What a wild ride 2020 has been. It’s been more than a year since COVID-19 and the biggest handicap (for me) is not being able to travel internationally. Living in Singapore, there isn’t much domestic travel that can be done. I’ve resorted to staycations (and recently seacations) to temporarily fill the void of travelling. The only saving grace is having going overseas at least once in 2020 during COVID-19 times.
The virus first hit Singapore on 23 Jan 2020 and since then the healthcare sector has been in overdrive. My friend and I were supposed to travel to Dubai in March 2020 but as a healthcare worker, she had to stay in Singapore and couldn’t leave. As bummed out as I was, with half a mind to cancel the trip and bank on travel insurance to recoup my losses, I was prepping to travel on my own. It’s relatively easy to navigate around Dubai with its extensive transport network.
My mum came along on the trip in the end which is a good thing she did cause who would’ve known that would be the last time we would travel in a long while. COVID-19 cases back then were low in Dubai although there was a surge in Abu Dhabi a couple weeks before our trip. With a little fear instilled, I made sure to pack enough and extra surgical masks, hand sanitisers, and anti-bacterial wet wipes.
We wore our masks once we left our home and it remained till we reached Dubai. Check-in was per normal but with temperature checks and meals served onboard like it was to be. The upside was a semi-full flight which meant we had the whole row of seats to ourselves.
Once we were in Dubai, the masks were off. There were hardly anyone there wearing masks and there were no temperature checks at the airport. The reality of COVID-19 had yet to hit Dubai during our time there.
Onboard a cab from the airport. The plan was to take the train to our hotel but mum was paying so… 🙃
Home was Rove Healthcare City for the first two nights — complimentary hotel stay as part of Emirates’ flight offer. I accidentally deleted all my pictures from the GoPro so I only have selective photos left 😭
Unpacked and walked ~25mins to the nearest mall — WAFI Mall — in search for lunch.
Beautiful architecture.
Though the mall was big, there weren’t a lot of exciting shops. We ended up having Marrybrown for lunch… The only saving grace was that there was Carrefour where we could stock up on supplies.
Yay to butter chicken + naan.
Day 2
Slept at 9+pm the previous night cause of the time difference and woke up at 6+am. Might as well sweat it out a little.
Off to Mall of the Emirates.
The hotel was a bit out of the way from the city centre but thankfully they had complimentary shuttle service!
Went to Mall of the Emirates to pick up our Big Bus Tour tickets.
The family has been to Dubai before but that was back in 2014. Their transport system is great and reliable but this time round we chose to rediscover the city through Dubai’s Big Bus Hop-On Hop-Off Tours. I’ll keep this post short so more details about our Big Bus adventure in the next post.
Till then!
