December 2002 After zipping around the sky and looking out my window at the meeting of an arid mountainous landscape hand in hand with the brilliant blue waters of the Gulf of Oman, my sixty-minute noon flight from Dubai to Muscat touched down uneventfully at the Asseeb Airport in the city of Muscat bathed in endless southern Arabian sun and embraced by soft breezes rolling down from the inland desert. I disembarked the aircraft down a set of stairs with my computer strapped to my back in a small rucksack and my sunglasses over my eyes and headed out to the bus waiting for us several meters away. "Hmm. . . I really hope getting a hotel room isn't going to be too complicated here," I thought. I reminded myself that I probably should have made the reservation while I was still in Dubai, but sometimes the best intentions are forgotten while you're running around with friends in a foreign city and I just never got around to it. It was the Islamic month of Ramadan and I had heard that most hotels have reduced rates during that time since families apparently stay amongst themselves during the holiday and most foreigners don't bother coming because alcohol is prohibited from being served in the hotels during that time. Standing beside me in the shuttle bus as we made our way over to the airport arrival terminal was a stout short-haired redheaded American woman, probably in her late 30s, so I leaned over and asked her, "Excuse me, I'm looking for a hotel and don't know the area at all. Do you know of any decent places to stay?" She responded, "Well, I'm staying at the Ramada Inn, but I don't live here so I couldn't tell you about anywhere else." "About how much are you paying?" I inquired. "My friends are paying for it so I really don't know. Sorry." "OK, no problem." I replied. "I'll figure something out. I always do." I My first bit of business, however, was to clear customs, exchange some money, and find myself a car rental. Finding a hotel would come later.

Arrived Muscat around noon. Rented car at airport, US$34/day + US$8/day insurance, 200km free/day, US$.10/km thereafter. Withdrew money O.R.100 (Omani Riyals/US$262) from ATM but couldn't get receipt then got the feeling that maybe I was being frauded since some sleezy type was hanging out by the machine and he used it just after I did. Maybe he had some data saving card thingy? And some other dude came up to me and asked my name and where I was coming in from. (Coordinating info for a scam? Or perhaps I was just being paranoid?) Needless to say, I did not respond with accurate info. I never share my personal 411 with strangers abroad. Didn't have hotel. Drove around and price surveyed. First drove up to the Hyatt, but the place was so friggin' ritzy that I was too afraid to even go inside and ax' how much it cost. I mean, some places just ooze EXPENSIVE. If you have to ask, you can't afford it. Next I drove to the Ramada Inn and the place wanted OR40/day (US$105), but that seemed a bit pricy since the place didn't look that ritzy and was a bit small. Went next to the Intercontinental and they were offering OR38 (US$100) which included breakfast. The place seemed ritzy enough but I figured I'd try one more, but when I got on the road in my rent-a-car I just couldn't be bothered with driving to another hotel so I turned around and took a room at the Intercontinental. They ended up giving me a nice "deluxe" double room with a good view of the coast stretching northwards. Dropped off my things, settled into my digs then wandered around the hotel to check out the accoutrements. Like all good hotels, it had everything I'd need during my stay. Chatted with a guy from Iraq in the hotel cafe and he told me where to go, what to do and where to see in Muscat, and we ended up running into each other again at the hotel's outdoor buffet at 9pm and chatted for two hours, drank Moroccan tea and smoked sheesha (apple flavored tobacco). He mentioned he'd love for the USA to invade and topple Saddam, although he really hopes the USA can do it without a war somehow. He really fears his family back home being caught up and killed in a war on Baghdad, but he certainly wouldn't miss Saddam's passing.

Above: me at the pool area of the hotel. Behind the pool and the line of the trees in the background is a gate which opens up to the expansive stretch of coastline which makes up Al-Qurm Beach and is the location of the city's major hotels and resorts. As you can see in the picture, the dress code within the confines of the Intercontinental gates was rather relaxed and you could basically wear whatever you wanted to the pool area as long as you wore something. (A tall order for Europeans sometimes!) As it turned out, the vast majority of the guests at the hotel were European and they were free to lounge around and relax as they chose. On the Al-Qurm Beach, however, the dress code was definitely much more conservative as the beach there is considered public space and Muslims generally don't bare it all when it comes to bathing suits. As a matter of fact, they don't seem bare it at all and virtually all the women were wearing dresses into the water and the men had on long shorts and shirts. From all appearances, the majority of visitors on the public section of the beach were of Indian or Pakistani nationality and those few Omanis that I saw wandering around were dressed in their long white robes (men) or long black robes (women), although unlike Saudi Arabia women in Oman are allowed to show their faces and everyone was allowed equal opportunity to have the soft coastal breezes blow across their faces.

As seen in the map at the top of this webpage you can see that Muscat is actually a conglomeration of four separate townships which have all grown into one city whose combined population now numbers somewhere around 650,000. Of the four infused enclaves, Al-Qurm is the modern suburban sector of the city where most of the new development can be found, Ruwi is a bustling and somewhat grubby market center, Mutrah (pronounce that final "h"!) is the site of Dhow Harbor and the magnificent old world Mutrah Souq ("market"), and Muscat is a small village surrounded by jagged little barren mountains and serves as the location of the main palace of the ruler of Oman, Sultan Qaboos. Our first stop in the city shall be to the Al-Qurm Beach. Above and below: not such a shabby place for a vacation!   Above: if you look closely you'll notice that palm trees aren't exactly indigenous to the coast of Oman and in order for the imported guys to grow, they were all rigged with a little watering system that kept their roots nice and wet in this otherwise bone dry environment. Above: fun is prohibited apparently. Despite this, I saw plenty of guys playing soccer along the water. Above: high tide formation on the beach I presume.

Above: the interior courtyard/atrium of the hotel from the sixth floor looking down toward the traditional Omani tea and coffee sitting area on the ground floor called Majlis Al-Shams; next to that on the left is the Al-Ghazal Pub; directly below that on the lower ground floor are Señor Pico (a totally yummy Mexican restaurant!) and the Mediterranean Grill where I ate breakfast every day. Ramadan ended three days after I arrived at the hotel and so the alcohol was flowing in all directions and the pub & bar scene was rather happening ever after! I tell ya, it's been ages since I've been able to find a nice margarita here in the Middle East! Yum!!! Above: a rather untidy view of my room with items strewn here and there Aside from touring around town, hanging out at the pool, strolling down the beach, and imbibing at the hotel pub, I did actually get a little work done and managed pull out my laptop either in my room or out on the veranda at sunset and spent quite a bit of time editing the hundreds of pictures I had taken during my time in the United Arab Emirates and Oman. While it may be easy to pull up these webpages and scroll down through all the pictures, it actually takes me hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and even more hours to upload, edit, crop, splice, resize and rename the images not to mention importing and organizing them within a webpage and them embellishish them with labels and stories, so my entire vacation couldn't all be about fun and games! As I would sit poolside at the Palm Beach Restaurant with my computer processing all these pictures during sundown, I noticed that with every encroaching step of evening replacing day, thousands of bright little green birds would fly into the hotel grounds and perch themselves throughout all the trees and start screeching at the top of their lungs and sing not only to themselves but also to all of us hotel guests relaxing in the disappearing light nibbling on tasty snacks and sipping on tropical drinks. Above: an Omani license plate. On the right you can see how to write the name of the country "Oman" in Arabic. Remember, Arabic is read from right to left, opposite of English. Numbers, however, are read from left to right.

On one of the days that I was in greater Muscat, I decided to take a little drive into the tiny township of Muscat proper, the origin of the modern city. The Intercontinental Hotel where I was staying is located in a part of the city known as Al-Qurm about 25km/16mi from Muscat so I hopped in my little Honda car rental, got on the quaint Sultan Qaboos Highway and headed out due-east. The highway itself was a sight to behold as there was an endless sea of Omani flags commemorating Ramadan waving in the breeze spaced about 15m/45ft apart from one another atop the roadway's center divider. Lining the highway were lush lawns and imported forests of trees, lush green shrubbery and beds of flowers all perfectly kept and hedged. Clearly Sultan Qaboos has an eye for aesthetics and I LOVED IT! I say, if you're not gonna have a democracy you might as well have a ruler who likes flowers and clean streets! Heck, this highway was nicer than most roads in the "advanced democratic" world! I drove along Sultan Qaboos Highway for probably 20 minutes, going up and down the winding curves as it snaked itself through the treeless and barren jagged brown geology engulfing the area. The highway dumped me off in the mini-harbor town of Mutrah where I switched over to Al-Bahri Road (pronounce the "h"!) that hugged the coast for a kilometer or two then took me up a nice incline to the official entrance of Muscat, the Muscat Gate Museum.

At its peak in the 19th century, under Sultan Said [pronounced Sa'eed] (1804-1856), Oman controlled Mombasa and Zanzibar [Africa] and operated trading posts even further down the African coast. It also controlled portions of what are now India and Pakistan. When Said died the empire was divided between two of his sons. One became the Sultan of Zanzibar and ruled his African colonies, while the other became known as the Sultan of Muscat and Oman. The division of the empire cut Muscat off from some of its most lucrative domains causing the country to stagnate economically during the late 19th century. The British exacerbated this situation by pressing the sultan to end the trade in slaves and arms for which Oman had long been known. When Sultan Faisal bin Turki died in 1913, the interior's tribes refused to recognize his son and successor as imam [religious leader]. This led to a split between the coastal areas ruled by the sultan and the interior which came to be controlled by a separate line of imams. In 1938 a new sultan, Said bin Taimur, came to power. Though he ended the long-running revolt in the interior, Said, in many other respects, took Oman backwards. He was opposed to any sort of change and sought to isolate Oman from the modern world. Under his rule, a country that only a century earlier had rivaled the empire-builders of Europe became a medieval anachronism. In 1958 Said boarded himself up in his palace at Salalah, which he rarely left thereafter. In July 1970 Said was overthrown by his only son, Qaboos, in a bloodless palace coup. Sultan Qaboos bin Said promptly repealed his father's oppressive social restrictions and began to modernize Oman's semi-feudal economy. Oman's oil revenues were, and still are, small and its resources limited. Qaboos saw the need to move quickly if the oil wealth was to have any real effect on his people's lives. Relaxation on issuing tourist visas means tourism is high on the list of growing industries in Oman. In 1998 Sultan Qaboos was awarded the International Peace Award from the National Council on US-Arab Relations in recognition of his insight, and his role in maintaining peace and stability in the region.

Above: a group of Omani boys at the Muscat Gate Museum As I was getting ready to leave the Muscat Gate Museum and make my way back through the park area and down the steps to the parking lot, I noticed this group of chummy boys walking up to me and as they approaced they said in Arabic, "Hello! Where are you from?" "I'm from America. Where are you from?" "We're from around the corner. Hey, since you're from America, could you give us a dollar?" "I'm sorry, I don't have any money on me at the moment. Do you take VISA?" They just looked at me like, "???" (That's my standard response whenever people ask me for money!) But they were pretty funny kids and as we stood there for several minutes chatting I wondered what it must be like to be a little group of boys born and raised in Muscat, Oman. What's life like in this little town? What do they do for fun? What's it like running around town in those little white robes with those colorful caps? How do they view foreigners? How do they view me? I always wonder about that sort of stuff wherever I go. "What's it like to be this person? And if I were them, with their experiences and cultural upbringing, how would I view me?" Would I be curious? Would I be hostile? Would I even care?

Above: a nice shot from atop the Muscat Gate Museum looking northward toward the Gulf of Oman with Al-Bahri Road curving toward the township of Mutrah beyond the hills with the giant incense burner perched above Al-Riyam Park on the left.

After hopping in my car, I decided to take a little drive through the township of Muscat which doesn't earn much mention in the Lonely Planet: Middle East travel book. The one public place of interest to be found in town, The Omani-French Museum, was closed for the Ramadan/Eid holiday like all the other public attractions, so I was left just to wander around town and explore the nooks and crannies of Muscat on my own.

Above: entrance to Sultan Qaboos' seat of government. Open to walk around and look at, but closed down for business during the holiday. Below: government buildings and Sultan Qaboos. The Sultan is officially unmarried, which is a bit strange my Arab-Islamic standards, but during an hour long conversation I had with one of his personal seamen down by the Sultan's private dock beside the habor I was assured that, "His Majesty the Sultan of Oman has a secret wife. He just prefers to keep his private life private." I guess it's not such a secret, now is it? Whatever the case, he seems like quite a colorful chap! (The black stripes you see on his white robe are actually lines of text printed on the reverse side of the image that have shown through.)

Not only is the Sultan a colorful man personally, but his little sea side town of Muscat is also *BURSTING* with vibrant color from endless beds of perfectly groomed flowers everywhere you look. A tiny sample can be seen below.

The township of Muscat is located within the confines of a small valley surrounded by jagged treeless hills on three sides and bordered by a harbor to the east opening up to the Gulf of Oman. Apparently Muscat is one of the many residences of the Sultan and is the sister city to Ruwi (7km/5mi away) for the seat of government, so down near the harbor you can see a slew of government buildings, and perched upon a craggy hill beside the water is a large stone fortress. As best I know, this fortess is one of the "homes" of Sultan Qaboos which is just a small walk away from his private sea port. The pictures below are of this complex, as well as the pretty little flowers and mosque surrounding it.

Despite the inviting, pretty little flowers all around, Islam is a members only religion and if you ain't Muslim, you ain't goin' inside their houses of worship. Infidels unwelcomed. This is quite a contrast to the Christian tradition of opening up churches for all sorts of non-Christian guests to observe and take part in their religious ceremonies and faith. Alas, since this neither my country nor my culture, I accept this institutionalized discrimination for what it is and don't think much of it. I always remind myself that if it ever begins to annoy me that I have every right to leave and go to a region of the world where this sort of segregation is less likely to occur.

Hey All! I ended up not driving down to the coastal city of Sur this morning since a) I was too tired when I woke up, b) didn't feel like driving for 8 hours there and back, and c) didn't feel like coughing up the 10 cents a kilometer I'd have to pay for my rent-a-wreck trip down there. Call me cheap. Instead I decided to stay local and just visit the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque which is a few minutes drive away from the hotel since it was in a brochure I had been handed upon my arrival here several days ago. One more interesting tourist sight to visit I figured. I drove out there and was rather impressed by the size and architecture of the relatively new Mosque and thought I'd just walk around the grounds and give it a gander. Now, living in Saudi Arabia, as I do, has taught me that Saudi Muslims hate nothing more than having filthy non-believing infidels roam around their holy zones and so I when I received the mosque brochure last Wednesday I made a point to ask the hotel reception woman whether or not it would be OK for me to visit the mosque. "Sure, no problem! Enjoy!" she proclaimed. Me: "Hmmmm..." Over the course of the last 6 days I've managed to see quite a bit of the Muscat area and strike up several conversations with Omanis and they seem light years more liberal than the Saudi Arabians so I thought that perhaps going near a Mosque might not present such a problem in this country. Also, the Omanis seem not to be camera-phobic the way the Saudis are since I've seen people taking pictures left and right here and I figured that snapping a couple shots down at the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque wouldn't present any major issues. Well... I ended up driving out there and meandered around the outside of the complex taking a couple shots of some flowers and the exterior of the mosque complex walls and then figured I'd walk toward the inner courtyard where the main men's mosque is located. (Men and women may not pray together if the presence of a woman is deemed a distraction to the other men, so in general (like 99.9% of the time) women have their own segregated prayer rooms.) Since I saw a group of Western-dressed Pakistanis walking around with cameras I figured being a tourist wouldn't be a problem and so I walked into the inner court yard, passing through a series of attractive arches - shoes off as per custom and respect - and started snapping shots. Alas, Islam is Islam is Islam and before too long this man dressed in a long brown robe with dark brown head wrap and black beard started walking over to my direction and I just shook my head back and forth thinking, "Man, I've seen this before. Here it comes." So I go over to the shoes area and put on my footwear to show that I'm getting ready to depart and suddenly he starts yapping at me, "ARE YOU MUSLIM?!?" to which I reply, "No, I am not." "NON-MUSLIMS ARE NOT ALLOWED HERE!!! GO AWAY!!!" "Oh, I'm sorry," I replied. "I thought non-Muslims were just banned from *entering* the mosque, but that we could meander around the complex." "NO! YOU ARE BANNED COMPLETELY!!!" "But I have this brochure..." "There are only two hours a week that non-Muslims can come here. From 8 to 10 a.m. and Thursday morning when no other Muslims are around. Other than that, you have to stay away!" "Gotcha. Alright, I'm outta here." So I left, feeling a wee bit dejected. I wasn't surprised at all as this is common practice by Muslims, but I still found it a little 1950's-segregationalist/apartheid-esque and unnecessary. I mean, to have to listen to Muslims whine all day long about "The West not understanding Islam" and then I go visit their country and express an interest in learning about their culture and religion by visiting their holy sites only to have them turn around and discriminate against me based on my own religious beliefs is a bit illogical and hypocritical to say the least.

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