After we were in, we waited in the Business/First Class lounge which wasn’t too bad, but when they called us it was like organizing a huge herd. When you have one security machine to go through and over 300 passengers to go through was a disaster, then they called another flight which also flood the security machine from the side and that turned into a shouting match. We got on the plane, I was thankful to be on the plane and heading back, it was an interesting trip and met some interesting people, if it wasn’t for the airport it would have been a pleasent trip. Khartoum is a very green city with beautiful natural views in all directions, but I was happy to be heading home.
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I had a one day trip to Jordan took the night flight, I had a choice of Jazeera, Wataniay or Royal Jordanian. I don’t like Jazeera, and Wataniya timing didn’t work for the meetings I had so I decided to take Royal Jordanian, their General Sales Agent in Kuwait is Al Sawan Co so I decided to book through them. Everything went smoothly, I got my tickets from the company and took off to Jordan. Spent the night at the Four Seasons, got really late check out from the same travel Agency, instead of a 12 pm check out they got me a 4 pm check out which was fantastic. And the hotel was very nice and clean, the staff was friendly. We even went to this restaurant called Reem Al Bawady and had mensef which is a dish which includes meat, rice, and yoghurt and its so good it puts you to sleep. It was a short trip and we flew back the same night as the meetings for work the next morning, landed in Kuwait around 1 am.
Overall, I really liked Royal Jordanian:
- The RJ staff are very friendly on the ground as well as the one on the plane
- They let you keep your brief case or hand bag next to you without having to shove it under the seat in front of you
- They know that an iPod or laptop won’t disrupt airplane electronics so they didn’t bother me during take off or landing, I kept watching my show forgetting that we were landing, she asked me just to put it away afraid that it will become a flying projectile upon landing which is a reasonable request but I kept playing Madden on my iPod
- The food was pretty good, not wow but not bad at all
- The price was reasonable, just a little cheaper then Wataniya since we booked it short notice 234 KD vs 217 for business class seats on those days