A summer jaunt to Qatar - part 5
Previous posts are here
Oman - Day 1
Breakfast at out hotel (Hotel Muttrah) was average apart from my first encounter with 'foul mudammas' which are a kind of curried beans. Quite tasty if done right. Oh, and it's pronounced fool. We had met up late the night before with Lyn and Brian, two friends of Mum's, and they'd hired a car, so after breakfast we drove off to Old Muscat.
Old Muscat is now the administrative heart of Oman, with various ministries and the Sultan's palace. It's quite nice and we drove to the waterfront and had a wander. Muscat has been a trading port for centuries. It was controlled by the Portuguese around the 18th Century and they built a lot of forts on the ridges around Muscat. The harbour is kinda pretty, sheer rocky hills rearing out of a deep, calm harbour. It was so quintessentially the perfect harbour that I felt like I was on a movie set or something. Anyway, we wandered over to see if we could climb up to one of the cool forts on the ridge, but a very friendly soldier called Abdullah informed me: "You want to walk around, look up at fort, take pictures: No problem. You want to go into fort: Problem." Turns out the big fort is still in use by the army. A bit later we tried to climb up a ridge to an abandoned fort on another ridge, but the only track seems to have had the Ministry of Health built in front of it... Odd. It makes sense in a way though. One thing I've noticed here in the Middle East is that they are actually very conscious about restricting access to vantage points that overlook palaces or key governmental areas. I guess they're worried about someone just freely wandering up there with an Rocket-propelled grenade or something.
So we wandered around Old Muscat. The Sultan's palace is nice in a very colourful way. Dave said it made him think of Toy Town. It was really nice to wander around with all these nice buildings with date palms and rocky mountains. Warm air and sunlight. Good look for the Middle East. Modern but with its own cultural flavour. All the governmental employees I saw wandering around were Omanis in formal, traditional garb.
Actually, the sultan is pursuing a strong policy of Omanisation in the government and other sectors. He's spending a lot of money on higher education for the Omani people, to try and get them to be the skilled labour force in Oman. I think it would be overkill in NZ. Something Winston Peters might dream up, to put NZ citizens (and potentially certain ethnic groups) ahead of foreigners. But in Oman, I feel it's a good plan. They need to do something to build up and maintain the domestic intellectual capital. They're an oil country, and if they just spend all that revenue on consumption, then the times will be great until the oil runs out and then they're stuffed, but if they spend it on capital investment, then they'll do a lot better. The Omanisation of the economy is possibly unfair to immigrants, but will result in getting both the education and experience for Oman to move forward. Perhaps. This is, of course, just a cursory perspective.
Anyway, we went off to Muttrah bay which is just next to Old Muscat, and wandered through the Muttrah souq (market), which was fun but I still didn't find a nice, light shirt that I wanted to buy. Had a really yummy mango juice though. There were quite a few tourists off a cruise ship.
It was about midday, so all five of us, Lyn, Brian, Mum, my stepdad Dave and I saddled up and drove through the traffic to head on down the coast. Muscat is a couple of hours drive from the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, so we were off to explore that. The drive down the coast is really nice. Apparently, the road used to be terrible, but now they've nearly finished a big highway, so it's fine. Part of me wishes that we could have explored along some poky road, but then again, it isn't a short distance so that probably would have gotten tiring fast. As it was, we zipped along between massive, steep mountains and the sea. Very cool.
The thing about the landscape in Oman is that if dry terrain with little vegetation brings the words 'barren' and 'desolate' to mind, you may not enjoy it. But if the words 'arid' and 'stark' come to mind, then you'll love it. Luckily for me, I was in the second group, so I had a great time looking at the stark mountains rearing out of the narrow, arid coastal plain. There are all these Wadis that cut through the mountains, and they're very cool with really steep sides, and gravelly bottoms with a bit of scrub. Oh, Wadi is arabic for a river valley, usually a dry one. The last Wadi we went through was huge, really high cliffs, and with actual water running through it, sparkling in the sunlight. Unfortunately, I failed to get a photo in time. Also, we saw some bedouin women driving a big herd of goats next to the road.
We passed a big oil refinery, then arrived in Sur, a coastal town of moderate size. It was ok. It had an inlet, but it was low tide so kinda drab. We didn't stay long. Then we drove off to Al Hadd, which is a small town right on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. It took us a while to find the accomodation we were looking for. We went to the wrong place at first. But eventually we found Turtle Beach Resorts right near Ras Al Hadd (Ras seems to mean beach or bay in Arabic). It was quite cool and funky. Little huts with common facilities. The common area/restaurant was shaped like a dhow (traditional ship). It even had its own private area of the beach. I'm not sure exactly why, it was in the middle of nowhere, but nonetheless it was fenced off! The thing I really liked about it was that it wasn't really swanky. It was quite low key. Still horrifically expensive, but that seems to be Oman. There were a couple of groups of people and a big bunch of Omanis and Qataris playing volleyball. It's always a good sign when local people are willing to stay at a place/pay the cost.
I joined in with the guys playing volleyball. I haven't played in years, and I was pretty terrible, but we had fun. It turned out they were all Lieutenants in the Omani or Qatari Air Force doing training exercises together, and they'd come here on their day off! That was pretty random. Oh, one guy, Yasser, was a Major. He was like a flight traffic controller for the air base or something. So I chatted with them, and even had an interesting theological discussion on the merits of believing in Islam or Agnosticism.
Dinner was tasty, and then, well after dark, we went to Ras Al Jin, a beach on the other side of the point, because...
Turtles! Turtles nest on the beach and then hatch and go down to the sea. So we went to this big building, where we paid the fee to have a guided tour in the dark. I think it was about NZ$15 per person, very reasonable. We wandered down a dark track to the beach, where we had to wait for a bit. The guide told us a couple of interesting facts about turtles. They live well over a hundred. Their gender is determined by the temperature of the sand the eggs are in, etc. I also met a kiwi guy who was hitchhiking round Oman. Small world.
Then we went to go see a turtle that was digging a hollow in the sand for her eggs. She was huge! Much bigger than I anticipated. And apparently she was only a medium one. She was using her front flippers to sweep swathes of sand behind her, and her hind flippers for a more controlled, narrow depression. So methodical.
Then he took us to a different part where there were...
Baby Turtles! So cute! There were a bunch of them emerging from the sand and moving their flippers wildly to motor at quite surprising speeds across the sand to the beach. Apparently, only about 2 to 3 reach maturity of every thousand that are born. It was quite sad to see some which weren't born as strong, floundering and moving in circles. I guess they're the ones that won't make it before the sun rises, and will thus expire in the heat or get eaten by birds or something.
I'm not someone who necessarily thinks Natural Selection is a good thing, but it was certainly interesting to see it in action.
After that we wandered back to our cars and headed back to the cabins for a bit of a chat and then off to bed!
That was a pretty long post, so I'll leave it there for now. :)
Oman - Day 1
Breakfast at out hotel (Hotel Muttrah) was average apart from my first encounter with 'foul mudammas' which are a kind of curried beans. Quite tasty if done right. Oh, and it's pronounced fool. We had met up late the night before with Lyn and Brian, two friends of Mum's, and they'd hired a car, so after breakfast we drove off to Old Muscat.
Old Muscat is now the administrative heart of Oman, with various ministries and the Sultan's palace. It's quite nice and we drove to the waterfront and had a wander. Muscat has been a trading port for centuries. It was controlled by the Portuguese around the 18th Century and they built a lot of forts on the ridges around Muscat. The harbour is kinda pretty, sheer rocky hills rearing out of a deep, calm harbour. It was so quintessentially the perfect harbour that I felt like I was on a movie set or something. Anyway, we wandered over to see if we could climb up to one of the cool forts on the ridge, but a very friendly soldier called Abdullah informed me: "You want to walk around, look up at fort, take pictures: No problem. You want to go into fort: Problem." Turns out the big fort is still in use by the army. A bit later we tried to climb up a ridge to an abandoned fort on another ridge, but the only track seems to have had the Ministry of Health built in front of it... Odd. It makes sense in a way though. One thing I've noticed here in the Middle East is that they are actually very conscious about restricting access to vantage points that overlook palaces or key governmental areas. I guess they're worried about someone just freely wandering up there with an Rocket-propelled grenade or something.
So we wandered around Old Muscat. The Sultan's palace is nice in a very colourful way. Dave said it made him think of Toy Town. It was really nice to wander around with all these nice buildings with date palms and rocky mountains. Warm air and sunlight. Good look for the Middle East. Modern but with its own cultural flavour. All the governmental employees I saw wandering around were Omanis in formal, traditional garb.
Actually, the sultan is pursuing a strong policy of Omanisation in the government and other sectors. He's spending a lot of money on higher education for the Omani people, to try and get them to be the skilled labour force in Oman. I think it would be overkill in NZ. Something Winston Peters might dream up, to put NZ citizens (and potentially certain ethnic groups) ahead of foreigners. But in Oman, I feel it's a good plan. They need to do something to build up and maintain the domestic intellectual capital. They're an oil country, and if they just spend all that revenue on consumption, then the times will be great until the oil runs out and then they're stuffed, but if they spend it on capital investment, then they'll do a lot better. The Omanisation of the economy is possibly unfair to immigrants, but will result in getting both the education and experience for Oman to move forward. Perhaps. This is, of course, just a cursory perspective.
Anyway, we went off to Muttrah bay which is just next to Old Muscat, and wandered through the Muttrah souq (market), which was fun but I still didn't find a nice, light shirt that I wanted to buy. Had a really yummy mango juice though. There were quite a few tourists off a cruise ship.
It was about midday, so all five of us, Lyn, Brian, Mum, my stepdad Dave and I saddled up and drove through the traffic to head on down the coast. Muscat is a couple of hours drive from the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, so we were off to explore that. The drive down the coast is really nice. Apparently, the road used to be terrible, but now they've nearly finished a big highway, so it's fine. Part of me wishes that we could have explored along some poky road, but then again, it isn't a short distance so that probably would have gotten tiring fast. As it was, we zipped along between massive, steep mountains and the sea. Very cool.
The thing about the landscape in Oman is that if dry terrain with little vegetation brings the words 'barren' and 'desolate' to mind, you may not enjoy it. But if the words 'arid' and 'stark' come to mind, then you'll love it. Luckily for me, I was in the second group, so I had a great time looking at the stark mountains rearing out of the narrow, arid coastal plain. There are all these Wadis that cut through the mountains, and they're very cool with really steep sides, and gravelly bottoms with a bit of scrub. Oh, Wadi is arabic for a river valley, usually a dry one. The last Wadi we went through was huge, really high cliffs, and with actual water running through it, sparkling in the sunlight. Unfortunately, I failed to get a photo in time. Also, we saw some bedouin women driving a big herd of goats next to the road.
We passed a big oil refinery, then arrived in Sur, a coastal town of moderate size. It was ok. It had an inlet, but it was low tide so kinda drab. We didn't stay long. Then we drove off to Al Hadd, which is a small town right on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. It took us a while to find the accomodation we were looking for. We went to the wrong place at first. But eventually we found Turtle Beach Resorts right near Ras Al Hadd (Ras seems to mean beach or bay in Arabic). It was quite cool and funky. Little huts with common facilities. The common area/restaurant was shaped like a dhow (traditional ship). It even had its own private area of the beach. I'm not sure exactly why, it was in the middle of nowhere, but nonetheless it was fenced off! The thing I really liked about it was that it wasn't really swanky. It was quite low key. Still horrifically expensive, but that seems to be Oman. There were a couple of groups of people and a big bunch of Omanis and Qataris playing volleyball. It's always a good sign when local people are willing to stay at a place/pay the cost.
I joined in with the guys playing volleyball. I haven't played in years, and I was pretty terrible, but we had fun. It turned out they were all Lieutenants in the Omani or Qatari Air Force doing training exercises together, and they'd come here on their day off! That was pretty random. Oh, one guy, Yasser, was a Major. He was like a flight traffic controller for the air base or something. So I chatted with them, and even had an interesting theological discussion on the merits of believing in Islam or Agnosticism.
Dinner was tasty, and then, well after dark, we went to Ras Al Jin, a beach on the other side of the point, because...
Turtles! Turtles nest on the beach and then hatch and go down to the sea. So we went to this big building, where we paid the fee to have a guided tour in the dark. I think it was about NZ$15 per person, very reasonable. We wandered down a dark track to the beach, where we had to wait for a bit. The guide told us a couple of interesting facts about turtles. They live well over a hundred. Their gender is determined by the temperature of the sand the eggs are in, etc. I also met a kiwi guy who was hitchhiking round Oman. Small world.
Then we went to go see a turtle that was digging a hollow in the sand for her eggs. She was huge! Much bigger than I anticipated. And apparently she was only a medium one. She was using her front flippers to sweep swathes of sand behind her, and her hind flippers for a more controlled, narrow depression. So methodical.
Then he took us to a different part where there were...
Baby Turtles! So cute! There were a bunch of them emerging from the sand and moving their flippers wildly to motor at quite surprising speeds across the sand to the beach. Apparently, only about 2 to 3 reach maturity of every thousand that are born. It was quite sad to see some which weren't born as strong, floundering and moving in circles. I guess they're the ones that won't make it before the sun rises, and will thus expire in the heat or get eaten by birds or something.
I'm not someone who necessarily thinks Natural Selection is a good thing, but it was certainly interesting to see it in action.
After that we wandered back to our cars and headed back to the cabins for a bit of a chat and then off to bed!
That was a pretty long post, so I'll leave it there for now. :)