Musandam

You start asking yourself why every single trip we make has to be be so chaotic. But then there woulndt be so much to write about if everything went smooth and easy.

One of my flatmates long ago planned this trip to Musandam, let us pay in advance, confirm us several times, organized the boats and the cars. It all looked so good. Yesterday is was easier than expected to get everybody out of bed and ready to leave. The idea was to leave at 9 am, get to Musandam in like max. 3 hours and get on the boats at 1 pm.
We left the house only with half an hour delay. AWSOME!!!!

I was in the car with Daniel, my German friend and my other friends all from my flat. The trouble began at the first stop at the gas station 3 minutes away from our house. We left one car behind at the gas station. They were completely lost and didnt know how to find their right way. So Franck, our organizer, went back to fetch them and told us to already head to the border to meet there.
My friend Daniel told me several times that he knew his way to the border so off we went… We passed several signs which said “Hatta, Oman”… At some point i wondered that the street looked the same as the one time we went to Muscat, but i didnt really care, as i was sure he knew where we had to go. Only at the border, after an 3 hours ride, we noticed that we indeed were at the Muscat border, which was totally wrong. Obviously my friend never checked where Musandam is and thought Oman is Oman after all.
Musandam is a little pensinsula belonging to Oman but totally surrounded by the UAE and not connected to the “other/real” Oman. The idea never crossed my mind that he didnt check where we would be going. Well it was too late for that. The one to blame this time was myself. The atmosphere in the car was not at all the happy joyful roadtrip atmosphere anymore. What to do? There was still some time to try to get to the right border. We just had to drive through the whole country to the other side. But well, we might as well try. So the adventure began. As always we passed millions of roundabouts with the wrong signs or no signs at all but with 6 differet exits. We got lost on almost every single on of them and had to ask our way around.
It was getting later and later. We knew that 2 boats were booked for us, so one boat could leave on time with the rest of the people and one could wait for us and leave a little later.
The ”little later” was a 2 1/2 hours delay in the end. Obviously we werent the only idiots of the group. One guy in one of the other cars only had passport copies with him and not his passport. Needless to say that he couldnt cross the border and had to go back. So many people here assume that its the same way here to cross a border as it is in the EU…
Finally we arrived at the meeting point at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Chasab, just to find out that about 60 people had been waiting for us to arrive. The other beat DIDNT leave with them.
You might imagine the looks that we got from those people.

 

But we did end up on the boats and had a really good time there. Although we didnt see dolphins (AGAIN). Musandam is famous for its dolphins. Only i am not lucky to see them. Neither when i went there with my parents years ago (i dont count the old crippled dolphin that only swam UNDER our boat and therefore was almost impossible to see) nor yesterday.
We stopped several times to have a swim in the sea, the last time at night illuminated only by the light of the fullmoon…
Happy and exhausted we arrived back on the shore at 10 pm to start our way back to Dubai.
Shortly before the border i rememberd that i had hung up my bathing suit on the boat to let it dry. And of course this is where it still hangs.
Do i have to mention that it was the newest and nicest one i had? …

Salalah – heaven on earth

The internet in our office is not working – so we are sitting around and waiting for it to come back so we actually can start work. (How did people manage to work without the internet?)

This after all is the perfect opportunity to finally write about my trip to SALALAH…

 

So for the ones of you who still have no clue where or what this is let me enlighten you. Salalah is a small city in the very south of Oman close to the boarder of Yemen. It is somehow famous as it’s the only region on the whole Arabian Peninsula that has Monsoon rains in August/September. So all the Arabs go there during this time to experience the magic experience of rain.

 

As we are Europeans theres no need for us to go there during the Monsoon days. We do prefer the sun and the beach at least for the moment. .

This time it was only Audrey and me. When we found some cheap flights in the internet we took the opportunity, took one day off from work and booked it.

 

So last Thursday finally it was time to pack our bags and get ready for the trip. Thanks god we planned in the hassle of finding a taxi in Dubai as it took us nearly an hour to find an empty one. Finally in the car the driver asked us if we flew Terminal 1 or Terminal 2. HUH????? There are 2 terminals? We didn’t know. Almost out of credits and out of batteries we tried our best by calling the airlines office, the airport and several of our friends to find out from where our plane leaves as it was not written on the 10 page printout of the ticket. But thanks to the help of our friends we found out that we had to go to Terminal 1. Ufff… relieve… Once at the airport boarding time passed by and still nobody was at the counter and no plane at our gate. After an hour someone finally informed us that our plane was late for at least one hour. What a start…
But everything else went smooth so we landed in Salalah 2 hours later than planed. I have never seen as relaxed people as Omanis. The passport control procedure takes FOREVER. They don’t have computers and write down everything in a big book. Very traditional those people!!!!

So our plan for the evening was to find a travel office to book our day trip for the next days as we wanted to see the sights around Salalah. The tours the office itself offered us were very expensive – but they organized another guide – a freelancer – who was willing to take us for the price we were willing to pay.
Our guide happened to be a taxi driver as well and offered us a free ride around the city. This ride lasted for the rest of the evening, including a complete city tour, traditional Omani dinner (which he payed), drinking fresh coconut milk in between and shisha in the end. That was all pretty nice of him but we didn’t wanna end up having to pay for a 2 day trip. I’ve experienced it before.
But he kept on telling us that the amount we payed for the the one day was more than enough and he was doing this for us to have a good time. Hm… ok… whatever…
So next day bright and early we left for our little tour. First we got to see the sights of East Salalah which included an old Fort, a Mausoleum of some relative of Prophet Mohammad, some ruins and an old port in one of the cities. Then we went up into the mountains, cruising around for ever and ever while enjoying the fantastic scenery before we headed west to see the frankincense trees and the blow holes. On our way back to the city we took a refreshing swim in the sea. Unline Dubai there were huge waves which made swimming quite some fight with the water.
Back into town we finally went to the souq to spend all our money on scarves, frankincense’s and jewelry. Of course we ended up spending far more money than we intended to but who knows if and when you will ever be back in Salalah. We ended our day with a great simple meal in the middle of the city.

The whole day we were listening to the same 10 cheesy 80s love songs from the cassette (!!!) in the car…
We had a great time with our guide who took us everywhere we wanted though at some point he got a bit too intimate with us when he started to ask very personal questions. We got a bit uneasy in his presence and had to think about how to make it clear to him that the next day we wanted to spend some time at the beach WITHOUT him…
But it was easier than expected and we set up a date to have one last lunch with him before leaving for the airport. So next morning we started our walk in search of the perfect beach we saw the first night we arrived. After one hour of walking in the sun we found it. White sandy beaches, palm tress… We felt a bit like Robinson Crusoe on his island as there we were the only people on the whole beach. PARADISE!!!!

So we enjoyed our peace and quiet time at the beach before we had to return to busy and noisy Dubai.

The farewell from our new best friend went easier than expected.

So after all it was an amazing trip with excitement and relaxation and we can’t wait to get to plan our next trip to Oman.

Trip to Muscat

I finally got my email adress from work today plus a guy from the bank HSBC was here as i will get a local bank account. Finally feels like I am settling in… Unfortunately I still dont have work – so finally I have time to write about our Oman trip last weekend. One step at a time…

We were 8 people on the trip. My landlord and his Italian girlfriend/wife (I’m not sure about their status) 3 of my flatmates, one girl from the flat upstairs and another French guy. The trip started fine at 6 am in the morning, we were early at the border, didnt have to line up for a long time, got our visas and the car insurances and could continue Muscat.
Close to Muscat the problems started to appear. Cause obviously Shahid, our landlord had some other plan in mind than the rest of us. He wanted to stay in a fancy Hotel and started looking for one somewhere in the outskirts of Muscat without really knowing where to go… (we weren’t asked about asked about our opinion at all) so while driving around in circles the fight between him and his gilrfriend/wife started… and didnt stop. After what seemed to be hours we finally could convince him that all of us wanted to stay somewhere cheap close to the center… Then we started looking for a beach and the whole driving around without any clue where to go started all over… I have no clue how many wrong turns we took… But we did find some beach in the end and even were lucky not to pay anything. Unfortunately the sun was already down so we soon had to head back to the hotel and the whole arguing started another time about where to have dinner… not to mention that we took the wrong road back from the beach and were lost one more time…
But in the end we had some decent dinner and we found the market/souq to walk around… which at this time already closed down.

So next day we decided to change plans and split up into smaller groups so everybody could do their own thing and was happy in the end…
I ended up wandering around the city with Audrey, the French girl from upstairs, as we both had the same idea about how we wanted to spend the little time we had. The weather was beautiful, the sun was shining so we went to discover the city. Only once we were disturbed by a yound Omani guy following us in his car trying to hit on us… but after several turns and twist we got rid of him as well…
We went back  to the market where we spent hours bargaining for the scarves made in Oman… too many colours from which to decide…. but in the end we were successfull and broke… After lunch we headed back to Dubai where we had fantastic cheap Pakistani dinner.
As we only have two bathrooms in our flat the only fight we had was who could shower the sand and dirt off first…

I loved Oman. Its not the most exciting place to be but its a beautiful place to be. The landscape is amazing and the people are so layed back, relaxed and friendly. If you live in Dubai its amazing to see locals working as Taxi drivers and in the supermarkets… actually amazing to see locals at all. All dressed up in their traditional local style. All of us girls decided unanimously that the Omani man are pretty handsome.
Definitely a place where you can relax from Dubai – the city that never sleeps… and definitely worth a visit!