This is a trip report from a trip to Dubai with Lufthansa. We bought these tickets when we came across a great Lufthansa offer a few months back and the price was just to good to turn down. We got the tickets for 2800 kroner (about 420 USD) per person for a round trip from Stavanger in Norway and that is almost half the price of what you normally see. We did go to Dubai in 2002 and you can read that trip report here. I’m also planning on making a new proper trip report…this trip report will focus on the flight to and from Dubai.
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I went to South Africa in 2008 and below is a short summary that I wrote while I was in Johannesburg. As Nikki is born and raised in Joburg, we have been there many times and here is one trip report that we made after a stay at the end of 2004. During the stay in 2008 we also had time to stop by Cape Town and you can find the trip report here. I think quite a lot of people will go to Johannesburg in connection with the soccer world cup in 2010 and I hope that people will see that it is a city worth a stop
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I stayed at Hotel Pulitzer in Amsterdam from March 16th to March 18th on a work trip to the city. I went for this hotel as they could offer a good deal on 2 night stay and as it was a Starwood hotel and I’m in the Starwood Preferred Guest program. I had to pay 207€ per night for the room. I have been to Amsterdam before but I had almost forgotten how charming this city can be. Nikki and I went there in 1999 and it was one of our first vacations together after she came to Norway. Here is a trip report from back then http://gardkarlsen.com/amsterdam.htm .
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Lastminutetravel.com is one of those websites that offers you a hotel at a certain price, a certain class and a certain area without really giving you the name of the hotel. Here is a way to find out what hotel that is on offer. First clink on the link of the hotel that is offered and in the URL you will see hotelId=9999 (where the 9999 will be unique for each hotel). Go to this link:

http://www.touricoholidays.com/en/PageHotelDetail.aspx?hotelId=9999&provider=localTgsProvider

and replace 9999 with the hotel ID and the name of the hotel will pop up

I have stayed at Traders hotel in Dubai a numer of times and I have been very happy with the hotel. So when I went to Dubai in April I decided to stay at Traders Hotel to see if the hotel could be compared to the hotel in KL. I booked the room online on the the Traders hotel website and it was 540 AED (about 150 USD) excluding breakfast. I only stayed there 1 night in connection with a meeting in Dubai.
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This is a trip report from when I went from Stavanger in Norway to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. I used SAS and I went via Copenhagen and Bangkok on my way to KL. I used my Eurobonus frequent flyer points to upgrade to business class and that it always a treat Normally I travel with a colleague but this time I traveled alone.
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One question that comes up from travelers is: what kind of plugs and sockets are in use at the destination that I’m going to? Will I have to buy a converter? Luckily most gadgets like cell phone chargers, laptop power supply etc can handle both 110 V and 220 V but sometime you do need a converter in order to get the plug into the socket. Well, here is a page that shows you which plugs and sockets that are in use in the various countries. Check it out on http://www.interpower.com/icl/guide.htm .

Do you wonder what the weather will be like in Tokyo in April? Or how hot it will be in NYC in July? Well, it is of course impossible to predict the weather several weeks and months ahead but we can look at statistics to get an idea of what the weather should be like. I normally use the site Weatherbase for this and here I can check out average temperature, average precipitation etc. But you should also check the weather forecast right before you leave for your destination to check what the weather is like at the moment

In February 2009 I went to Kuala Lumpur for work and I used SAS to get there. On the way to Kuala Lumpur (or KL as it is also known)  I was able to upgrade to business by using my SAS Eurobonus points but on the way home the flight was completely full and I had to stick to economy class. Even if I am a SAS Eurobonus gold card member this was actually my very first trip with SAS in economy class on a long haul trip. Here are some of my thoughts as I was going home…
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I have to admit that I haven’t used KLM that much in the last few years as I have gone over to StarAlliance and after I had a horrible flight with them from KL to Amsterdam (see KL trip report)- but I used them quite a lot to start with as they were a Braathens partner (when that airline existed), as the connection from Stavanger to Amsterdam was very good and as they were quite cheap. So over the years I have been to Schiphol about 40 times and it is a lovely airport. Anyway, KLM has made some destination guides that might be worth looking into. I’m not sure that it gives you the ultimate guide to each place but at least it gives you a good overview of the places to start with as it covers stuff ranging from eating out, weather, how to get around etc. You can check out the KLM destination guides here.