It’s warm here

Muscat

Finally, I took a week off. It’s the first leave I’ve taken since last March from Guangzhou. Honestly, since I’ve had holidays and home leave, it’s not so much this was much-needed, but I really felt I needed to do it just to cull down some of my leave hours.

So far, it’s been long weekends. The last three destinations have been cold, so I aimed for warmth this time around. And although it’s much warmer than Istanbul, I don’t really consider 60 degrees in the morning warm.

The early morning I arrived in Muscat, Oman, the wind shocked me when I got off the plane. Later, I found out it’d rained hard the day before – an anomaly. And it was still cool. For the most part, the days have been in the low 70s. Wendy would be wearing a winter coat. So are some of the locals.

Burj Khalifa, 124th floor and up

But the trip’s been really good, I think. I went snorkeling in Muscat – oh, man, the water was cold – and hiking in a canyon at Wadi Shab. And I just hung out at the beach, collecting shells and walking up and down. That was more than enough for me.

Between the boat ride to the swim – about 20 minutes at speedboat pace – and the cold water snorkel, I wound up with a cold, and hopefully I can get rid of it before I get home. I’m at the cough-til-you-choke stage.

From Muscat, I took a bus ride that should have been six hours but was more like nine and wound up in Dubai, which is an absolutely amazing city. It’s so … planned. There are all these skyscrapers – including the world’s highest, the Burj Khalifa, at 160 stories – and you look around and realize than 10 and 20 years ago, they didn’t exist. Fifty years ago, the UAE didn’t exist.

Looking out from inside
of big mosque in Abu Dhabi

What I learned at the border – do not enter UAE on a diplomatic passport unless you have a visa. I handed them the wrong passport without thinking about it and after the lady stamped it, I left and went to try to exchange money. I minute later, I heard someone calling someone and looked up – it was the other customs officer, signaling me back. Went to the lady and she said I couldn’t enter the country. I was completely flabbergasted but then realized my mistake and handed her the correct passport, no worries.

However, a bit later at customs, I and another lady were the “randomly selected to search your crap” women, and that officer discovered my diplomatic passport when she dumped out my little Jansport bag. This caused more utter confusion because what normal person carries around two passports? She asked if one was expired and I said no, obviously because that’s the truth. This confused her, probably because they don’t first of all get too many diplomatic passports and then therefore don’t randomly select for searching people with diplomatic and tourist passports. She asked for clarification and I just said one was for work. She asked me where I worked and I told her.

Abu Dhabi desert safari

 Fortunately, the truth works and I was clear. I pack very lightly and I think it surprised her how little I had, and about 1/5 of the whole bag was food – I’d had what amounted to an apartment in Muscat (seriously, it was larger than my apartment in Jakarta) and had gone grocery shopping because that place is ridiculously expensive. I was carrying the leftovers, mostly Coke and noodles, to the Dubai.

Dubai is the most western city I’ve been in abroad, I think. Yes, there are people walking around in headscarves and the male Arabian dress, but I have eaten at Buffalo Wild Wings, Tim Horton’s, TGI Friday’s and The Cheesecake Factory. There are malls like I’ve never seen malls. I mean, Zippy would have a field day, and not just because there’s a store called Zippy. The place is just amazing.

Inside mosque. Can't say
I have a clue what
some of these mean.

Abu Dhabi is the last stop on the trip, and the bus ride from Dubai was a much more manageable two hours or so, dropping travelers in front of yet another mall. It wasn’t as spectacular as the Dubai ones, but it still had TGI Friday’s. I’ve seen another Tim’s here as well. What I should track down is the Five Guys. I’m not sure if my gut can handle much more American food, though.

Tomorrow’s my last day here – my flight leaves at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning. Tomorrow will be a slow stroll through Abu Dhabi – maybe the mosque, maybe Five Guys, maybe the paperback I swapped for in the last hotel. In the afternoon, I do the sand dune thing and then head back to the hotel to grab a cab to the airport. I’m supposed to land around 8 a.m. and I’m already worried about what happens when I get to work on Monday.

The worst part of vacations is when you realize they’re almost over and your thoughts turn to work emails. Sigh.