There was a prayer call a little after 04:00 right across the street from the hotel, and it was incredibly loud.  We somehow managed to get back to sleep, but only for a little bit.  After getting up, Justin went downstairs, and the lobby was even hotter, and the internet was even spottier, than the night before.  When he came back up we re-arranged and packed for air travel, putting the stuff we didn’t think we’d need at the bottom of the checked duffle bag, and only clean stuff in our backpacks.  We were done with that by 07:00, so we went down to breakfast.  The breakfast itself was pretty sad, but the AC was working, so we sat at a table right next to it and at least enjoyed being cool for the first time in Socotra.  We spent 90 minutes or so doing 10 minutes of internet browsing, but at least it killed the time.  After that we went back upstairs and read, then headed down to the lobby a little before 10:00.

Adham was already there, and we gave him his envelope with his tip.  Abdullah showed up right after 10:00, and we gave him his envelope as well.  We were terrified we were going to forget to do this, and ecstatic we remembered.  Abdullah proudly showed off a brand new right rear tire - we hoped it would be another 6 years until he had any more issues.  In the vehicle, we found out there wasn’t going to be a new group for Abdullah today after all.  We asked if he was happy or sad - he was very happy.  It was a little weird getting back in the Land Cruiser and driving through town after our time at the hotel with TV, internet, a real (sort of) shower, a real bed, etc.

We had a picturesque drive west out of town to the airport, maybe 15-20 minutes.  We are not the only people to have thought that.  Adham told us that one group decided to go for a swim in the ocean before continuing directly to the airport.  We decided to just stay clean and dry.  We got to the airport around 10:30.  We had to have very abbreviated goodbyes, as the airport was very busy since both Yemeni Airways and Air Arabia were having flights today.  We surmised maybe it's easier to have the airport employees show up only once a week?  Inside the airport we saw Isa’s driver, working at check-in.  There were 3 Americans in front of us at check-in, or at least 3 people with US passports - who knows where they might be residing now.  One item of note at the airport was a women’s security area, where Crystal was frisked and had her bag checked.  Another item of note was that we received handwritten bag tags and handwritten boarding passes.

At immigration, we made sure to get our stamps.  To go into the waiting area, someone was checking everything one at a time, and the guy checking tickets asked if Justin didn’t want to leave Crystal, since he waited to go in.  After Turkmenistan, the answer to that is always yes.  In the waiting area, we parked ourselves in front of an AC unit near a window.  We had 3 hours to wait, but we were checked in and we were cool.  The waiting area was fairly full until the Yemeni Airways flight (not open to tourists) boarded, at which point the waiting room wasn’t very full at all.  Talking about the trip, Crystal said that knowing what she knows now, she would’ve brought a handkerchief or bandana to keep cool, wipe off dust, etc.  After 2 hours in front of the AC unit, we actually started to get chilly - we never would have thought that was possible on Socotra.

We saw a luggage cart go by, and we saw our burgundy bag, so we figured we’d be seeing it again in a few hours.  We can’t really remember a time when our trip seemed “over” or “complete” after just the first part - maybe Kilimanjaro, but even that we had 2-3 days walking down the mountain to decompress and get ready for the Serengeti and Namibia.  The longer we waited, the more we started to get claustrophobic with all the people in the waiting area.  The incoming plane from Abu Dhabi landed shortly after 13:00.  To board the plane, we had to go through security again, literally just before walking out the door to the plane.  Crystal wasn’t a fan of unpacking and re-packing in such a tight spot with so little time to do it.  The security didn’t seem particularly robust, however.

On the plane, someone was in Justin’s seat, and the flight attendant’s solution was to just have him move across the aisle - he wondered if he was moving into someone else’s seat, and whether this was going to turn into a game of musical chairs.  We weren’t sure why we were separated in the first place, but it was a short flight and we weren’t inclined to make a big deal out of it.  Crystal was seated a couple rows ahead, next to two of the Russians watching the news last night in the hotel.  A minute or two later, another guy came up to sit in what should’ve been a seat next to Justin, and he actually got the group to move, so Justin just went back to his original seat.  

The drama continued about 2 minutes after that, as there was a big blow up with the South Asian family in front of Justin, being angry at just being asked to show their boarding passes.  The patriarch of the family was insulted at being asked, mentioned that the woman two seats to his right needed to sit by him because she was “his servant”, and it must have taken every ounce of patience in the flight attendant to not cuss the guy out.  3 of the 6 members of the party were in the wrong seat.  If even 50% of people sat in the correct seat on this flight, that would be a shock.  It was as if no one had been on a plane before, but the vast majority of people had by definition just been on this very plane the Monday before.  It would’ve been faster to just have a flight attendant personally escort people to their seat from the tarmac.  

The flight was thankfully short, as Crystal was surrounded by obnoxious Frenchies who kept moving seats and not wearing their masks correctly (or at all), and Justin was surrounded by crying and coughing babies (also not wearing masks).  Crystal slept a good chunk of the flight, and Justin watched Dunkirk - believe it or not, the flight had wi-fi based personal entertainment options.  After landing in Abu Dhabi, we didn’t have a gate, instead we had a bus to take us to a special entrance area.  At immigration, we used the automated passport reader and it thankfully worked this time.  That being said, we had no stamp because of that, but hopefully the computers would know what’s up in Dubai in a few hours time.

When we picked up our bag it was filthy, and its tag was missing.  That bag has been through a lot.  We’re almost positive it’s been to all seven continents, and probably close to 40 countries.  Amongst places it has been are Bolivia (where it got inadvertently soaked in gasoline), Turkmenistan, Iran, Madagascar, and now Yemen.  We took it when we moved to Tenerife.  It’s still going strong, and missing a tag wasn’t a huge deal, as Crystal had two on her backpack and we just moved one of them to the duffle bag.  Outside, we met our driver, who was both on time and knew where we were going.

It was a 90 minute drive to Dubai, and the sun was setting during the drive.  We were staying at a different hotel, right by the airport, the Jumeirah Creekside hotel.  To our surprise, our room was enormous, which was kind of a bummer since we spent all of about 5 minutes there.  We immediately went downstairs and grabbed dinner on the ground floor, outside, watching cricket and breathing fumes from all the cars going by on the nearby highway.  It was way cooler outside than we remembered from a week prior, but perhaps Socotra had just skewed our temperature gauges.  The food was fine, and if nothing else it was different from spicy chicken and rice.

After dinner we went up to a Cuban bar on the roof, with time for 1 drink.  Justin got a tiki drink and Crystal got a glass of a red blend.  From the rooftop we had a view of Dubai, albeit from afar.  We could see some of the light shows on the Burj Khalifa, but only barely.  It was almost chilly on the roof, so we figured it must have been cooler than when we had been in Dubai the week before.  We discussed where the hottest places we’ve been during our lives, and the finalists were Socotra, Danum Valley, Puerto Maldonado, and Central India.  Danum Valley and Puerto Maldonado were each incredibly humid, like being in a steam bath, and Socotra and Central India were (slightly) less humid but with higher temperatures.  In Central India we never did anything requiring much physical exertion, so it might have been the hottest and we just didn’t realize it since we weren’t as active.  Anyway, the moral of the story is to visit Socotra in March instead of early May.

Our driver to the airport called our hotel room 15 minutes early, at 10:45, so it’s good we were back in our room by then.  At the airport, at the check-in desk, they wanted to see our health certificate for Seychelles.  We’d completely forgotten about this, as we tried to fill it out before we left, but Seychelles wouldn’t allow it to be filled out that early, and then we disappeared off the grid for a long time.  So now we were trying to do it via a smartphone at the airport.  Luckily Justin had local access to all our passport photos, ID photos, pictures of pass sanitaires, itineraries, and the litany of other things the form wanted from us.  

After a short while, we got that submitted, got the necessary QR code, and got back in line such that we could get our boarding passes.  A Chinese woman behind us was hell bent on crashing her cart into our legs.  Justin kept glaring at her, and she even apologized multiple times, but kept creeping up behind us over and over again anyway.  After surviving everything in Socotra for a week, we didn’t want to be out of commission for the Seychelles because an idiot tourist took out our achilles with a luggage cart.   Even once we got to the service desk a second time, she came up behind us and almost hit us one last time.  Once we finally had our boarding passes in our hands it was just past midnight.   Immigration was via automatic face recognition, so we crossed our fingers, walked up to the spot, and it worked just fine this time.  Inside the terminal, it was a bit like a Las Vegas casino, as we lost all sense of time and place; it easily could’ve been 12:30 instead of 00:30.  

We had some time, so we stopped in at Sky Bar, not too far from our gate.  We each got Mango and Passion Fruit margaritas.  The service was a bit slow, but they weren’t exactly standing around either.  But we ordered our second round such that we’d have plenty of time to get to the gate before boarding started.  This was a good plan, but there was poor execution.  We had a hard time getting their attention to get the bill.  Then the bill was wrong.  There was a big sign saying that “all” cocktails were 15% off for a second round, and they hadn’t given us the 15% discount.  They futzed around for a bit at the register, then came back and said there was no discount because we had the monthly special cocktail.  Justin said fine, whatever, that we now just needed to pay to go get on our flight.  But the guy kept wanting to argue, even when we weren’t arguing any more, and Justin (in an increasingly loud tone) kept telling him we just needed to go.  Even as Justin was paying the amount, the guy was still making a case to Crystal.

We rushed over to our gate, as boarding was just about to start, only to be shocked when we arrived, as the screen said “Final Call.”  The only explanation for this was that they started boarding early when the plane was full, but that didn’t explain why “final call” would be on the board 5 minutes before the boarding time on our boarding passes.  Anyway, the whole thing was odd, and both of us (and particularly Justin, still irked by the woman with the luggage cart and the bartender who wouldn’t let the argument go) were irritable.  The fact it was hours past our “regular” bedtime probably contributed a lot, too.  We went to sleep before the boarding doors even closed.  Crystal was woken up for a meal, however, and thankfully she prevented them from waking Justin too.  Who needs a meal at 03:00, especially on a flight where there is no time change??!!