The CrossFit Asia Regional finished without any drama so Tim and I were able to leave Seoul late Sunday evening as planned.

I had to snap a few photos of the Asia Regional Athletes.  They aren’t hard to look at.

(Excuse the blur.  These pics were taken from about 100 feet away and/or with no flash).

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So we headed out.  I had purposely booked our flights so that we had a layover in Dubai.  Tim had a 6 hour respite between flights then went on to Johannesburg.  I am in Dubai until Thursday and will be taking a guided tour of Abu Dhabi today.  Apparently it is only 1 hour away by car and worth seeing.  I don’t get to the Middle East very often so it seemed like the logical thing to do.  I am also hoping to buy one last Persian Rug.  I have a great collection but I do not have a 100% silk rug.   The best silk rugs come from a town in Iran (Qom) and I have found a reputable dealer in Abu Dhabi that sells the kinds of rugs I want.  A fine silk persian rug can have over 1,000 knots per square inch.  That means a small carpet about 30″ x 30″ has almost 1 million knots.  The rug I am hoping to buy will have taken the equivalent of 2 man-years to create; more on that if I am successful in my search today.  But I’m getting ahead of our story.
It only seemed logical to get from Seoul to Dubai on a magic carpet so I did the modern day equivalent and booked us on Emirates Airlines.  No chance of doing it in First Class but here are some shots of their Business Class.  Wake up Delta, your planes suck.
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Sadly this was a red-eye flight so we had to sleep.  I did manage to stay up a few hours, watch a movie and have some champagne but eventually I too had to pull the plug.  Both Tim and I slept soundly and woke up reasonably refreshed before we landed at the Dubai Airport.  My travel agent had arranged for someone to meet me at the gate so I was whisked away through a separate Customs and Immigration line and was in a  7 series BMW headed to my hotel in about 20 minutes.  Now that’s the way to do it!  We did however land at 4:30am and my Guide said we were the first of several A-380’s due in that morning.  Emirates has their own hub for the A-380, the largest passenger plane flying now.  The picture above is only the upper deck which is First Class and Business Class (pictured).  Economy is the entire lower deck but even there they have individual screens for each seat and it’s meant to be better than the other airlines.  I just knew that if I put Tim in Coach Class while I flew upstairs I might as well start having the divorce papers drawn.  I made that mistake once early on in our relationship and it did not go well.  I have informed him that he will be making our Top Ramen noodles until I can pay for all of this but life is short and with the opportunity to travel with Tim and CrossFit this is the direction we will take for now.  It looks awful, doesn’t it?
Safely in Dubai I checked into the Palace Hotel.  Here is the view from my room.  This tiny little dot of water is part of a 30acre man made “lake” that sits in the middle of the City.  It’s not like your normal “lake” in that it is crystal clear and looks more like a swimming pool.  Here it is looking over the hotel pool.
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It seems like everything here is the Worlds Largest.  The “lake” is arguably the largest pool of its kind next to the tallest building in the world next to the largest mall in the world (over 1,200 shops) and one of the largest aquariums in the world inside the mall along with ice skating, waterfalls, and every elegant name brand you can imagine.  They must do a lot of retail therapy here but a lot of it is done through a small slit in a black Burka.  They do appear to be embracing the gym culture as evidenced by the Burka-Sportswear I found (below).  If it weren’t so prominently displayed I might have thought it a joke, but the Islamic cultureis
quite evident here.  Best to remember that as you wander around.
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