Dropp
I escaped last week. I arranged for a cheque in AED, which either I could have cashed at the NBD in EGHQ, or just deposited into my local HSBC. From there, I just transferred funds to my UK account.
Just for your info, there are daily limits out of the HSBC, unless you arrange for this to be increased; that just took a couple of days after submitting the request.
Good luck ( from the beach in the sunshine, with no a/c in sight and no fools trying to trip me up)