Day 36 - Friday 17th June

The first activity for the day was to have a swim at the beach near the hotel. We wanted to do this before breakfast because the sand is too hot later in the day. We also wanted to be able to say that we'd swum in the Arabian Sea. The water temperature was very warm - rather like a bath but perhaps not as hot as we'd experienced years ago in Fiji.

After breakfast, we decided to relax around the pool. There wasn't any rush because yesterday we'd requested a late checkout and so we could use our room until 2pm rather than the standard checkout time of 12 noon. Our flight back to Sydney didn't leave until about 6:30pm.

We'd packed up and checked out by 1:30pm so we could go around to Grosvenor House which is a nearby hotel owned by the same company. It was one of the hotels we had considered staying at when planning our trip. The hotel porters stored our luggage and they organised the shuttle bus to take us to Grosvenor House.

Grosvenor House has a different atmosphere to Le Royal Meridien Hotel. It is a very elegant hotel that might be better suited to business travellers or perhaps tourists who don't plan to spend as much time at the hotel. Our hotel, on the other hand, is ideal for relaxing around the pool.

In the Grosvenor House hotel, we had lunch at a cafe called Leaves Cafe. The service was absolutely brilliant. I lost count of the number of people (including managers) who came by to ask if we were happy with our meal. When they asked us to fill out a survey, we gave them a glowing reference.

I wanted to give a larger tip than normal but paying the bill ended being harder that I expected. We concluded that there might be a problem with my credit card and so we paid by cash.

We caught the shuttle bus back to the Le Royal Meridien Hotel just in time for the car that the hotel had organised to take us to the airport. It was an easy trip that only took about 30 minutes.

Check-in and security were also easy and we were soon in the business lounge. Unfortunately we wasted most of the time there trying to get the WiFi to work consistently.

Soon after we took off from Dubai on our way to Kuala Lumpur, we struck turbulence. It was so bad that the pilot told the cabin crew to strap themselves in too. This delayed the normal cabin service.

Once again the Malaysia Airlines in-flight entertainment was old fashioned. Although the magazine showed a wide range of options, only a few were available on this flight and there was no choice for the starting time. All the movies started at the same time and so, by the time you got around to looking, they were well under way. Furthermore, the controls didn't seem to match up with the display in front of you. After checking with a crew member, I just gave up.

The main reason we'd booked this flight was to be in business class so we could sleep overnight on the leg to Kuala Lumpur. However, the seats only reclined without going flat enough to sleep properly. I eventually did manage to get a few hours sleep.

When I woke up, I naturally wanted to go to the loo but I noticed that the fasten seat belts sign was on and so I decided to wait thinking that it be turned off soon. There didn't seem to be any turbulence and the crew were acting as if there wasn't a problem. I waited and waited.

By the time Suzy woke up almost an hour later, I was busting to go. When she just got up and went, I did the same. Someone starting knocking on the door and messages started flashing telling me to return to my seat. Having got that far, I just ignored it all. It was almost another hour before they turned off the fasten seat belts sign. There didn't seem to me to be any good reason that it was on for so long.

As you would expect in business class, the crew were excellent and they tried to make the most of the trip in an old out-dated plane. I'd had good experience previously with Malaysia Airlines about 20 years ago and so I was disappointed.

I came to the obvious conclusion that you get what you pay for. If you buy cheap business class tickets on special, you get a cheap flight. If I could afford something better, I doubt if I would bother with Malaysia Airlines again any time soon.