Dubai Airport at 2:00 a.m. is possibly the strangest place I’ve ever found myself. It’s not so much the airport itself, but rather the multicoloured masses of deranged, jet-lagged travellers lunging through the never-ending duty free shops that lend it a manic intensity.

It isn’t helped by my state of mind, which has been off ever since my spotless Dubai taxi paused, mid-journey, to pick up a Thai prostitute this afternoon. She explained she’d been waiting for ages for a cab along the ruler-straight, eight-lane artery where my driver pulled over, and was running late. Rather than forcing her to wait for him to return after dropping me off, the cabbie chivalrously offered her a seat right there.

It turned out to be for the best: she recommended a decent restaurant, where I sat opposite a mosque, watching sheikhs drag race their Cayenne Turbos between pedestrian crossings.

But the airport really is an odd place. Its enforced 24-hour openness makes estimating the time a futile task, and 12-hour analog Rolex clocks hardly help. The main strip of duty free shops is forever jammed with people, their resistance to consumer bingeing weakened by a lack of sleep and tantalising lottery displays that promise new BMWs at 1000 to 1 odds.

The only signs of attention to some kind of time zone come if you attempt to engage the information desk, where staff will greet you with a “good morning” at 1:45 a.m., and at the restaurant, which serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a fairly reasonable 24-hour cycle. As of 1:30, dinner was still being served, much to the amazement of an Indian man who filmed the entire buffet on his handheld camera before grabbing a plate of dal and eating while wandering around, his eyes half-focused on the Filipino waiter trying to charm the two brunette German backpackers.

(Edit: shortened paragraphs for ease of reading)