Dubai International Airport (DXB)
DXB is a strange place. I've only ever been here in the middle of the night - usually for a stretch of 7 or 8 hours, starting around midnight, waiting for a connecting flight. It's 1am now, and full of people, milling, walking, waiting. It's strangely quiet for a place containing so many people.
It's a bit like a dream place - there are humans in all the outfits of the world, from the skin-tight, flesh-baring outfits of westerners to the burka'd women, closely following their men; all variously eating breakfast, jumping on trampolines (yes, trampolines), drinking beer, sleeping.
The holy grail, for those on a long stopover, is one of the lounge chairs which allow you to recline and put your feet up, hopefully grabbing an extra few hours' sleep while you wait. These are in high demand, and rarely free, so those unlucky enough to miss out have to be creative in their sleeping arrangements - particularly given the liberal rows of less-comfortable seats have inhospitably been constructed with high arms between each seat, to prevent anyone lying across them and sleeping that way. Have to admit on more fatigued stopovers I've tried to do it though, and I can see others giving it a go from where I sit, in the corner between two walls with good wifi access which I've claimed as my territory for as long as I'm here.
From the casual legs-crossed, head-leaning-on-hand approach, to those who have picked up luggage trolleys, perched their gear on it and so been able to fashion a vaguely horizontal surface for their lower half, while resting their upper half upon more luggage or a travelling companion, and the rather revolting bloke who's hocking up something disgusting every few minutes and delicately expelling it into a Coca-Cola can, it's the kind of place where the usual social boundaries go out the window. Of course, by the time anyone reaches Dubai, said social boundaries have usually been fairly thoroughly challenged by the close confines of the plane on the way here, particularly as people become increasingly desperate for sleep. I myself ended up playing an awkward game of heads-and-footsie with the bloke I was sharing a row of 4 seats with. We had a silent tussle over who got the intervening two seats for a while (he did), but apparently this arrangement didn't let him rest in sufficient comfort for his liking - as I realised while dozing off and finding his feet getting tangled around my own after he relocated his whole self to the floor. WTF. However this meant that I then got the seats, and being much shorter than he was, curled up in what felt like luxurious comfort for a long haul flight and enjoyed a good snooze.
After 12 hours of this routine, during which neither of us said a word to the other, it felt rather strange to leave the plane and this stranger with whom I had been sharing such an intimate space during the vulnerability of sleep without a word.