Travel notes from Abu Dhabi, Pakistan, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong

In June I was accepted into a masters in Cambridge to study manufacturing, which I will start this October. I decided to quit my job and spend the remainder of the summer mostly travelling. I kept a note on my phone where I recorded my observations, and as I sit here waiting for my flight home to Dublin I have decided to put them together for your enjoyment. Some of the travel was with friends, some was alone. I didn't make observations in all cities. Before I get into them, I'll leave you with my meta-observations that are still top of mind for me.

1. English is so important. If you're French, German, or Chinese you might be able to get a good paying job without needing English, but for the rest of the world it's a requirement. If you're Greek or Spanish or Pakistani and you don't speak English, you're limited to your local job market, which is a big reason why youth unemployment is so high in these places. We're so lucky in Ireland that English is our native language and we can get jobs in Canada, Britain, America, Dubai, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland, or pretty much anywhere.

2. The world is very homogenous on a surface level, especially on the tourist trail. You can book your hotel on booking.com, get an Uber from the airport, pay with your card or withdraw cash from an ATM, make your way around with google maps, text people on WhatsApp, eat in a KFC in a shopping centre, relax in a public park, etc etc. Towards the end of my travels things didn't really feel that unique or exotic. Shenzhen was the only place that I found 'difficult' because of the great firewall and almost complete lack of English. I used to feel a desire to see the world, I no longer have that anymore, maybe that will change later but I don't think so.

I hope you find these observations entertaining.

Harry O'Brien

Dubai

September 2025

Our 'hotel' was the bottom floor of a 20 storey residential building called 'Hotel Flamingo'. It has about 10 rooms, our room was barely big enough to fit 3 single beds into and cost 30e a night. The 24 hour reception consisted of the same woman sleeping at the reception desk every night, who I presume you can wake if you need anything.

Most bars and clubs in Baku let you smoke inside.

The best clubs only let you in if you are with a woman.

Everywhere takes card, they actually prefer it, as opposed to Turkey or Greece where they asked for cash.

People leave their phones and handbags on the bar when they're on the dance floor. Perks of a low crime high trust society.

I've heard mixed things about UAE. I've heard that it's safe, low tax, has lots to do, and not too expensive, but also that it is vapid, soulless, and has a dark underbelly of mistreating migrants. I did not encounter this bad side, but it is definitely not a walkable city at all, they don't even try. They don't really expect you to spend any time outside, the city is built for cars. I do know a lot of people who live that kind of life, who don't go for walks or runs, who have a lot going on and appreciate a city that is quiet and comfortable and safe, and for those people I think this city can be great. Just not for me. But I certainly missed this place when I went to Pakistan, which is on the other end of the spectrum.

You can tell there is lots of cheap migrant workers here. The shopping centres are staffed entirely by migrants and seem to be overstaffed. Every migrant speaks quite good English and I have been able to hold conversations with them. They all like it here, many of the men have families at home, some of the younger migrants plan on working here until they start their family.

The heat is bearable. I was there at the start of September, not the absolute peak temperatures but close, and in the evening it was fine. I was able to walk around and as long as I was hydrated and didn't mind sweating it was fine. I would've went for a run but it's just so hard to walk around here, footpaths end abruptly and there are lots of traffic lights. In Shenzhen, which isn't as hot but is much more humid so makes you sweat about as much, you could run from one side of the city to the other almost entirely in public parks and the road network there is pretty much just as good.

To fly from the UAE to Pakistan I had to fly out of the country's 3rd airport, Sharjah. This is where all the migrants workers fly out of and isn't half as nice as the other airports in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Check in was bizarre, there were lots of people checking in large taped up cardboard boxes, the check in clerk took a photo of my Pakistani visa and sent it to a guy on WhatsApp and told me to stand nearby and wait, I came back a few minutes later and he pointed to a guy standing nearby in a suit with a lanyard and told me to talk to him, when I spoke to this man he pulled up my visa on his WhatsApp and gave me the nod, I went back to the check in clerk who proceeded to check me in.

This airport was packed much more densely than the other airports, the roofs were lower, the materials were cheaper, there were fewer amenities, and it was mostly men. My flight had around 100 men and 5 women. The flight attendants were all women, no headscarf, dressed no more modestly than Ryanair stewardesses. I didn't notice any overt oppression of women in Pakistan but women seem to be less independent, I didn't see them out and about too much.

Pakistani men are pretty handsome. Great hairlines, a few enjoy long hair, great facial hair, and a few with gorgeous eyes and eyelashes. Not in a gay way.

I paid €2.30 for a 30 min taxi from the airport to my hotel. He only took cash but offered to let me send him money on Binance, a crypto website. Fortunately my hotel paid for it and I fixed up with him later.

My 'hotel' was a lovely air conditioned en suite room in a house where I assume a few people were living. I was given fresh towels, bottles of water, everything you would expect. After booking on booking.com they texted me on WhatsApp to ask when would I arrive. It's so convenient to have your receptionist on WhatsApp, in a few places I stayed I would text at 1am and ask to extend my stay a night or 2 and I never got woken up for checkout the next day. These places were also always cheaper than hotels which is why I love them.

I stayed with a freelancer I have worked with online for 5 years. I always knew he was a good guy but he was a great host to me. He picked me up in his tiny, tiny car after my first night, took me to all of the big attractions around Islamabad such as a public park, lake, and a viewpoint, which were all lovely and well kept, and he insisted on paying for my meals and entrance fees, but I managed to pay for a few things in return. Afterwards I stayed with him at his house. He lived with his parents, wife, and 2 kids in a building roughly 6x10 metres. It had a small courtyard in the front, a separate 6x3 metre building that was a living room, and that had 2 spare single beds which is where my host and I slept. There was a small 3rd building that was the bathroom/shower, and a little shed that had a cow and a calf and an electric machine that would cut plants down to feed it to the cows. All buildings are simple plastered concrete block with corrugated steel roofs.

My buddy was 31, never smoked or drank, never heard of hash, cannabis, kush, or marijuana. I didn't see any alcohol around Pakistan.

He has only been to 5 cities in Pakistan and never outside. His dad has 4 siblings, his mum 8. He has 2. He has no desire for more kids.

He lives in a village of around 300 people. No postman, but they will text you if you receive post and you can pick it up at the post office. My buddy's family is considered well educated in the village. He works as a software engineer in the city, pays roughly 10% taxes but gets almost nothing in return. No healthcare, no pension.

There was a massive thunderstorm that night, incredibly loud and knocked out the power. Multiple roads were flooded, trapping people in their villages. This is very common.

Military seem to get looked after. Their HQ is in the city centre, looks very nice and has a cricket pitch, and military get lots of benefits. Pakistan is a heavily militarized state, lots of posters praising the army.

The menus of restaurants are entirely in English in the big shopping centres, but the smaller local restaurant menus are entirely in Urdu. My private bus ticket to the Chinese border was written entirely in English. Roadsigns in Islamabad were in English and Urdu, but further out they're entirely in English.

Islamabad is not a great city. While it is dense there are very few footpaths or public parks or spaces, it's almost all buildings, similar to Istanbul. Islamabad is a newish planned city, maybe Lahore or Karachi are different.

It was not easy to find the bus that took me from Pakistan to the Chinese border, I had to go to multiple bus stations to find it. When I finally did it was pretty easy, just bought my ticket at the counter. It was €16.50 for a 17 hour journey, not too bad.

The toilet in the ticket office has no toilet paper or soap, just a bucket and a sink. And every toilet outside a few hotels is squat. These are common in China and Hong Kong also and I grew to prefer these. I already use a little step on my toilet at home to get into more of a squat position on my toilet.

Right after leaving the bus pulled into another stop to refuel and pick up some more people. Then the attendant went around asking everybody if they were military, which qualifies them for a small refund.

I didn't see any foreign flags in Islamabad, but deeper into Pakistan I saw palestinian and Iranian flags, and photos of the Iranian Ayatollah.

Passed a few Aramco service stations. Apparently Saudi is the most popular place for people to go for work.

Pakistan is very green, lots of trees and bushes, very pretty place.

On the bus I met a young medicine student from Lahore, studying in Xinjiang, called Usman. His tuition fees are €3580 p/a, accommodation is €600 p/a, 6 year degree. He shares his room with 1 other person, free electricity, heating, and air conditioning. He gets holidays every 6 months, term is starting again so he is heading back. After graduating he can work in an international hospital in Chengdu, China for €30k p/a and get free accommodation. He needs to pass the HSK4 mandarin exam, which requires a decent level of Chinese, enough to work in Chinese. He was studying on the bus, had printed out some notes. But college is taught through English. His college is almost entirely Pakistanis.

When we drove past McDonalds he told me Pakistanis don't like McDonalds because it's an israeli company. It's owned by Blackrock. Some young people in Pakistan have attacked McDonalds and KFCs for this, but Usman tells me they're uneducated. He told me a survey came out that said 80% of the world supports Palestine and France will recognize the Palestinian state soon.

Usman is 25 but his ID says he is 23, this is common in his part of Pakistan. Usman tells me they do it because some jobs have age limits.

There are people everywhere. The land is a bit jagged so lots of the plots of land are small.

There are checkpoints at the borders of every province in Pakistan, you need to give the cops your ID card so they can scan it, or in my case a printed copy of your visa so they can enter the details manually. I didn't have printed copies which meant our bus had to stay parked for a while as the cop held my phone and entered the details manually. Usually everybody gives the bus attendant their ID card or visa copy so he can just hop out, give them to the checkpoint cop, and get back on. The cop also notes the reg of the bus, our origin, and our destination. Some checkpoints are not at borders, they either wave you through or maybe stop you, get on, and look at everybody on the bus.

Once we came to the next town we stopped, some people got food and I had to go with the bus attendant who took me to a small photocopy shop, where I text them a copy of my visa and they printed 7 copies. The guy in the shop wouldn't accept money and handed me back the cash I offered, insisting I was a guest. Stuff like this happened more than once

On my esim I had slow but steady data, not enough to watch a video without lots of buffering but enough for email or reading the news. This went after 7 hours.

We had a pitstop every 2-3 hours or so. I had a big plate of rice, chicken, naan bread, and chickpea veg curry for €2.20.

We are driving a very bumpy dirt road on the side of a mountain. I only learn a few days later that this is because the heavy thunderstorms from last night triggered landslides and heavy flooding, and that 800 people died. Many are still stuck under the rocks and apparently there is a smell of dead bodies along some parts of the road.

[Enter video of Pakistan road bumpy cliff]

On my bus there are about 12 men, 1 woman. Men cannot sit next to women unless they know them, I'm told if the only empty seat on the bus was next to a single woman the bus would be considered full.

My resting heart rate is usually 60-80bpm, right now it is 100 because the trip is interesting and partly because we're driving on a bumpy cliff edge less than 2 metres from a massive drop.

As we get deeper into Pakistan after nightfall the checkpoints are more serious, the guys have proper military uniform, balaclavas, bulletproof vests, and are holding their AK-47s, whereas at previous checkpoints cops were sitting, looked casual, and their AK was just hanging by their side.

At 2.45am, 13 hours after we set off, we hear a loud bang, the engine revs up and the bus slows to a halt. Turns out the belt snapped. We stand around for a bit and luckily another bus going to a destination very close to ours agrees to take us all onboard while the bus driver and attendant stays behind. The 2nd bus came pretty quickly so we were only delayed 15 minutes.

At our new destination I managed to get onto a taxi with 3 others, which drives us to our final stop. The views are absolutely stunning, and the roads are really good. There was 4 minutes of tunnels all built by the Chinese which was a pleasant surprise. However, rockfalls are very common and it is a constant battle to clear the debris.

We make it to our final destination at 9.30am and there is a protest blocking the road and entrance to the Pakistani immigration office, so we cannot get our exit stamp and enter China. The protests are about taxes, this province does not want to pay income and sales taxes and has set up a big tent on the road with a poster saying 'No taxation without representation', but these guys get a vote they just don't want taxes. All of the locals I speak to are against the protests, it disrupts business and local life.

At the border town the only way to get 4G is to get a local sim, you need a Pakistani ID card and need to give a thumbprint to get one. It gives you crappy 4G unless you use a VPN, in which case it gives you super fast 4G.

That night I stay in the border town and hope the strikers will let us through in the morning. They have a gathering in the tent, guys take turns giving rousing speeches over a megaphone to a crowd of roughly 60 people. The only words I can make out are gilgit-baltistan (the province we're in), supreme council of gilgit-baltistan, Pakistan, and no taxation without representation.

I chat with some cops who have to monitor the protests. Most of them speak decent English. Other than their hat and bat they're dressed as civilians. They're from a few hours away, all have families at home. They ask me where I'm from, how big is Ireland, do we have a democracy, how many square kilometres is Ireland, am I married, how many siblings do I have, what do I do for work, do we have similar strikes at home, do I know the head of our army, who is our head of state. They tell me the strikers don't want independence, they actually chose to become a part of Pakistan. The cops are sympathetic to their movement but don't agree with their methods. They all love Imran Khan when I ask about him. They mention he studied in Oxford, married some woman called goldman, they all voted for him. So did my freelancer friend and his family and all his friends. They also tell me China will be a superpower in 2-3 years, when I ask about the recent India/Pakistan skirmish they said they use Chinese fighter jets because Pakistan has no technology, and Pakistan won because they have better fighter pilots. The cops say they don't see the strike letting up soon and I should back to Islamabad if I want to go to China.

My Pakistani buddy Usman, after buying a drink in the shop, takes off the cap and just drops it on the floor without thinking, and when he finishes his drink he just leaves the bottle on the floor. Doesn’t even flinch. I suppose there are no public bins here.

I get up early the next morning and the border still didn't open, so I decide to get a taxi to an airport that is 4 hours away and on the road back to Islamabad and try and get a flight back down, which would save me driving that terrible road. Before I leave a guy comes up to my car and asks for a lift, I am paying €32 so I ask him to pay half, he says no so I ask for €3, he says yes and gets in. He speaks decent English, the driver not so much but knows all the numbers because he was able to negotiate the price. Once we start driving the passenger asks why I'm going to the airport, I explain, he tells the driver, the driver calls the airport and I think books me on the flight. Great. I am endlessly impressed with how friendly these people are.

Pakistanis can squat so low. They can keep their ankles on the floor and put their ass on the ground. I encourage you to try and keep your ankles on the floor and see how low you can squat, probably only to 90 degrees. I also notice this in China. I think using squat toilets is part of the reason for this.

The driver stops at a metal box with colourful flags hanging off it and puts in 30c. I ask why, he said its for the family of a man who died. He was a good man, he says.

I get to the airport, and go through a big rigamarole with locals and security all trying to help me figure out how to get a ticket, eventually I'm told the flight is full but I get put on a waiting list and get told to withdraw cash in case somebody doesn't show up, in the end it doesn't matter as the flight gets cancelled. Luckily I find somebody who agrees to split a taxi with me back to Islamabad. Only now do I realize that we drove the bad roads because of the floods, and the landslides have been cleared and we can drive on a much better smoother road. Thank God. This taxi is €100 but split between 2 people.

On the road back to Islamabad we pass lots of tourists spots, ziplines, hotels, kayaks on the lakes. It really is beautiful and apparently there are great hikes along this road.

The guy I'm travelling with is a wealthy businessperson who imports from China, he offers to take me on a week long trip around Pakistan, all expenses paid, and then drive me to china himself in his car once the border opens. I politely decline because I do not want to spend another week in Pakistan and I book a flight to Hong Kong via Doha. I find out right after I book this that Israel has just bombed Doha. Great.

Cashews and walnuts are popular here, and they offer me some. They taste exactly the same as they do at home.

I am pretty sure my driver is semi illiterate. His phone is in English but he does not speak English, however from a quick google search I find that the languages spoken in this region are not supported on Android, so maybe English is the easiest. He asks me to put in his number and takes a photo with me for Snapchat.

Usman and I still text a bit, he sends me screenshots of Michael D condemning Israel in the strongest terms, which I have never heard of. I owed him a fair bit of money and offered to send it to him on Wise, he tells me I don't need to because Ireland is so pro Palestine. I'm not sure if he really means it or if that's just an excuse to be nice, as it seems baked into the culture to not let guests pay for anything.

Cousin marriage is very popular here, seems to be the norm. I asked 3 people ‘how did you meet your wife?’ and each says it was an arranged marriage with their first cousin.

Loved Pakistan, great country, lots of problems and a very turbulent place but cheap, great weather, beautiful countryside, and easy to get around with just English.

They use bamboo as scaffolding here

This shop has a screen just showing shoplifters. It has about 5 clips on repeat.

My 'hotel' is one floor in a 6 block 16 storey building, where each block has 2 elevator shafts. The ground floor is a narrow retail floor with cheap shops, restaurants, Laundry, forex, and barber shops. My room is about as small as you can make it while still fitting a large single bed, nightstand, small fridge, and shower ensuite. It's e15 p/night, in a prime location, air conditioned, clean, comes with fresh towels, and just a great place.

I get maybe 3/4 a washing machine full of clothes washed, dried, and folded for €5 in 4 hours, in a place on the ground floor of my complex.

The tubes here are much longer than they are in London, but just as frequent. At 7pm I got off at the wrong stop, realized pretty quickly, turned around and another one arrived about 15 seconds later.

During rush hour they have ushers and put up barriers to enforce one way lanes on the stairs.

There are tons of forex and crypto places here. This place is very international, people from all over the world.

There are gorgeous quiet hikes about 30 minutes from my hotel, which is some of the best access to nature of any city I've ever been to. You can get incredible views of the city.

The self service checkouts here are so easy to use. It doesn’t weigh your items and if you’re getting lots of the same item you can just scan it once and add more units. The perks of a high trust society.

Getting the high speed rail from Hong Kong to Shenzhen was a breeze. Bought my ticket at the train station, walked through security, Hong Kong immigration, Chinese security & immigration, and onto my train in about 35 minutes. Much quicker if you're a Chinese or hk resident. My train was 14 minutes vs 1 hour at least by car, and entirely in a tunnel. You can feel the g when it's accelerating. I had full 4g reception the entire way.

I had downloaded all of the Chinese apps I needed for my trip, but my VPN didn't work when I got to China which meant I couldn't use Gmail, Google Maps, Google Search, ChatGPT, which are probably my most used apps. I eventually figured it out but it was a real pain in the ass when I first landed. The great firewall blocks a lot, including all social media, WhatsApp, SoundCloud, Google Drive, Wikipedia, and BBC News. I did a quick comparison of wikipedia to the Chinese version for a few non controversial pages and found the Chinese version definitely worse, although it was translated.

Many of the Chinese apps do not have any English, including their just eat app and all of the apps for ordering in restaurants like KFC, McDonalds, or Luckin Coffee. Since the staff don't speak English this makes it difficult for tourists to order, but after a few days I started to figure it out.

The Roman alphabet is used loads in China. They use it to spell things out phonetically, and most of the logos of big companies are written using them. I always thought BYD, Huawei, DJI etc etc all had a different Chinese name, but no it's exactly the same, same logo and all.

Shenzhen is an incredibly well planned city. The streets have lovely wide footpaths, lined with lots of trees and plants that are very well maintained, tons of public parks that all join together nicely, very easy to walk through the city despite it having lots of large roads running through it. It has a gorgeous 13km walk along the bay with incredible views. They even have a museum dedicated to urban planning. This city had 70k people in 1970, now it has over 10 million.

It is the most futuristic city I've ever been to. Robot coffee machines and candy floss machines are standard, as are robot street sweepers. Lots of robo taxis.

The subways do not run at night, which I couldn't believe at first, but the road network is so good and taxis are so cheap that it's much faster to get taxis in the evening anyway.

These guys in the video are singing and wearing masks at this table, holding up a poster that said ‘NOT YOUR BIRTHDAY’. They did this 3 times during my meal.

At every subway station you need to put your bags through a scanner and walk through a metal detector, which is just ridiculous. For me to get a metro card I had to upload a copy of my passport and a photo of my face, which I didn't realize until I got to the station, and when it took longer than 3 minutes to get approved I just bought a ticket manually.

On the maps app it shows how many seconds are left at the traffic light you are at. I could also see this in my taxi app.

I kept an eye out for how many cars had 'nubs' for LiDAR, I didn't see any in Hong Kong but lots in Shenzhen. In Hong Kong they drive on the other side of the road so that might explain some of it.

Overall, Shenzhen is objectively the best city I have ever been to. It is very affordable, safe, beautiful, clean, walkable, and very easy to get around. I have a feeling Singapore is even better, partly because Shenzhen was modelled off of Singapore, but didn’t get the chance to visit.

If I were to do it again, how would I do it differently?

1. Plan it out. Flights are roughly twice as expensive when you book them with a few days notice or less, so I could’ve saved a lot of money by booking them earlier. Also, I often spent the first few hours in every city googling things to do and see in the city. I should’ve had this done before I came. Which leads into my 2nd point…

2. Only go where you want to go. I did not want to go to Abu Dhabi or Pakistan in particular, but I went there because I found cheap flights and they were headed east, but I really wanted to see China. I do not like travelling for more than 3 weeks. anytime I travel without a return flight, I always want to come home after 3 weeks. I have wanted to see Singapore and Zurich and Munich for a while as these are places I have considered moving to, but I felt they weren’t ‘exotic’ enough to travel to. I also didn’t want to book all my flights and accommodation before I left because then I wouldn’t be able to change my plans easily and I wanted a bit of freedom, but that freedom was very expensive and I didn’t even really change them, except for when I couldn’t cross the Pakistan-China border. At least I have cool stories from Pakistan but I didn’t fully quench my travel bug.

3. Pack light. I travelled with a 10kg check in bag and a backpack, I ended up wearing the same two pairs of shorts for the entire trip and carrying two pairs of pants and three t-shirts that I never wore. You can wear a t-shirt two days in a row and just do laundry every 7-10 days.

Finally, if you are going on one of these trips, I highly recommend getting one of these travel chargers.

It is the only plug I needed to carry to charge my laptop and phone and is pretty powerful. It won’t charge your phones at their max power, for example my phone can charge at 37w max but this will only charge it at 25w max, this is fine for most people but if it bothers you like it bothers me you need to find a specific charger that supports the high power protocol your phone has. Each brand has their own protocol so you’ll have to do some research.

I also recommend carrying a portable battery, I got a 30,000mAh (your phone battery is ~5,000mAh) for €48 on AliExpress, but you really only need 10-20,000mAh. Technically you cannot bring a battery larger than 20,000mAh on a flight, but I have taken mine on 20+ flights with no problems.

Thank you for reading my travel notes. I hope they have been as interesting, entertaining, and enlightening as my travels have been for me. If you have any questions throw them down below and I will be happy to answer them.