Friday 30 April 2021

Preparing to leave Dubai.

I arrived back in Dubai 2 weeks ago. Peter has been off work while we've planned our exit. We sold his car, made a claim to cancel the Insurance which can take up to 3 weeks. We've had quotes for shipping the rest of our furniture, advertised the garden for sale and made arrangements to have broken and old furniture removed. We've now hired a car until the end of May.

I sold my car and closed my bank account back in September, so we're confident of how that all works.

There's still quite a bit of stuff to do, unlike a move within the country in which you live, when you leave a country you have to close everything down before your current visa expires. However it's a lot easier this move as we don't need a visa to move to the UK. When we moved from South Africa to Dubai, we had to return to the UK to get our documents certified and get our cat and dog out to Dubai before our current visa expired, but we couldn't ship the furniture or air freight until our new visas were in place. 

We have two more payments due out on the credit card in the next 10 days then we can cancel the credit card, but need to keep the main account open to pay in cheques from the deposits for the house, utility bills and an investment that matures soon. Once that has all cleared we have to withdraw/transfer the account to a zero balance then apply for a completion certificate to close the account.

We had to get the UK credit card activated so we could use it to hire the car

I keep getting informed that we can of course pay someone to do all this for us, but from personal experience having been told this in the past and actually following the advice we have discovered that 9/10 these people aren't qualified experts and that actually they don't make the job any easier as basically you still do all the ground work and they just basically queue on your behalf to submit that paperwork that you still need to sign and sorry but there is no way we're giving ANYONE a signed letter to deal with our finances on our behalf.

We're vacating the Villa on May 24th, we don't have a hotel booked yet as we're waiting for confirmation from the UK Government in regards to our isolation/quarantine on our return. 

At the moment we're required to spend 11 days in a UK hotel at the cost of £1700 each, we've looked into flying home via Germany where we'd need to stay for 11 days before we would be allowed back into the UK and the isolate at home for 11 days. We're allowed to travel between the UK and Dubai as we have Citizenship and Residency. We've both had the full vaccine and are happy with regular PCR testing.

Dubai is a hub, but we're hopeful after May 17th it'll be off the red list, Dubai have currently suspended flights from India.

Thankfully this time we're not leaving one place and arriving into the unknown. We are returning to our former family home that I've spent the past 18 months restoring after tenants and setting up utilities, buying a car and sorting phones and internet which hasn't been as easy as it sounds because we've not lived in the UK for so long, have no 'no claims' for driving, need insurance that allows us to leave the house empty for more than 30 days and has involved changing all the landlord cover back into personal use, getting new quotes and at one point had me measuring the outside area of the house and working out the square footage for the top two floors for buildings insurance purposes (since when did that become a thing?) We moved the cat and dog back in February.

We're registered with the Dr's in the UK but need to find a new dentist and I need to add Peter to the council tax and change our voting options.

We need to close everything here in Dubai rather than risk letting it just expire when our visas run out. We plan to travel through Dubai in future years to visit one of our sons in Australia and don't want to risk arrest should we have anything outstanding. 

I'm not looking for help, guidance or advice on any of this, there is a time scale to follow for all of it, just not all the same time. We've done it many times before, we'll do it now as well. I just don't have the brain space to do anything else for myself, let alone anyone else right now. An International move is nothing like an internal move, trust me, I did both last year. We're not planning on doing any further moves, internal or external for a long time to come.

14 comments:

  1. So much work but it sounds like you are going through it all methodically. Good luck! #PoCoLo

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    1. thank you, it's a chore but has to be done

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  2. I'm impressed with all that you have done since I've been following your blog. I'd be a nervous wreck! Safe journey back and I hope all goes to plan x

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  3. Wow, it sounds as if you are really coming home! Good for you!

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  4. A lot of work, hope it gets swiftly gets done for you X #pocolo

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  5. My parents did this every 2-3 years of my life til I left home, as part of my dad's job. I remember it being a lot of logistics, paperwork and work as every country is so different. My mum was a pro at it, I always remember her not even being phased when things went wrong (the plane hijack where a plane was on a runway full of terrorists threatening to blow the plane up? Some of our belongings were on that plane! I remember watching the news and waiting to see what happened)
    I hope it all goes as smoothly and easily as it can and you don't have to pay for the hotel quarantine here.

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    1. that's probably the only thing left to happen to us now, fingers crossed the travel routes are updated soon

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  6. Exciting times.
    You do right doing everything yourself instead of paying someone to do it. There is so much that could go wrong and I wouldn't want anyone dealing with my finances.
    Good luck to you and Peter. x

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  7. Moving internally is stressful enough so I cannot imagine what it must be like to move countries. Having read your blog, I can only be impressed with how organised and methodical you are. Good luck with everything! #pocolo

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