Feels like a while since I blogged my last entry. Five days in fact. Long time for me because so much as been going on in the last few days. A close friend left the desert for the greener fields of France, landing a job as Cabin Crew with a branch of Air France’s mammoth network. With Transavia to be precise. This particular friend, TALL BEN (as we like to call him here), whom I will always consider as an outsider was well up there in the French Mafia of Dubai. Always around with a brilliant joke or story to tell. He will be greatly missed up there in the skies as well as on the ground here in Dubai. He’s leaving the sandpit with a kick ass legacy. I know you’ll be reading this as it goes live. I have just read your message and thought I’d reply here. Letting everyone else know that people who you hang out with here in Dubai, make or brake your whole expat experience. We had been hanging around together since Day 1. The very first minutes of the whole hoooha started when you approached my folks and asked to my very own Mother “Are you Sodwee’s mother ?”. To what she replied “Yes, I am. You’re looking for him ??…. He’s having his last French fag over there (pointing at the revolving doors outside Charles De Gaulle terminal 2c)… And there I see you, along with Nivine (who remains in the sandpit with me) and that’s where we met, in the parisian cold. We were shitting ourselves with stress, anxious, and willing to leave for a better place. We made it a better place. Because Dubai is not the kind of place to offer. It’s the kind of place you go to make something for your own. So we did and a year later still enjoying it. Three other strangers joined us on the plane. Gilbert, Mathieu and Greg. They will miss you to. Hope for the best in your experiences and future life in Paaaaaareeeeee. We’ll see each other there, there’s no doubt about that. And of course, you know where to find us. If your urge for cheap jetski thrills are getting higher as time goes by, you know where to ring the bell… Best of luck. Speak to you soon. By the way, I still haven’t realised you have gone. Fo’sure when I hit up Zinc next time, I will realise the gap in the dancefloor. You certainly made the start of my stay in Dubai extremely eventful, your antics will remain : fond memories of your swapping skills, the magic Lagos trip with Greg, your amazing cost cutting, saving every penny actions and so on. But most importantly being able to shift from shy guy to show man in the span of a year ! You say I’m the greatest party animal but I thank you for that compliment. And to thank you, I will post a picture of you, so you also get the chance to get fan-mail / comments.

This previous paragraph might or most likely will come across as very cheesy but this guy deserves the credit. So now onto Mauritius, after dropping Tall Ben at the airport and making sure he was escorted by the Yellow Chicks (Marhaba airport service at Dubai Intl’), I went back home to rest before this third part of my Mauritius layovers. The last one in fact.

This layover was very special aside from the awesome weather and sunshine, the amount of food I gobbled or the great crew with us… I had the pleasure of meeting Carine, a reader of this blog and owner of one of her own. She managed to swap one of her other MRU trips for this one and we found out that she was flying with me. Which made it the whole thing quite exciting. Carine is the bubbliest crew I have ever met that speaks three languages : English, French and Spanish. She had been reading my blog well before she even applied for a Cabin Crew position and knew my every move for the last year which is always weird to hear. She has been flying for 3 weeks and still finding her marks around the cabin. The perfect example would be picking up the interphone. She was shaking every time she had to, which recalled directly to my first few weeks as a Cabin Crew. I was sweating a pint of sweat everytime I had to answer the phone. Carine is a great team player as we later found out when she courageously downed a full shot of the deadliest plumb mix that Miljan brought over from Serbia. Lethal it was, lethal ! She then managed to dance around until the early hours of the night…. on the beach.

This makes for a brilliant transition. The whole crew had planned to spend a hella good time while in Mauritius. So we decided to buy some drinks on our way to the hotel so we didn’t have to pay the extortionate prices the joint was applying. Meaning we had quantity of drinking material. We had spent the whole day on the beach, getting our tans ready for the next day. We ate an astonishing amount of food too, too much for my little belly to be honest. But it was so nice I couldn’t resist. Especially the italian grubs by the pool. You can’t beat it ! After a real nice dinner with the entire crew, including Captain and First Office (who was French by the way) we hit up on of the far beach of the hotel so we could let ourselves go for the rest of the night without disturbing the rest of the hotel guests. The group was led by Tony, a crazy FG1/DJ/funnyman who had brought his speakers and iPod for our dancing needs. We partied the night away, under the stars, with the sweet sound of waves breaking just 10 metres away. Loved it so much. I was in my stripey pajamas, so much for beach wear… As you can imagine, the next day was quite challenging for some of us. Including Carine, who shamefully slept until late in the morning. Missing out on the goodness seven of us had to endure : The Boat Trip to Paradise Island…

10 am. Seven of us made it to the meeting point. Hanen, Api, Mika, Miljan, Aneta, Jaco and myself. We hoped on the Shandai boat owned by Jimmy, one of the best boat drivers. If you need a boat trip and you’re staying at this hotel, I recommend his services. He will take you on a dreamy trip ! You can email him here to find out more on the prices and trip details : jmanguillier@yahoo.fr.

I had done this boat trip before, so I knew where we were heading to, but I was so desperate to see Paradise Island again, I just had to do it again. This time, with my own music. I knew I could convince enough of us to make it happen, so I burned a compilation of tracks and awesome tunes to rock out while we were speeding across the lagoon. Some club anthems, classic oldies and new commercial crap to wiggle to.

The mood was just perfect, everyone had smiles across their faces. The scenery around the lagoon was amazing. Blue, transparent waters, reflecting the white sands on the seabed, aswell as the colorful corals. We sailed past the Ile aux Aiglettes where Turtles live, but didn’t manage to spot any this time. We then headed towards the waterfalls and enjoyed a water massage there and jumps from the rocks into the cold waters. Speeding through the waves to the blasting sound of “Show Me Love” and “Rise Up” (a cabin crew’s favourite) we arrived in paradise. Just the perfect beach, with the perfect palm trees and the warm sea water. Spent quite some time there just soaking in the sun, a little walk round the island and we were off again for snorkling, more tanning and boat driving.

If you find me snorkling again, it would be a true miracle. I had so much difficulty in putting those goggles that I wouldn’t have the will to do it again. Everytime I ducked beneath the surface, the darn things would fill with bloomin’ water. Adding to that, the fact I had sunblock on the face, the mix of salt water and cream inside your goggles just makes you wanna cry. It hurts. So I decided to ditch the snorkling and climbed back on the speedboat to enjoy some music and a well deserved Coke.

The day was coming to an end. We all settled on the boat for our last leg back to the hotel. We finished in a bang. Circling around at high speed in front of all the sad honey mooners sat there on the beach ! Ahaha, music was very loud too which made them feel very odd. They looked at us with bad looks as we stepped out onto the beach. I couldn’t feel much better !

The rest of the afternoon was spent eating pancakes, spaghetti bolognese, and drinking fruit cocktails before we hit the sack for some rest before our uneventful flight back to Dub-Dub. I now have 5 days off and if everything goes to plan, we should be heading to Fujeirah with the french gang. Otherwise I think I’ll just go to Paris for a little weekend. Until peace out fools. A video of this trip is in the works. Unfortunately, Facebook has disabled my video uploading because of copyright infringement, so the only place to see the video will be here, on the blog ! In the meantime, enjoy all the pictures I successfully managed to upload !

Related Posts, according to Airbot... (automatically generated)

• Quick Low-Res Teaser
• Airboy does New York & Aquaventure in Dubai
• NEW LAVIATORS JOIN THE CLUB – BEST IN SHOW, so far…
• So far, So Good. Or supposedly. TWO NEW LAVIATORS. DL#81.
• HOTEL GOSSIP. WTFML. TWO NEW LAVIATORS
• Airboy does Shanghai #2 + VIDEO
• DOWNLOADABLES #74 / Tonite Only – City rooftop, in your tanktop, rainbow stylin’
• 366 days in the SANDPIT !
• November roster detailed… + MP3 !
• Inside my RV(s)