I’m now back from my work trip to Dubai, and I’m going to share my wisdom and experience with you, my faithful readers, whether you like it or not.

Basically I arrived, worked, then flew back, so you can imagine I had a wide and varied experience which involved seeing almost entirely the inside of hotels and absolutely nothing else.

From my previous post you’ll have seen that I might have had a moment or two to spend in a jacuzzi overlooking Dubai creek, which I suppose was alright, if you like that kind of thing. Which I do!

Since all I saw was the hotel, I’ll tell you about the room. It was a five star hotel so the room was nicely appointed and the bed was comfortable beyond belief! One odd thing though – the bathroom and bedroom were separated by a glass window.

Now I don’t know about you but I don’t want my wife to watch me having a poo – and I most certainly don’t want to watch her – I’m sure that’s a thing some people enjoy but as Alan Partridge would say, “They’re sex people Lynne!”

Moving on, when at the hotel I mostly saw it during the hours of darkness as I was working during the day. It looked better at night including the view in the distance of the ludicrous Burj Dubai, by a long way the tallest building in the world. Visible below, it’s the lit up tower to the left of the image in the distance

Finally because I apparently go away on work and always take a photo of a big wheel, here is a photo of a big wheel.

Any questions on Dubai? Ask me, obviously I’m an expert.

So I find myself in Dubai working for a few days, which sounds good but isn’t since I’ve had next to no time to myself to do anything.

Having said that, there are a few benefits…

All I need to do now is pray that the ash cloud doesn’t stop me from flying home!

More on Dubai when I’m home.

I can’t remember, did I mention I went to New York? Well in any case I did go to New York, in your face! HA!

I took a few photos when I was there, not least a couple of enourmous panoramic ones which I’ll share at a later date. Until then, please do enjoy these, and if you don’t enjoy them, then you are a stinker, plain and simple.

This here below is the 3 train, I know this because I am some sort of expert on all things New York because I don’t know if you know this but I’ve been there you see.

This is something called a “Yellow Taxi”, there are a lot of these in New York which you would know if you had been – I’ve been, this is how I know these things.

This is a “School Bus” which if you went to America like what I did, you might see, because in America school buses are yellow.

More valuable, exciting and interesting lessons in the American and New York city way of life coming soon. I bet you can’t wait.

Firstly an apology – I haven’t posted here for ages but I’ve been a very busy boy moving house and decorating and all that jazz. Also I’ve been to New York!! WOOO!!!

My sister got married in central park, it was flipping amazing, you honestly couldn’t imagine a nicer location for a wedding. I’m sure it helped that the weather was nice. The previous day was the hottest day on record for this time of year!

My wife and I had already been to New York once before so we took the opportunity to relive some things and experience some new things – it was very relaxed with the only problem being I ate far too much red meat and drank far too much Brooklyn Lager (yum).

At least we beat the volcano and got home safely! More New York posts will follow over the next few days…

Only a scant four months have passed since we went to Kenya and had a lovely holiday. At the time I shot a single roll of film through my Holga which is unusual for me because I was expecting to have used about 96 films.

Anyway, on to the point – I got the photos back this week. First up, this really hurts – partly because I have no memory of the camera coming open at any time, but mainly because I’m now utterly convinced that the photo in the middle would have been the best photo ever taken by anyone ever.

The ones either side don’t look that special, but I’m not letting that deter me from my belief. Moving swiftly on from my apparently never ending ability to make ridiculous mistakes with what is basically a very very simple camera, I did manage to get one or two that I liked. First up, hanging the camera out of the window of the safari truck I just did a hopeful shot to see what would come out.

I think this was taken on the first day, and was our first experience of what a lot of the roads in Kenya are like – red – and horribly uncomfortable. Next up, a random street scene in Kenya – like nothing I’ve ever experienced before or since.

This is a local shop – and is fairly consistent with all the other local shops you see when you aren’t in a city. Finally – out on the safari trail, a couple of shots that I feel OK about sharing:

I simply can’t understand why I didn’t take more pictures with the Holga whilst I was there – I guess I was too busy having a good time to think about it, most unlike me!

As I mentioned before, we went to Kenya, and it was bleeding brilliant. We did a four day Kenyan Encounters Safari, followed by 9 days in the Turtle Bay Beach Club in a village called Watamu. Lovely place, lovely people, can’t recommend it enough. I took about 3,000 photos, most of them with this bad boy:

I’ve written what has turned out to be a very long description of our time on safari – which I have no doubt that nobody will read, so if you want to look at the pictures, click on this thing here: Kenyan Encounters photos

Hope you like them – I liked taking them!