dubai_phil

Just want to re-iterate, again, re Al Aqah. There are 2 hotels alongside each other, then a big rock, then another hotel on a beach about 3kms long. You buy a hotel stay - period. There is then a VERY VERY VERY scruffy unfinished set of accomodation that may one day become a village with a shop that sells stale food and soft drinks. That REALLY is it, there is NOTHING else Mountains behind you and sea in front. The hotel and Nada, Nichts, Nothing that any "Non-Local" is going to want to go anywhere near for about 30kms in each direction. Sun & Pool & Hotel International Buffet and almost English prices in the Curry House, so spend some time there but FFS not 2 weeks you would go as mad us me & Eric

That is Blingland, a theme park that was designed and promoted by The Daily Snail for it's readers. There is a real holiday to be had down this way in a real City. The East Coast (and the drive their) through the Mountains is stunning Le Meridien is a really good hotel, lovely rooms, but as Eric said you are stuck in the Hotel so it has a Cocktail Bar on the Top Floor and the pool bars. Some Snorkelling & Scuba diving but that really is it. About a 90 minute drive from the airport. If you simply want to hit a beach then also next door is the Rotana Al Aqah which is more basic but the rooms are really decent and it will be cheaper. A good mix would be to spend some time over there chilling and then move back to stay in one of the City Centre locations, Movenpick in Bur Dubai (NOT the Marina) is a hotel we've used for business guests, away from the whole Burj & Marina stuff and able to get to some good (no booze) cheap restaurants. Deppo is right, 4 days would be boring if you didn't 1) know someone here or 2) do some research on actual stuff to do Naif Bazaar, Abra'a trips, Jumeira Mosque educational centre, Dune bashing in a 4 x 4 (no offence but something I know many would like to do) IF you go to a hotel you are allowed 4 litres of booze per person at Dubai Duty Free Inbound. That would cover 3 bottles of wine, a bottle of Spirits and usually two half case of Beer (Tsing Tao is our favourite 7 quid for 12 cans) but they do Fosters & Bud and occassionally Guiness which WILL save you a fecking fortune on Hotel prices. leave any left overs with me or Eric

Dear Constant Reader Every day that you come onto this thread you and the millions of others out there breathe a tiny piece of new life into this marvellous work of Non-Fictional entertainment. By now we have far surpassed even the wildest dreams of the erstwhile master of twists, turns, evil, darkness and the mere mundane depravity of the perils of Human existance. We have surpassed even the great Stephen King in the number of pages and words of this, the greatest of all the Horror stories of modern times. To have found such tales of Life after Death, sheer unadulterated horror at the callous disregard for Human Charity by such a procession of evil characters places such a work of art beyond even the possibilities of Hollywood. No sir, your mere presence peeking out from behind the sofa and registering your view of the thread ensures that this, The Horror Story of All Horror Stories will continue to grow as the plot continues to thicken, new heroes make their Stand against The Dark Tower, as those tales of Misery about The Bag of Bones somewhat more than a Green Mile down the M27 carry a tone of even darker Desperation. The Skeleton Crew left to Carrie the battle for Promotion as The Regulators continue to circle will be shown to have been as effective as a Dreamcatcher as The Storm of the Century finally catches up with those that try to live Under The Dome. When The Mist finally clears, Just after Sunset, the only possible ending will be the Cell.

And here he is. End of Jan. Well, for us it is already freezing here. 24C daytime and 18 in the evenings. For us the sea is too cold for swimming. For you Europeans, the sea will be as warm as the Med, the sun will still burn you to a crisp after about 20 minutes without Sun-Screen. It is our high season for good reason, this time of year, each day is just like a perfect English Summers' day, and the humidity stays low. BUT - we DO get rain this time of year. Haven't seen any yet, but we do catch the edge of the Indian Monsoon occassionally and see a few grey days each year between Jan & March There will be a load of events on around the Emirates, golf in Abu Dhabi 19th onwards, in Dubai 8th Feb onwards and there will be a number of gigs coming up (check out Time Out Dubai) The Beach hotels tend to be "Luxury" level with prices to match a bottle of Heineken is AED 49 at The Royal Mirage - that's about 9 quid, but there are many in City Hotels that offer good deals, plenty of all you can eat and drink evenings and shuttle buses to the public beaches or Beach Clubs. Also check out "Serviced Apartments" quite a few come with Maid Service and a pool and can get VERY good deals - mate got a two bed apartment for a week at around 100 quid a night. Eric & I will always be around to give advice on where to go. But if you are bringing the other half she needs to understand not to wear see-through tops on the way to the beach by taxi - once there - no problemo Le Meridien Mina Seyahi is always popular and has one of our best Beach Bars for evenings, Jebel Ali Hotel has a great beach and facilities but is almost 60km from the City so you really are marooned unless you want to spend 30 quid each way on a taxi or wait for a bus but do some research first. Backpacking budget holiday with some sunshine - forget it. The wrong 2 or 3 star hotel will find you trying to check in to some Asian Mafia Brothel, but PM me for more detail if you need help There's enough to do for a good 10 day or so trip and it really isn't much more than a 7 hour trip now. Personally I'd always recommend Centara Villas in Phuket as the perfect Winter Sun and Hotel combination but you are then talking 12 hours from UK to Bangkok, a messy transfer and another 90 minutes to Phuket before you have a one hour transfer

Ah great, FA Cup game so Solent can broadcast commentary online via BBC IPlayer. Which of course doesn't work if you are outside the UK unless you have all ssorts of dodgy proxy busting VPN hiding software that then fecks up your bandwidth anyway ho hum Hopefully will find a link to a Blackpool tater or two

no no no, we ain't sold anyone, just a link for those that keep popping up on matchday threads asking for Radio Feed Links http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10280~2258775,00.html Basically 17.99 until the end of the season. It isn't great, but it's all we have at the moment. (Oh and Fish wants to stay at Donny so maybe a player sale after all) http://www.teamtalk.com/doncaster-rovers/6635859/Mills-keen-to-stay-at-Keepmoat

Let's bat all day, that would hurt them. Bresnan Ton & Prior gets a double... But in reality, if we can get through to lunch and add another 40 or 60 runs that leaves them 65 ish overs tomorrow at an improbable (for teh Aussie top order) 4 an over would still only get them to 260 at the end of the day which would bring the scores about even. Thing is, I cannot see Strauss making sure that Anderson & Bresnan & Swann do anything other than strangle their scoring as we did so well for their first 8 wickets, so they have to try and force the pace - game over A 2-1 series win is in the record books for ever. Sure a 3-1 win may well earn a few more World Ranking points, but go for what is on the table first and then see if there is a no risk chance to finish on a high. A full day of sun on the SCG wicket - still think Swanny could finally have his day after lunch tomorrow

Well, it was pre-season and as "one who has been proved correct" keeps insisting, we are always awful at that time of the year. Early 80's - be surprised if any of the squad can remember even flying to the US hic

Ah yes that's it - cheers.

Didn't we also play Seattle at The Dell, late 70's? They had the shoot-out lines on the pitch and if memory serves me right the ex Leeds Keeper Also for some reason seem to think Terry Paine had a run out

Hahaha They need money yet can't get their act together to collect it from supporters. Oh, and they are finding even more ways to annoy the FL Yes at last Pompey Fan in print agreeing his club is a shambles Woo HOO

As is avoiding the risk of unecessary Yellow or even worse Red Cards

We should have had cover for RL last February. LB & Guly are very good players for us, but they do not have the attributes, especially up until Xmas that RL had with his physical presence in the air. When RL was off colour we struggled, we had threads about him being dropped, but the reality was that we had no like for like cover for him. Bringing in another LB type player is not what we need, we need a decent up and coming youngster who can come off the bench or make a few starts this season. We also need cover in the wide positions. If we were to lose AL for 2 or 3 games we would lose a lot of our creativity, if we lose AoC for 2 or 3 games we lose a lot of our pace and impact. We now have 3 quality CM players to rotate, but again, with suspensions or knocks, is Oscar Gobern ready to come off the bench or even start? Chaplow signing, getting Guly full time and not losing AoC and AL would be a good Transfer Window, but I still feel we need that cover up front and out wide. Guly has only just started to settle playing in the middle, really not sure he'd do the job out wide for us yet, so would still like to see two more signings.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/8240213/Saudi-Arabia-captures-Israeli-spy-vulture.html

In the same way that Michael Clarke made a totally frivolous review appeal in the first test (I think) and then when clearly been given Not Out and Hot Spot showed nothing, Snicko showed he WAS out in another test. The rules are there, Bell used them. Great to listen to Whingeing Aussies about it. How many times in the 30 or 40 years we seemed to regularly get walloped did things NOT go our way All we need now to finish the series off will be some freak bounce, unlucky ricochets off of a boot and grind the Aussies into dust for a generation.... Well, that's what they wanted to do to us for so many years.

Another great day at the office for England. Good knock from Cook again - has batted for more minutes than any other England player against the Aussies according to Channel 9. Nice partnership from Prior & Bell to drive more nails into the coffin, shame Bell got out before the end. 208 ahead, would have taken that yesterday and we still have 3 wickets in hand, another 40 or 50 or get through to lunch tomorrow and should be game over.

Not sure on that one, could have been that whole Solar Radiation effect though

Ah yes of course http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

yeah and in keeping with weird behaviour, what's with that Great White Shark boat attack thing on Sky News. When did they start eating Outboard motors? Oh & how the feck did that guy manage to hold a video camera, surely he must have been crapping himself. Now THAT's weird

Many on here would have queued up to do it when you kept trotting out your statistics threads...

Ah Salisbury, the rural traffic jam and home of Nimby's par excellence. With a catchment area population of around 500,000 who use the magnificent (and mainly shutting down) City Centre Facilities of a rural market town. And our choice of nearest League football club ensures that those of us & our kids who've been going since the 60's aren't real fans. If only they'd shut down Odstock & made our mums or (ex) wives travel by Ambulance to Southampton General, we'd have all been real fans.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8239548/Hundreds-more-birds-fall-from-the-sky-this-time-in-Louisiana.html OK the first story about huge numbers of dead fish turning up was under the radar. The second story about 3,000 birds dropping out the sky was a bit weird. But now a different type of bird has dropped out the sky some 300 miles away. WTF is going on?

Jeez, if that doesn't meet the criteria for "Frivolous" appeals I can't see how any ever will. From the horses (oops sorry) Donkey's mouth

Crikey, singing abusive songs about Away grounds is not acceptable.... Been going on for years, obviously some people have never been to the Subutteo Stadium in West London

Hmm I wonder how you managed to come up with this theory? Surely only a married man who would be worried about such a thing could think this through.... She was found on a golf course, I'm just shocked that nobody else thinks it was Tiger Woods trying to cover up his latest relapse to avoid losing the last of his psonsors