Category: Travel

I first heard about this from Marzouqs blog and today a friend of mine sent me this video from YouTube. The e-gate smart card basically allows you to go through the immigration process at the Dubai airport A LOT quicker. Once I watched the YouTube video on how practical the e-Gate card can be I was instantly convinced to get one. I travel to Dubai on average 5 times a year and this could save me a lot of time. It supposedly take 10 minutes and costs KD15 to get card which makes it even more enticing.

Here is the video showing the e-Gate (skip to 2 minutes). [YouTube]
Here is some more info on the e-Gate [Link 1] [Link 2]

Picture from Airport International

Mark wouldn’t give us access yesterday cause my picture was so much better than his.

Thats from Antalya – Turkey

We decided to pass by the London Zoo today since its in Camden Town close to where we wanted to do some shopping. The zoo is larger than the Kuwait Zoo (duh) but much smaller than the San Diego Zoo. They have an incredible gorilla exhibit surprisingly with around 3 gorillas. The zoo looks like it was built in a forest, the whole area around the zoo is a huge green park with hills and trees and the inside of the zoo is the same. The zoo is actually split in two with a canal passing through, you need to cross a bridge to get to the other side, very cool. There are a couple of more pictures if you click on continue.

Well for some reason today my credit card just stopped working. It didn’t get canceled or anything of the sort, machines just don’t read the card anymore. I think the chip on my credit card got damaged somehow. Now I have to walk around with cash, sucks!

We left Paris today and got back to London but not without going on one hell of a ride.

We got to the Eurostar train station in Paris around 5PM which was around an hour before our train was set to leave. When we got to the automatic check in the machine rejected our tickets. I couldn’t understand why until an employee there arrived to help us and explained to us the problem. Our train had left over an hour earlier!

I am not one to make a lot of mistakes, I am usually the extremely reliable guy who plays it really safe and always tries to arrive earlier than the recommended time. Somehow, for some fucked up reason, I read our London arrival time as our Paris departure time. I can’t understand how that happened, looking at my non refundable non exchangeable ticket now I can’t imagine how I mixed up the departure and arrival times. Its right up on my list of dumbest things I have done in my life. We had missed our train out of Paris and that was just the beginning of our adventure.

There was another train leaving to London in around 2 hours so we headed to the really long cue queue to buy tickets and waited. While in line I tried calling NBK on 801801 to try and move money onto my credit card. I didn’t know how much I had left on the card and I didn’t know how much the tickets would cost so I figured I would play it safe and move some more money onto my visa. I spent 15 minutes trying to call Kuwait without any luck when suddenly I got through and got a hold of the NBK operator and explained to her that I wanted to move money onto my card. After 10 minutes of trying the NBK operator told me there was a problem with the NBK automated system and I should call back in 15 minutes.

We got up to the ticket counter and we asked for 2 one way tickets out of Paris. The employee told us we could get on the next train, price was 236 Euros per person which amounted to a total of 472 for the two of us. That was more than DOUBLE what I had paid for 3 weeks ago for our two way tickets! We didn’t have any other option so we asked for the tickets but when we tried paying for them both my credit card and Nat’s got rejected. Our cards were maxed out, it just wasn’t our luck.

Now you are probably thinking why didn’t I just withdraw money from an ATM machine and pay for the tickets with cash? Well the problem is when I travel I don’t keep a lot of money in my ATM card account so that just in case I get mugged at an ATM machine I can only withdraw a certain amount of money (I watch a lot of movies). It’s never been a problem before because I always use my credit card for my purchases and if I needed more money than whats available on my ATM card I just transfer more onto it.

So here was the situation, my Macbook had no battery and I didn’t have the charger so I couldn’t connect to a wifi network at the train station. There was also no Internet cafe at the station but even if there was I didn’t want to access my bank account from a public computer. I couldn’t get a hold of NBK, the answering machine never came on it just kept ringing and no one was picking up. Since I couldn’t connect to my NBK account I couldn’t use my credit card and I couldn’t withdraw any money so I was pretty much fucked.

I decided to call my sister and have her log into my NBK account and transfer money, problem was she wasn’t at home and the line kept breaking up. I then started calling my friends one by one to see if they were near an Internet connection including Bader, Marzouq and Khalid but no one was near a computer. It was just freaking frustrating. I had the money to buy the fucking tickets to get the hell out of Paris but I just couldn’t get that money onto my ATM or credit card! Time was running out by now and I needed to buy the tickets.

We decided to leave the station and head out around town looking for a place to get Internet access. After around 30 minutes of exploring and asking people we finally found an Internet cafe. I asked the guy if I could connect with my macbook but he told me it wouldn’t be possible. I looked at his computers, they had Windows XP on it… I had no clue if there were any trojans or softwares that would read and store my bank account info and passwords on the machines but I didn’t have an option, I was desperate and I just needed Internet. In literally 2 minutes I had logged into my bank account, transferred money onto my ATM and credit card and was out of the cafe. Thats all I needed, 2 fucking minutes of Internet to change the direction of my life.

We ran back to the train station with 45 minutes to spare but now we were back in the cue queue to buy tickets. 30 minutes later we purchased the tickets. The employee told us something about how our seats would be pull down seats but we didn’t care we just wanted to get on the train. We checked in, passed through passport and security check which luckily was empty and ran towards our train. If we had just been 1 minute late we would have missed the train again.

When we finally got on the train and the doors shut and we started moving, it was just the most amazing feeling of relief. Our fold down seats were these tiny seats located between the carriage cars (pictures above). They weren’t really that bad, it was kinda cozy sitting in between the carriage cars alone.

I can’t believe how an average day turned into such a mess. First thing I did when I got to my hotel room here in London was log on to the internet and change my NBK online banking password. Also when I get back to Kuwait I am going to take out another credit card and keep it aside just in case of emergencies like today. Finally Nat is going to be taking care of our traveling from now on, I am losing it!

I thought I sent a post earlier in the day from my phone saying I was in Paris but I just checked and it didn’t get posted. We arrived here today morning and we will be leaving tomorrow night. Its kinda like speed shopping/tourism. Being here makes me miss the London Underground. The Metro here in Paris is moldy and fugly.

We were at the supermarket picking up some munchies when on our way to the cashier we noticed a bunch of self checkout counters. It was hard to grasp the concept at first, I check out my stuff? Who will check and see if I was honest and didn’t skip anything? I still don’t know how they make sure people don’t cheat (probably monitor them with CCTV’s) but the idea of having customers check themselves out is unreal.

Its a pretty easy process, you take your items one by one, scan them on the machine and place them in the bag. Then you have a number of ways to pay, I chose credit card and just placed my card in the machine and that was it. Its the coolest thing ever.

The coins! So many fucking coins! The smallest note is like 5 pounds and everything else below is just coins. My wallet doesn’t even have a coin pocket so I am walking around with all these coins in my jeans and I am jingling the whole time like one of Santas reindeer’s.

Cheese burger, Ceaser salad, fries, onion rings, 2 beers and a coke.
Total: KD17

I know a lot of people will be traveling to Europe during the Eid so I just wanted to share some handy travel software that will work on Nokia phones and in some cases other smartphones, iPods and PDA’s.

I already previously posted about A-Z Maps which I purchased before I traveled to London for the first time last month. It was an incredibly easy to use software which allowed me to navigate London very easily as if I had been there before. The company has maps for other cities also including Paris, Barcelona and Helsinki. The map starts up instantly when you run it and then you just type the name of the street you are in and the software will show you where you are on the map. It’s also not expensive costing around KD10. More details on this software is available on the publishers website. https://www.lumisoft.net/

Another software I recently purchased in my preparation for my London trip later this month is Tube 2. When I was in Paris last month I had a hard time navigating the underground subway system and this software will be making my life a lot easier this time around. I purchased two versions of the software, the Tube 2 London and Tube 2 Paris. How it works is you type the name of the station you are in and then type the name of the station you want to go to and the software will visually show you your route on the underground map AND it will also give you step by step instructions. Here is an example of a trip from the Marble Arch to Waterloo station:

Marble Arch to Waterloo
Time: 13 minutes
Changes: 1

1. Marble Arch to Bond Street
Depart Marble Arch via the Central line (Eastbound) towards Epping for 1 stop.
Service runs every 5 minutes.

2. Bond Street to Waterloo
At Bond Street change to the Jubilee line (Southbound) towards Stratford for 3 stops.
Service runs every 5 minutes.

3. Waterloo
Arrive at Waterloo.

As you can see it makes things a lot easier. The software costs like KD3 and its available for the London, Paris and New York subway system. You can get more information from the software publishers website. They also have versions that work on iPods but they work differently. https://visualit.co.uk/

I am in Lebanon now and the weather isn’t as cool as I hoped it would be. Its good enough to drive around in a convertible or on a motorbike but not cool enough for long walks. Its kinda humid, not Dubai kind of humidity but still enough to make you feel icky after a short walk. I can’t believe how hot it still is in Kuwait!

I am going to Dubai tomorrow and coming back Saturday. I really don’t feel like going to Dubai, all I feel like doing is just sleeping in late and then ordering a pizza while I watch some TV on the couch. This would be the third weekend in a row in which I am traveling, but unlike the last two trips, Dubai doesn’t interest me. I won’t be taking my laptop with me and I don’t think I will be moblogging from there either. Last months bill increased nearly 600% from my usual because of my moblogging!

While in London I was able to walk around and discover the city without holding a large map and looking like a tourist because of a simple software I was able to get for my phone called A-Z London Maps. I don’t think I would have been able to enjoy my stay without this incredibly easy to use and practical software.

You don’t need a GPS device and you don’t need to connect to the internet to be able to use the map, the software installs everything onto your phone. To use the software all you need to do is type the name of the street you are in and the software will show you on a detailed map where you are. This helped me a lot since if I needed to find my way back to the hotel I would just check on the map to see where I was and then plan my route. Also if I found a street I liked I could easily find my way back. If I was using a regular paper map it would have taken me ages to find my location on it but with A-Z maps I just type my street and the software instantly circles my location on the map.

There are maps for London, Paris, Dubai, Barcelona, Helsinki and more but they only work on some Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. You don’t need to buy it to try it either, you can download the map and try it out for 30 days before you decide to purchase it.

I only found 2 problems with the software or should I say there are 2 things I would have liked the software to do. The first is the option to work with a GPS device. Although every street corner in London displayed the street name it would have been more practical if the software automatically recognized where I was. The second thing I would have liked would have been the option to search for shop names and then have the software find it for me on the map. Of course thats asking for to much but still, it would have been nice to have.

Final score is a 4 out of 5. If you are interested in the maps you can check out the Lumisoft website for more details and trial downloads. [Link]

A lot of you have been recommending a variety of restaurants for me to try out ranging from Thai, and Lebanese to Italian and American but no one even recommended a good Fish & Chips place! While walking around today I found a small cozy place where I had Fish & Chips for lunch.

One store I fell in love with here in London is called Size?. Size? is a sneaker store but they seem to have the coolest/funkiest collection of sneakers I have seen all in one place. Majority of the sneakers I saw today I had previously only seen on SneakerFreaker.com and DrJays.com. Now I am trying to figure out which sneaker to get, I only want to get two but I have around 10 I like. Some of the sneakers I found and liked are displayed above and below this post.