My stay in Abu Dhabi wouldn’t be successful without a last public bus experience! After a full day of sightseeing, I left my Couchsurfing place for the airport to catch my night flight. And taking a taxi was not an option… you know me now! Not only for pride, but in this case also for price reasons: my decision between paying 25 euros a taxi or 0.5 euros a bus was quickly taken! And I was happy to notice that the bus to the airport was passing by the main road 5 walking minutes away from my place! I planned a very long time to reach the airport to avoid stress – and knowing the poor bus frequency. And this was the best idea I had! As I arrived at “my” bus stop on the main road, the bus line to the airport wasn’t on display, although the line was clearly passing there. After studying the network map, I noticed that the airport bus only has very limited stops, and the closest stop to hop on was… 10 km away… next to the main bus station… in the “wrong” direction! I took a bus driving down to this area, had to walk 10 minutes to find a pedestrian bridge to cross the highway and to reach the bus stop on the other side of the road… While I was on the bridge, I saw the airport bus arriving but no chance to run fast enough with the backpacks. I enjoyed waiting for about 30 minutes for the next bus, and loved even more driving by the bus stop next to my “house” about 1,5 hours after I stood there for the last time! Hahaha!
But good news, I finally made it to the airport and even had time to have dinner (McDonalds… I feel ashamed…!). I was very successful at my little game of getting rid off the last coins and bills of local currency. There were some cheap snacks and drinks vending machines in hidden corners and after a complex planning and optimization, I managed to buy some chips/biscuits and a drink that cost exactly what I had left! The small pleasures in life!
As my plane of SriLankan Airlines took off, I was very excited about the idea of landing in a complete different world a few hours later, in the morning. The trip had only started a few weeks ago, but I was about to experience my second big cultural shock… first leaving Christian Europe for Muslim Arabia… and now heading to the Buddhist world…
Here we come Sri Lanka!
Free like a bear 