I've told you about some of the things I won't miss and now I'll talk about some of the things I will miss.
I'll miss Al Ain city. It's a lovely city sprawled out across a wide, flat area at the bottom of Jebel Hafeet which divides Oman and the UAE. Most of the main streets are wide, with divided roads whose median strips are populated with palm trees, grasses and small shrubs. They are clean and at any time of the year you can see gardeners tending plants and cleaners picking up any rubbish that's been left on the street.
There are no drunks stumbling about, graffiti is almost unheard of, and nobody here returns to their car to find someone has kicked in the side panels of your car. Vandalism here is very, very scarce as are street offences common in Australia.
We have some lovely friends. We'll certainly miss them although we intend to keep in touch and hope some will visit us from time to time. (There are too many to place their photos here)
Rosie, a lovely lady who cleans our house and irons our clothes will be missed. Not only for the valuable work she does, but because she is a friend.

Our mansion. Although our house at Alice Springs is lovely, we'll miss our Arabic mansion tht has more room than we need, airconditioning that is very effective and cheap to run, and which is rent free. (Can't do much better than that eh?
Food prices and Middle East foods. The price of food, as is the case with most things here, is very much cheaper than in Australia. There's no shortage of anything and there are some lovely foods like date honey that are peculiar to the Middle East that are nice to taste.
Beer, a category of essential food, is not only a little cheaper than in Australia, it also comes in a 500mL can. (Eat your heart out.) Look at this shot of a can in an Aussie stubby holder designed for an Australian 375 mL cans. Now I'm being a bit dishonest here. I will miss the price, but it will be good to get back to light beer and smaller sizes. It's very easy to overdo it here.
No tax on salary. I'll write that again ... NO TAX on salary. Everything you earn you keep. I'll certainly miss that.
Petrol prices. Petrol is so cheap here, you don't even have to bother about how much you put in your tank. 100 AED is roughly $30 AUD and you can fill your tank for 75 AED (60 L tank). Imagine that.
Well, that's just a glimpse. There are many other things I will miss and the misses outweight the won't misses, just to set the record straight.
Robin