Move is failure, but we not giving up
3 years ago
General
Hello, I have to tell you this and I did not have the strength to correctly form sentences and separate them into different lines
A few days ago we arrived in the UAE with a small amount of USD (about $80) and with a large amount of rubles, which should have been enough for us for the next month. But no one warned us that in ANY exchange office in the city it is impossible to exchange rubles for the local currency dirhams. Rubles cannot be exchanged for anything at all and nowhere can you pay with Russian cards. We were left without money in another country (except for the $80 we were able to exchange for dirhams) and had to pay for the apartment on the same day, but we explained our problem to the owner of the apartment and he allowed us to rest one night there and find the terminals in the afternoon downtown where we can exchange our money. It was the 23rd and it was the last day I slept on the bed before this day. In the afternoon, he told us that he was blocked on Airbnb because he wrote to us not on their website but on Instagram, and he was given conditions - he must evict us and open the booking dates on the site. At the same moment, an apartment was booked with him and he told us to urgently move out within 30 minutes. We collected our things and walked to the Dubai Mall, it's in the city center. We came there and all day from morning to evening we went to hotels, shopping centers, banks, etc. and looked for a place where we can exchange money or at least buy food and water for them. In different places we were told that we needed to go to another floor or to another department and the money would be exchanged there, but when we arrived at the place there we were told to go to another and so on. From that moment to that, we only drank water from the tap and toilets of shopping centers, once we had to drink from a bidet. Our money was not accepted anywhere and in the end they said that they would not be accepted anywhere in the city. We had about 70 dirhams left, for 50 dirhams we were taken by taxi to the airport and for the remaining money we bought 2 cupcakes and ate them. We bought tickets already at the airport, in terminal 3(!) and after that we calmly sat down and waited for 10 am, at that time it was 19pm the previous day, that is, we needed to spend the night at the airport about 16 hours before our plane back to Russia. You might think that everything is fine, we just need to sleep, but I decided to see which terminal our plane was flying from. It was terminal 2 when we were in terminal 3. I looked at the map and realized that Terminal 2 is located on the other side of the airport. We asked at the information desk how to get to the terminal we needed and they told us that it was impossible to do it on foot, only a taxi. We had 0 money and we walked around the entire airport, on the way we asked oncoming people if we could shorten the path, to which we were told that we could only get to the terminal by taxi, after that a taxi stopped near us and the driver said that will be able to take us for free and won’t take us for rubles either, and left almost knocking me down. My bf's phone was already dead, my phone had 20% and I tried not to turn it on, just to look at the map. We walked for a very long time, I felt a terrible pain in my leg, and the bf pulled his back hard and it hurt him to walk. We had no water and food, we did not sleep and ate only a cupcake. We walked for almost 2 hours and in the end walked 8 kilometers to the end, it was hard and we were very tired, but still we reached our terminal 2. It was very hot and I carried a winter jacket with me (she stayed with Russia because at that moment there was snow) and in UAE was very warm, I felt ugly and I don't think I smelled good :| . When we arrived, it became easier for us and we could just sit quietly at the airport. My boyfriend was very tired and slept on me and I watched things and learned to do nothing for 4 hours in a row and just look around, I thought about different things and most importantly that I lost so much time and money just because everyone around was talking us that we can transfer our money to dirhams in the city, which turned out to be untrue and nowhere on the Internet is it written that rubles are just pieces of paper, candy wrappers or something. For all the time we spent, I could draw a lot of drawings, but I couldn’t because there was no place for a laptop anywhere and also local sockets didn’t fit our wires, so I couldn’t touch my phone because it had about 5% left. We had to take the plane, sat on it and listened as the people around happily told how they had a good rest and how wonderful everything was with them, and we could only wait silently when we returned to Russia. The flight took 6 hours and it was terrible, I can't stand airplanes and high lifts very well because of problems in my ears, they start to hurt very badly and I feel like I'm a diver who dived into the depths without preparation. Now we are at home in Russia, but we are not going to stay here, we will definitely find a way to convert our currency into dollars (now Russian banks do not issue foreign currency, you will have to buy it from different people through friends). But unfortunately we spent almost all the money we had and now I have to work even harder than before. I will start drawing tomorrow and I will definitely fly away from this country
Thank you for reading this, maybe later I will update the journal and add photos that I did
A few days ago we arrived in the UAE with a small amount of USD (about $80) and with a large amount of rubles, which should have been enough for us for the next month. But no one warned us that in ANY exchange office in the city it is impossible to exchange rubles for the local currency dirhams. Rubles cannot be exchanged for anything at all and nowhere can you pay with Russian cards. We were left without money in another country (except for the $80 we were able to exchange for dirhams) and had to pay for the apartment on the same day, but we explained our problem to the owner of the apartment and he allowed us to rest one night there and find the terminals in the afternoon downtown where we can exchange our money. It was the 23rd and it was the last day I slept on the bed before this day. In the afternoon, he told us that he was blocked on Airbnb because he wrote to us not on their website but on Instagram, and he was given conditions - he must evict us and open the booking dates on the site. At the same moment, an apartment was booked with him and he told us to urgently move out within 30 minutes. We collected our things and walked to the Dubai Mall, it's in the city center. We came there and all day from morning to evening we went to hotels, shopping centers, banks, etc. and looked for a place where we can exchange money or at least buy food and water for them. In different places we were told that we needed to go to another floor or to another department and the money would be exchanged there, but when we arrived at the place there we were told to go to another and so on. From that moment to that, we only drank water from the tap and toilets of shopping centers, once we had to drink from a bidet. Our money was not accepted anywhere and in the end they said that they would not be accepted anywhere in the city. We had about 70 dirhams left, for 50 dirhams we were taken by taxi to the airport and for the remaining money we bought 2 cupcakes and ate them. We bought tickets already at the airport, in terminal 3(!) and after that we calmly sat down and waited for 10 am, at that time it was 19pm the previous day, that is, we needed to spend the night at the airport about 16 hours before our plane back to Russia. You might think that everything is fine, we just need to sleep, but I decided to see which terminal our plane was flying from. It was terminal 2 when we were in terminal 3. I looked at the map and realized that Terminal 2 is located on the other side of the airport. We asked at the information desk how to get to the terminal we needed and they told us that it was impossible to do it on foot, only a taxi. We had 0 money and we walked around the entire airport, on the way we asked oncoming people if we could shorten the path, to which we were told that we could only get to the terminal by taxi, after that a taxi stopped near us and the driver said that will be able to take us for free and won’t take us for rubles either, and left almost knocking me down. My bf's phone was already dead, my phone had 20% and I tried not to turn it on, just to look at the map. We walked for a very long time, I felt a terrible pain in my leg, and the bf pulled his back hard and it hurt him to walk. We had no water and food, we did not sleep and ate only a cupcake. We walked for almost 2 hours and in the end walked 8 kilometers to the end, it was hard and we were very tired, but still we reached our terminal 2. It was very hot and I carried a winter jacket with me (she stayed with Russia because at that moment there was snow) and in UAE was very warm, I felt ugly and I don't think I smelled good :| . When we arrived, it became easier for us and we could just sit quietly at the airport. My boyfriend was very tired and slept on me and I watched things and learned to do nothing for 4 hours in a row and just look around, I thought about different things and most importantly that I lost so much time and money just because everyone around was talking us that we can transfer our money to dirhams in the city, which turned out to be untrue and nowhere on the Internet is it written that rubles are just pieces of paper, candy wrappers or something. For all the time we spent, I could draw a lot of drawings, but I couldn’t because there was no place for a laptop anywhere and also local sockets didn’t fit our wires, so I couldn’t touch my phone because it had about 5% left. We had to take the plane, sat on it and listened as the people around happily told how they had a good rest and how wonderful everything was with them, and we could only wait silently when we returned to Russia. The flight took 6 hours and it was terrible, I can't stand airplanes and high lifts very well because of problems in my ears, they start to hurt very badly and I feel like I'm a diver who dived into the depths without preparation. Now we are at home in Russia, but we are not going to stay here, we will definitely find a way to convert our currency into dollars (now Russian banks do not issue foreign currency, you will have to buy it from different people through friends). But unfortunately we spent almost all the money we had and now I have to work even harder than before. I will start drawing tomorrow and I will definitely fly away from this country
Thank you for reading this, maybe later I will update the journal and add photos that I did
DBZFan12
~dbzfan12
I hope things get better for you soon.
Samonta_Usagi
~samontausagi
gosh, I'm so sorry you had to go through all of this, its sounds absolutely awful. I'm hoping you're able to get back on your feet soon. Hopefully your second attempt will be more successful once you have non-ruble currency
shaodevitt
~shaodevitt
Maybe you should try Georgia? It’s pretty cheap to live there and the people are really nice as well
ununpentium
~ununpentium
im sorry things coudnt work out for you this time rio, i hope you get another chance soon
ShiverTheArticuno
~shiverthearticuno
Oh god... I'm so sorry to hear. Glad you're trying to still get out ASAP though, but please, stay careful... Just been nervous. Georgia/Hungary aren't possibilities I assume? Those seem close-ish to RU but I also don't know if you have anyone to stay with there or not
Christy
~christykitsune
How awful.. what a horrible time. I hope you are back safe.
so UAE a bust or do you intend to try again?
Gyro
~thirdspurs
Damn that's fucking terrible...how the fuck are you supposed to get out if they wont allow you to convert to another currency.
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