My Dubai Travel Journal

Some things in life are a big surprise. Something unexpected like that happened with me last year. Our wedding dates in August were decided in May. There were only 3 months to the wedding and there was too much to do. I had all my to-do lists ready and everyday after office I had a whole list of chores to do before driving home. One day I got a missed call from my bank representative. I couldn’t be bothered to call him back as I was heading out from office and just about to get into my car. Anyway I made the effort and had him on speaker phone when he congratulated me and told me that I have won a return ticket to Dubai. I said ‘I have not applied for any draw whatsoever so how is that possible?’. He said the system picks up an ID card number randomly in over 100,000 people and luckily it was you so you can come and collect your free ticket.

So, well I was invited for the ceremony and a picture was taken while I was handed over the letter for their bank magazine. It was an open ticket which could be made in any dates of my choice within the next 6 months. I knew as my wedding was coming closer, I had to plan the trip ASAP. I spoke to my boss and told him that I have won a return ticket to Dubai and I’m wondering when I should avail it. As there was a conference coming up soon, my boss said why don’t you go day after tomorrow? I ran home, contacted my mom and agent and got Dubai visa and quickly packed up. In the meantime, my sister Waliya had also planned to go to Dubai on a holiday. She told me I had stolen her thunder by going there before her, that too free of charge. I called up my friends and they were kind enough to ask me to stay with them. So it was all planned out. I did most of my wedding shopping from there.

When I came back, I had to get down to wedding preparations on full throttle as there was not much time left and there was too much to do. So for months and months, I didn’t bother making a travel journal for this trip. After wedding and honeymoon was over, I thought I had some receipts and tickets from my Dubai trip so while I make my honeymoon travel journal, why don’t I make Dubai journal too. I don’t have a very good memory so I called up my friend with whom I had stayed and she gave me detailed description of what we did and when. In our office, we had many expired table calendars (Biosensors stents) which were in the store and we had to throw them away. We colleagues had divided these amongst ourselves and had thought that these can be made into journals. So I just used one of those and got some pictures developed from the trip. It hardly took me a few days to complete this journal. Today I will be sharing it with you. I hope you like it.