Being in Dubai without a credit card, is a bit like forgetting your swimming costume when you go to the SPA, the whole experience is diminished. Shock – Horror we were credit card less in Dubai. And it was not that straightforward to get cash from the ATM’s there either. There was a glimmer of hope however as our lobby, linked into Festival City shopping centre, which had an ATM that actually took our debit card ( thank god). We could access some cash albeit that particular purse was severely limited.
Desperate to look as if we could afford to be here we tried this out, but I could tell it was dawning on the night manager that he was dealing with a right couple of chancers. Any credibility that we were actual customers of a certain standing seemed to have disappeared into the night along with the bogus taxi driver. Despite his obvious misgivings, and probably against his better judgement, we were finally taken to our room, it was 2 in the morning.
Our room was palatial, we had upgraded this so would have been disappointed if the reception cock up meant we would not have been able to get the room we had paid for. But we were comfortably ensconced and with this securely under our belt, I rang the credit card company to establish why my card had been cancelled. OK, I get it I did have a slight idea why, but I also knew that the process had been aborted (I threw the phone away). Frankly I had not expected the automaton (that couldn’t speak Scottish) to have a modicum of brain matter that allowed it, not only to translate my abrupt narrative sufficiently but equally to have the artificial intelligence to complete the incomplete and work out that it needed to cancel my card.
While the call centre staff were helpful and understanding of my plight (even to the point of empathy for the lack of a card in this particular location), there was no way I was going to have my card reactivated and available to me on this holiday. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of my husband, who had remained quite quiet throughout this conversation, breathing a sigh of relief that our bank balance had unwittingly achieved a little reprieve on this particular trip.
At 3am I fell into bed, exhausted, frustrated and annoyed. Sleep in this state was elusive but after about an hour I could feel my eyelids weighted with exhaustion and just about to drop off when the TV (60 inch screen) suddenly jumped into life and bellowed pop music. We sat erect shifting from semi-slumber to wide awake club in seconds. Searching frantically for the doofer to turn it down or off we scrambled from the bed feeling around the furniture before finally locating it on top of the TV unit (where else?). And we zapped it ferociously and the room fell into momentary silence.
Now all we had to do was get back to sleep, but the wheels of frustration started rolling again and it was another 20 minutes before I started to fall asleep. I was just about there………….then the TV lit up again, not quite booming but nevertheless shattering the silence and our sleep. We zapped it again, muted it and tentatively looked at each other before we lay back down on the bed. And this blinking TV insisted on breaching into the bedroom every 30 minutes after that.
On the fourth occasion, I murdered it; frenziedly pulling the wires out of the wall. It lay motionless and blank but it did the trick and finally we were able to get some shut eye. We were both exhausted and deflated as we headed for breakfast the next morning. But first stop reception, where we had become so familiar with the night manager the evening before, to report the malfunctioning tele.
It was while in reception I noticed that there was a bit of tartan adorning the pillars surrounding the Lobby and a poster welcoming the Graduates of Herriot Watt University. All the way to Dubai and a graduation party for a University less than 10 miles from home, it was unbelievable! As we headed for breakfast, sitting at the first table as we entered the buffet, was a lady I knew well enough to have shared more than a few glasses of wine with.
Turns out she was organising the graduation party, what an incredible coincidence. We exchanged niceties but I also regaled the tale of the credit card, (you can tell how much this had upset me). She went immediately to her purse to offer us her card, how tempting it was but I declined this offer, preferring to stew and wallow in my misfortune because I knew my other half was actually breathing a sigh of relief it couldn’t be used.
I was ready to accept this, after all we were on holiday, it was Dubai and nothing else could go wrong, could it???????????????????
Life’s little dramas blog 