I like traveling. We travel, as you’ll know if you follow these pages, quite a bit. And quite extensively. But we have an unspoken rule; we need to feel safe. Ish. So Columbia last Christmas was absolutely fabulous and wonderful but enjoyed with a degree of care and caution that wasn’t required in, say, India. Where you do feel safe. Though Colombia’s lack of perceived laws and rules are mainly historic. Albeit recent history, that of Paulo Escobar and the drug cartels. Who were lawless, Godless, ruthless. Nowadays there’s more law, not sure about God, and we never met Ruth.

In Jamaica we were cautious and didn’t do too many drug deals on the beach. In 3 weeks time we’re going to Australia and New Zealand. Being very wary of kangaroos. And we’ve done South Africa, where you feel safe but everyone tells you that you’re wrong to believe that. And Argentina which was perfect, and Brazil, where again you need to watch where you go and what you wear/carry. America is generally safe, Canada almost perfectly so. The Far East is generally pretty good on the whole. Bearing in mind that there are always areas in every country, every city, where you have to ‘be careful’. This is caution over people, not over the State.

But we’ve never been to Dubai. And we never will. We have been twice to the airport whilst planes were filling up and that in itself is an experience. In gaudiness and tastelessness. Which is not why we wouldn’t go there. I’m not scared of gold plate, even if I don’t like it very much on an industrial scale. But I am scared of places where the laws appear to be made up as they go along.

If you know that to enter a mosque with bare shoulders is wrong, you don’t do it. If you’re aware that pissing on holy shrines will get you in trouble, unlike various groups of back-packers in Indonesia, you can avoid it. But if you can get arrested just because you looked at a policeman, or bumped into someone in a shop, and then jailed without any meaningful trial for 17 years with no appeal, that’s not somewhere I need to be in any particular hurry.

Matthew Hedges was researching Dubai security for his PhD, arrested for spying and jailed for life. This morning, just one week later, he has been pardoned and is on his way home.

And this guy grew up in Dubai, knew it well, its laws, how they generally make them up on any particular day, who not to offend, how not to offend them, Matthew knew all this. Yet still fell foul of the whims of those Emiratees.

So, thank you very much, I’ll return to Ecuador with pleasure, troll the streets of Hong Kong all night, do Manhattan any day. But Dubai? You can keep it.

Happy Monday

A xxxx