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Tuesday, November 13, 2012

I'm gonna sit right down and post myself a letter

In honour of my Father’s visit I decided to take a day off on Sunday after the excitement of last week so we had a wander around the Bastikiya area (historic old part) of Bur Dubai. We stumbled upon the “Philately House” which was a renovated building housing a stamp museum. Apart from setting out the history of stamps and postal services in UAE (the first post office was opened in 1909 and was run by Indians. Most of the stamps seem to have been developed on the back of the ties the Trucial sates had with UK and India and it was fascinating to see some of the addresses of the old letters displayed as despatched from here – “Post Office, Nicosia”, “Post Master Mallacca”. I was a wonder some of them reached their destination given the spellings of some of the addresses. A lot of the examples seemed to be from military personnel), there was also a collection of old bank notes including a £100 from Syria (which I bought for AED45 for A) and an old green English pound note (only AED25). I bought V. an Iraqi 25 Dinar note so hopefully we can stat a collection of exotic foreign currency! We completed our tour around with a ride on a water taxi from the Old Souk water station up to Baniyas and back again and then a short walk down past the HSBC building.

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