How to Combat Jet Lag

7/31 JFK International Airport

New York to Dubai

As we sat in the airport making our final phone calls to friends and family it finally hit us that we were about to board a plane for Kenya almost 9 months after beginning our planning. The plane was completely as we all filed in to take our seats we looked around and tried to guess where everyone was going.

We had decided to go with Emirates airline because so many rave about the service - and they weren't wrong! First of all each seat had its own television screen (touch screen) and a whole entertainment system with video games, movies, tv shows and news on twitter. It was almost perfect except Mer's screen was broken and Jessie's sound didn't work!!!!!!

However, after the first hour they actually reset the plane's entire system of entertainment and when it came on we both had working monitors. While we'd like to claim it was because we were so assertive it was probably the guy in front of us who asked the flight attendant every five minutes. In addition to entertainment, the food was awesome and every two hours they were shoving more of it in our faces.

Finally twelve hours later (and three movies) we arrived in Dubai for a 7 hour layover. Because we'd gotten less than two hours of sleep between the two of us we decided to try and keep busy and awake so we could try and sleep on the next leg of the trip.

TOUR Of DUBAI

Dubai, famous for its oil money, didn't exist thirty years ago. We hired a car to take us around for two hours. First of all it was 98 degrees out with 75% humidity (read: Hades) and the air was thick with yellow dust. The car was working hard to keep us air conditioned but really you can't fight that kind of heat - as ebony says it felt like we were going to burst into flames.

For the next two hours we toured the whole city and found out how far oil money goes. The emiratis have built an entire island (13 kilometers) filled with luxury shopping, housing and the worlds only 7 star hotel. The hotel is 27 stories tall with each floor being a suite - the prices range from $8,000/night to over $60,000. We also saw some of the more humble hotels (5 and 6 stars) with rooms only $6,000/night. Other than hotels (which there were literally hundreds of!!!) there were tons of shops and stores. After the first two or three that we drove by it was hard to maintain our "oohs" and "ahhhs" as the driver proudly showed off all of the over the top hotels and shopping malls. On every block there were at least 2 sky scrapers or buildings under construction and our tour guide bragged that they were constructing ANOTHER man made island that was going to be two times the size of the one we had toured earlier.

It just seemed so far out of our own worlds that it was hard to understand how so much money was being wasted in the name of "Luxury" holidays and vacations. In fact what was most absurd was the fact that it was so dusty and hot outside that no one was on the street and only 3 swimmers on the beach...why travel so far to be stuck in your hotel??!

One sign on a luxury hand bag store, named "Sauce", had a sign in the window:

"What did the saucy queen wear to the recession?

Her brand new, super hot, super shiny shopping bag!

Let them add sauce..."

It was a little unreal reading that sign and thinking how we would never see a sign like that at home. But that is the reality of Dubai and from what we could tell the construction and trade boom were going ahead at full speed (though one person from Australia said they were having a minor slow down).

After seeing all the stores and hotels we headed back to catch our flight from Dubai to Kenya. We both agreed that our short visit there was about all we needed and though it was good to see we probably wouldn't ever need to return again.


DUBAI to KENYA

The flight, 5 hours total, flew by quickly. We each slept an additional hour and started to get really excited to get to our final destination. The plane was PACKED with tourists, in fact there were hardly many Kenyans at all. This is high season in Kenya and when we landed there were two other planes deboarding also. We stood in line for about 45 minutes waiting for our visas. Very different than Dubai, the beauracracy was still done by hand and each visa was hand written along with a receipt. We picked up our bags and almost ran outside happy to finally be in Kenya.

24 hours later we had arrived.