Best part of the trip

At this point, my vacation is in the history books, but because I came back sick and then had another quickie the next weekend, I haven’t really pondered the trip.

The destination was selected for warmth and although it was much colder than expected (meaning high 50s, 60s and low 70s instead of the 80s-90s that I expected and I came away with a bad cold, it was glorious. I aimed for the desert, hitting up Muscat, Oman and both Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the UAE.

The plans included the snorkeling in Muscat and the Burj Khalifa and malls in Dubai, but I really wasn’t sure about Abu Dhabi. By that time, I was mall’d out; I think at one point I’d been to four in a day, and I am not a mall person. It’s just the thing to do in Dubai, so I went with the crowd.

Anyway, upon advice from friends, I did the desert safari thing from Abu Dhabi. These things are billed as once-in-a-lifetime excursions and this makes No. 3 for me, so that’s kind of relative. I did one in Morocco when I set up that tour, and of course that will forever remain the best, and then I did the one in Wadi Rum earlier this tour. But the one in Abu Dhabi involved just a quick excursion into the desert and “dune bashing,” which is when you get in a Toyota Landcruiser with five strangers and a driver and play follow-the-leader up and down sand dunes for about 30 minutes. I’m actually kind of environmentally opposed to these things, but there wasn’t much else to do there, unless you’re into malls.

I did the excursion at night, which means I got picked up from my hotel at 3 p.m. – this was a little snafu, because I was told “at 3 p.m. sharp” and when I stepped outside at 3 p.m. sharp, the concierge guy said oh, you’re waiting for them? They were here but left 15 minutes ago. He called them for me and they came back. The concierge, who was Indian, said, “Oh, you know how Indians are!” But they did circle back and get me. 

After meeting at a certain spot and letting a lot of air out of our tires, we played follow the leader in a group of about 12 Landcruisers (seriously, there were no other makes or models). We’d go 5-10 minutes, then stop again for something, like to see camels or just take in the view. I think this was to keep us from turning green. I saw one person – not in my Toyota – who was really sick.

The dinner trip dropped us off at a Bedoin camp, which is the same thing I did in Wadi Rum. In Morocco, it was the same thing except it’s called Berber there. But it’s fun. We had a nice meal and then there was a dancing demonstration – a guy and then a bellydancer. I was really amazed they could spin in circles for 5-10 minutes without throwing up!

At that spot, we were able to do little camel rides (like petting zoo rides, almost) and try our hand at sand boarding. Our little crew of Landcruisers got there first (all told, there were a couple hundred people at the event) and I went straight to the hill to try that. I wasn’t about to stand up, but I did drag the little board up the dune and sled down it about 10 times. It’s much harder going up than down!

It was a fun little trip, and I can’t imagine there’s anything left for me to do in a desert. Morocco is still the No. 1, in part because it’s Morocco and in part because it was an overnight trip. I remember seeing a shooting start and into Algeria. Toyota can’t beat that.

But once home and back at work, when people asked my highlight of the trip, it wasn’t the desert. Or the mall. After really thinking about it, it was stumbling upon Tim Horton’s. Oh, man.

For those who don’t know, Tim’s is a Canadian donut chain that has the best Canadian Maple donut ever. While living in Detroit, I went to Timmy Ho’s many a time. And when the chain expanded into the U.S., my area got a store in Livonia, so that was just phenomenal.

At some point, Wendy’s bought it, and then at some point, sold it or spun it off or something, plus lost the apostrophe. I personally refuse to drop the apostrophe, because Tim Horton, the hockey player who founded the chain, did not have an “s” on the end of his name. As far as I’m concerned, it’s still Tim Horton’s.

And there it was, in Muscat. Muscat was one expensive city and I was counting my rials, but when I saw Tim’s, I hesitated not. Well, that’s not true. I was walking and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something that I swore was a Tim Horton’s, but knew it couldn’t possibly be true, so I kept walking. When I realized it WAS Tim’s, I stopped dead in my tracks, then bulldozed in for a Canadian maple. And relished it.

Later, when I took a cab from the bus station in Dubai to my hotel, I saw another! After my trip to the Burj Khalifa, I walked back to the hotel – around an hour and a half walk – and found that one again and bought six donuts for my three breakfasts in the city. It was amazing.

Then, in Abu Dhabi, the last day after visiting the mosque, I went to the waterfront mall to try to find Five Guys. I got there around 10:30 in the morning and it was just too early for a burger, so I found Timmy’s again and had a chicken panini and another Canadian maple donut.

And  you know what, it’s everything I remembered it to be.

All As in geography

Mother Armenia

Travel is plentiful from Istanbul; I can get to a bunch of places in under three hours. At some point, I wrote down all the holidays and a bunch of potential destinations and I’m buying tickets when I can. Not all of it’s sketched out yet, but so far there are trips planned up through August.

May’s going to be a fun month because we have three three-day weekends. I’m staying in town for one of those to run a 10k but have to decide where to go on the other two. Kosovo, Macedonia, Austria and Yerevan were down as potentials for then because I’ve heard the weather’s good.

I did bulk buy of tickets before Christmas for holidays up to St. Patrick’s Day, starting with Kyiv and Sarajevo. I also did Chisinau and decided after that that I needed to go warm, so I did the Oman/UAE thing for an entire week. I didn’t realize that Presidents’ Weekend was the weekend after and I’d be going back-to-back, but I did intend to aim reasonably warm. I figured I’d give Albania a shot. I mean, who goes to Albania?

Healthy tea, in a very
generic way

So I bought a ticket and got a hotel and, looking at the computer screen, thought, “Wait a minute. Isn’t Tirana the capital of Albania?” I’d bought a flight and booked a hotel to Yerevan. I couldn’t recall off the top of my head where Yerevan was and honestly had to Google it to figure out I was going to spend Presidents’ Day weekend in Albania.

They’re all As, right? So what’s the difference? Well, for starters, about 30 degrees. The temperature in Tirana was 42 and Yerevan was 12. Oh, man. And since I was still coughing, I didn’t think this was going to be good. I brought a David Baldacci book – Forgotten – and figured if I did nothing else, I’d hang out in the hotel (Hotel Meg for good reviews) and read.

I think I packed lighter than I’ve ever packed. I wore a pair of lined jeans, a long-sleeved denim shirt and a sweatshirt. Clothes-wise, that was it. Well, other than the super heavy LL Bean coat, a scarf and the Centennial Classic hat/Red Wings gloves that Dana gave me. Since my flight left on Friday night at midnight there and then left for Istanbul Monday at 6, I figured I’d just wear the same stuff. I brought more vitamin C tablets than I did changes of underwear.

It was so utterly cold but sunny and gorgeous. I had a wonderful time and loved Yerevan, even though I thought it was in Albania. I did really good not to come away with another rug – those Armenian designs and colors were right up my alley.

Getting in the country was a little dicey. The flight – Atlas Air – went just fine, but I was sick and coughing and we landed at 3 a.m. I had a car hired to pick me up and just wanted to go to bed. But first, immigration.

Since I walk fast, I was pretty much one of the first people in line and I got stamped immediately. I started to leave, and a customs official stopped me for more questioning. OK, no worries. I got taken back to a little room, where another official asked why I had gone to Azerbaijan.

It never occurred to me that Azerbaijan and Armenia might not get along, but they wanted to know what I had done there – I visited a friend – and then asked why I was in Yerevan. Fortunately, even in my mucus-filled fog, I knew “Because I thought it was Albania” was the wrong answer and I said tourism. Albania or Armenia, that’s what I was going to do.

They then asked where I was staying and my phone number, which I happily gave. I don’t mess with international officials. I certainly understand people getting selected for questions, which is what I’d assumed had happened. And as I sat there, I realized how it would look strange for this random American to hand over a passport with a few short stays in Eastern European countries. It occurred to me that my diplomatic passport would demonstrate that I was based in Istanbul, so these weren’t trips from the U.S., which really would have been weird. (Although, quite honestly, I’ve done it before, but not as often.) So I pulled out my diplomatic passport and asked them if they needed to see my Turkish visa.

They backed off so quickly they risked whiplash. It had not been my intention to play the “I’m a diplomat” card – indeed, I never said it – but as soon as the two officers saw it, they started apologizing left and right. “Oh, mistake! Mistake!” I didn’t see the need to apologize – they were just doing their job – but it was kind of funny. 

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.