After coming down from the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa slightly dizzy and nauseous we raced to my appointment to get my hair done which we had booked earlier.

So while laying there getting my hair washed and massaged very relaxed I opened my eyes reluctantly to be moved to my chair to have it straightened and who should walk in but a friend of ours from Perth, Katie!

Apparently she had literally bumped into Merv on his way to Starbucks and came to say hi! We chatted for a while and 30 minutes later I walked out with shiny beautiful straight hair and met Merv and Katie had a coffee while waiting to meet Katie’s new husband Sergio.

We caught up for a while and chatted about Dubai and Perth and then we both went our separate ways, us with some tips about Dubai and headed out into the 40 degree heat and walked to the train station to head to the Mall of the Emirates.

Another thing Dubai has done really well apart from the amazing buildings is the Shopping Malls, and the Mall of the Emirates is no exception. With over hundreds of shops inside and one novelty store in the centre of the isle where Merv bought some Bucky Balls that are small magnets that you can manipulate into many different shapes we made our way to Ski Dubai the Indoor Ski Complex to have another dream come true to see and hug my most favorite animal in the world, the penguin!

So after just managing to catch the last session we were told to collect our snow gear which consisted of snow pants, jacket, boots and gloves and to meet at 8:00pm all suited up ready to go.

Very giddy and excited we made our way to the meeting point and was introduced to our penguin trainer, Sarah. Sarah gave us the run down on the do’s and dont’s with the penguins and then we followed her into the freezing cold and waited patiently for our Penguins to arrive.

King Penguins are the second largest penguins in the world, next to the Emperor Penguin and we had the pleasure of meeting two female Kings that waddled in as penguins do and boy could I not get the smile off my face.

Sarah, the trainer told us all about them and their species and then it was time for human interaction and before she could even finish to say “who wants to go first” my hand was up and it was all I could do to stop jumping up and down and disobeying all the rules begging for her to choose me first. Those that know me well, know that this is very out of character for me as I usually just sit their quietly waiting for my turn but they were just so darn cute, I couldn’t wait any further.

She must have seen my excitedness and I was chosen to go first so I very calmly (inside I was squeeing and wooing) sat down between both of them and proceeded to follow all instructions and pat them and hug them and smell them all while smiling at both the man with the camera and also Merv with his.

I didn’t want my turn to stop but everyone had to have a go so I reluctantly got off the floor and let everyone have their go with MY penguins with Merv finishing it up,but not before they allowed me back down to have more touching and hugging while smiling at the man with the camera with Merv and our time was up.

I sadly said goodbye to the penguins and we all left, took our borrowed warm clothes and boots back but got to keep the gloves as a souvenir and went to the photo stand to choose our photos and ended up getting all of them on a disk with some enlarged and in a fancy folder and even one in a snow globe.

We had to wait for them to be printed to so we went for a walk and checked out the indoor games area that had a small amusement park rides and a lot of arcade games, then went for a salad at TGIF’s and then picked up our photos and made our way back to the train station, our hotel and finally our room and into bed after another amazing day in Dubai and slept like babies.