Charleston

sorry my blog sucks.. i know, i never update it and i have no pictures like nikesh's... he has pictures and slide shows and movies and he has clearly one-upped me on the "amin boy indian trip". but now that i'm back and have nothing better to do, i'll update this shit more. its hard to travel around the world and blog at the same time... now i have nothing to do and i'm sitting in the ICU updating this haha

Well now we're home, but last you heard from us we were in Hong Kong. Nirav was set to leave and we had a good day of sightseeing. The next destination was Dubai, which at first Netto and I were not extremely excited about seeing that we were broke, tired and now Nirav-less. Also, plans in London seemed so exciting with clubbing, a Chelsea football match and Stonehenge, that we kind of looked past Dubai. In all honesty, it was a good city, but not a great city. There is a lot of construction and no public transportation and so it became hard to do the 'four days of sightseeing in a day' trick that we've been doing in all the other cities.

Things I enjoyed most about the city was seeing all the crazy things they have built and are going to build. The buildings are magnificant, from the tallest building in the world to the largest mall and first "seven star hotel" ...its all very nice. The various souqs or markets were interesting to visit as well. We also met up with Misha, one of Nikesh's friends from college and so we had a nice night out despite it being a tuesday night. The next day we were scheduled for a desert safari, which I was really excited about. We started the safari off with dune bashing which means you get in a land cruiser, take some air out of the tires and barrel down these huge sand dunes. It was a rollercoaster on crack.. really good crack. After a camel ride, a beautiful desert sunset, shesha, belly dancing and the desert stars.. we were scheduled to fly out to London-town baby... London-town.

We arrived in London and in London was the one and only Anjali! I unrolled my jeans and a pile of sand poured out on to the airport floor. Now there is some Arabic Desert sand in Heathrow airport and I didn't declare it to customs, shit! We had a glorious time with Anjali. She scheduled a weekend packed with a road trip, partying with Shaleena in Bristol and going to a English Premier League Chelsea match. On thursday Netto and I had some family time and on Friday it was on like donkey kong... Friday we set out on our road trip and in true RTW fashion, Netto and I drank a beer and enjoyed the scenery. Stonehenge was amazing, but wish we could have gotten closer. Bath was a great little historic city and then we arrived in Bristol. After getting horribly lost trying to find our hotel we found a Nando's chicken, had some drinks and the night began. And then it was morning, so we decided to go to bed for a couple hours before heading back to Stamford Bridge for the match.

I would advise you, if you're a football fan, to go to footytube.com and check out the Chelsea v Wiggins highlights, because it was a great great game. It was quite an experience hearing all the different chants. I could finally understand what they were saying, unlike on TV you just hear a bunch of drunk, english accents. The Chelsea game, for me any ways, was it. I crashed and burned after that. There was some talk of going out in central London and all, but that was it. I was jet lagged and out of energy..

Thoughts: Since being back, everyone has asked about Dubai and how it was. While in Dubai I was constantly thinking about the question: "what makes a place attractive and beautiful?" I realized that there were two things to take into consideration: man-made vs natural. Alot of places have both and in some places, one superceded the other. For example, New Zealand was amazing. Auckland and Queenstown were great cities, but New Zealand's natural beauty was clearly the sight to see. Dubai, on the other hand, is known for its cityscape and the crazy things they build. They have man-made island resorts from the palms to the world. They have unbelievable architectural wonders such as the Burg al Arab. But my favorite part of UAE wasn't the city of Dubai, but was the desert. After traveling (quickly, mind you) around the world, it was interesting comparing and contrasting all the places we've been and the different priorities each country or city had as to how to make their native land attractive. New Zealand leaves itself alone versus Dubai creates unimaginable structures and new landscapes.

Google Images: no worries... slide shows will be up soon