23rd-28th October - Days 25-30 - Cairo, Egypt
6 days melted into one as we returned to that city we now call home – Cairo. Our pockets breathed a sigh of relief as we took the bus from the airport to Midan Tahrir without having to ask our banks for permission first, and we hopped back to the Dahab Hostel and settled in for a few days of business, leisure and lazy wandering.
The business portion consisted of 2 parts: Getting the Sudanese visa, and then getting a ferry ticket across Lake Nasser into Sudan. This first part was complicated by several predictable factors – Sudanese bureaucracy, the French consulate, and our ever decreasing ability to wake up to alarms. We had gone into the Sudanese embassy and were instructed by a man who we would (with great affection) come to call Mr. Asshole that we had to bring 2 photos, a letter of recommendation from our embassy and 100$. M delightfully demonstrated the advantages of being Finnish as she swanned off to Zamalek, got her letter and had a coffee even before I had squirmed my way out of the metro in search of the consulate, which internet maps had told me was out east in a district I’d never been to. As I walked further down the small, dirty and empty streets, asking people who couldn’t give me answers, I became more and more doubtful that I would find the French consulate here. We needed to get the letters into the Sudanese embassy by 12, and it was now 11. The clock was ticking. I decided to abandon my map and ask everyone, getting pointed in vague and contradictory directions each time. Eventually one gentleman informed me that I was in the wrong part of town and bundled me into a taxi with strict instructions to the driver, and off we set across town. An hour and many kilometres of traffic jams later I emerged sweating, tired and cursing at the foot of the Finnish embassy building where M was sat, looking unfussed and refreshed. Trying the phone number several times again, I cursed the Republic even more vigorously. M’s suggestion we go up to the Finnish embassy again bore fruit, and we had an address and a phone number. It turns out that there are 2 El-Fadl streets in Cairo and that Mappy had given me not the large street in the centre of town, but the filthy alleyway out in the suburbs. The joys of travel.
There was a twist in the story yet as the consulate found itself completely unable to pick up the phone when I called it, and then refused to issue me a letter of recommendation on government orders. Mr. Asshole was not going to be happy about this.
And so it proved the next day as we handed in our applications, with Mr. Asshole assuring me that I would not get a visa without a letter of recommendation. I tried to smile and persuade him that he could give me one but he kept on repeating the same two slogans : “No letter, no visa”, and “I told you the rule”. Great. Thankfully M knows how France works and wasn’t overly fussed as we thought we could try again at the consulate in Aswan. Having made us stand around and wait for 3 hours, Mr. Asshole told us we could come back tomorrow to pay, and we began to see a hint of a smile. The day after, we got our passports back, laden with visas. Our names are misspelt on both of them but Mr. Asshole sorted us out well.
Our desperate last minute attempts to buy ferry tickets sank because it was too late but we’ll go back on Saturday as we were ordered to in order to try our luck again.
Leisure has taken many forms as well : lying around, drinking tea and beer, playing backgammon and wandering around the area with the various interesting characters we’ve met – Daniel and Megan, two Americans studying in Moscow; Derrick, a Dutch guy who introduced us to the wonderful game “Cow trade”, and Richard, an English guy who’s heading down to Cape Town and should, inch’allah, be on the boat with us on Monday. The less interesting characters, like the Swedish group who drink lots and say very little, we have tried to avoid. Many hours of backgammon, many gallons of tea and many hours of lazing later, we’ve hopped on a bus to Dahab on the Sinai coast for a couple of days before heading back to Cairo on Saturday and starting the long slog south. Daniel and Megan offered to keep our backpacks in their room so we’re free of them for a couple of days. Woohoo.
This entry is dedicated to M on her 26th birthday and on finding out her sky high thesis grade – I apologise to her that the first bar I took her to had already closed down and that we couldn’t find the second one but at least we had Thai food with Egyptian wine!
Thursday 29 October 2009
Communiqué to M’s friends
Dear Friends of M,
Before leaving on this trip, I heard vague rumours of your concern that I would be dragging M from one fleapit hostel to another, spending the occasional night sleeping under a bridge and only eating berries plucked from trees and whatever we could find crawling around under rocks in an endless quest to spend as little money as possible. I would like to assure you that this is not the case. In the last week we have done the following:
Before leaving on this trip, I heard vague rumours of your concern that I would be dragging M from one fleapit hostel to another, spending the occasional night sleeping under a bridge and only eating berries plucked from trees and whatever we could find crawling around under rocks in an endless quest to spend as little money as possible. I would like to assure you that this is not the case. In the last week we have done the following:
A meal and bottle of wine at “Trader Vic’s”, a restaurant in the InterContinental Hotel in Muscat.
A tour of the desert, just for the two of us, in an air-conditioned 4x4
A dolphin watching trip.
2 nights in an apartment hotel in Dubai (this picture features only one of five rooms)
Total cost of above activities: Enough to gain us super-quadruple-platinum membership of Amex
Total cockroaches spotted: Zero.
I’m already starting to think of applying for jobs and preparing myself for the end of the cash reserves although hopefully your fears will have been allayed, at least for now :)
Plane Stupid
21st-22nd October 2009 – Days 23-24 – Muscat, Oman
Needless to say really, but we did not only miss out on the mosque but got to Gabor’s office closer to 1pm more to show our humiliated faces and to say thanks once more for the tour than to rent any cars. I also felt a headache strong enough to put me off driving mounting already early on in the morning, so this time the disappointment of still not getting to drive does not swoosh over me in the slightest.
Instead, we took a microbus to the nearby fishing town of Seeb as our afternoon activity. Less than an hour’s drive west from Muscat city, this quiet town is a regular stop for the locals for some fair-priced tailoring and other shopping. During our stay in Seeb we scoured the main street and the corniche in search of squid kebabs – the first we did slightly poorly at, but the squid kebabs we managed to enjoy fresh out of fire and concluded them being worth our rials even if they don’t top the ones I’ve munched in Cambodia and Vietnam on my earlier journeys. I also ended up spending a couple of rials on Omani halwa (softer and gooeyer than its Middle Eastern counterpart and made mostly out of dried fruit instead of nuts and almonds) and local coffee to take as souvenirs to be indulged in on those social nights to come along the way.
The lure of the squid man
Pre-empting our morning flight out of Muscat the next day we decided to come back from Seeb in good time and spent our evening recovering over some excellent Moroccan tagines and thé à la menthe in one of the centres of Muscat we hadn’t yet explored. Back at the hotel well before midnight, we should surely wake up to the six alarms we set to start at around 7am and safely embark the plane scheduled to leave at 10am.
Next picture – a déjà vu from my Parisian times when we had a certain TGV to catch with my flatmate and I shook her up too late for standing a chance at catching it – “T! T!!!!! T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We’ve missed the plane!! It’s 11am!!!!”. What followed from this was a trip to the Gulf Air office with one of T’s well-renowned stories that he has a habit of making up at tough spots. As I was focusing on looking miserable and ashamed, T blabbered away to the clerk about how our rental car had broken up on the way back to Muscat this morning and we couldn’t make it to the airport on time despite having got up at 4am in order to drive the distance from Nizwa (a town in central Oman, in the Hajar Mountains) specifically reserving enough time to catch our plane. A couple of remarks about how beautiful Oman is but how crappy it is to have a car break down here as the distances are great and roads winding was all it took to get the clerk to issue new tickets for us for the same evening, with a layover in Bahrain airport overnight. After the clerk said we would not be charged for the re-issuance this time, T nicely topped the story off with a joke about sending the bill to Europcar even if that would have been the case. Hurrah! Bravo! Academy award! And good luck on your career as an act… I mean politician, T! And too bad for your brand value, Europcar. We walked out of the office with our new tickets and couldn’t resist to high five already before turning the corner.
We suddenly had an extra afternoon in our hands in Muscat. Without further ado, I spotted an ad for dolphin watching trips and within 30 minutes we were at the marina sitting on a boat with some well-to-do Emirati tourists. We got a nice and speedy (read: bumpy) ride along the coastal corners around Muscat and were offered various snacks by the smiling women of the party which seemed to appear regularly out of some miracle secret pockets inside their abeyyas. We didn’t see any dolphins, however, as they apparently come close to the shoreline in the mornings to eat and then bugger off further out of reach of these kinds of trips. Oh well, we’ll just have to come back for the bottle-noses or try catch them elsewhere another time.
An apparently famous sea arch.
With apologies to those who are bored of sunset pictures by now...
With some nice sunset pics stored on our cameras’ memory cards we rolled up at the Muscat airport later that evening, well in time for our flight.
Needless to say really, but we did not only miss out on the mosque but got to Gabor’s office closer to 1pm more to show our humiliated faces and to say thanks once more for the tour than to rent any cars. I also felt a headache strong enough to put me off driving mounting already early on in the morning, so this time the disappointment of still not getting to drive does not swoosh over me in the slightest.
Instead, we took a microbus to the nearby fishing town of Seeb as our afternoon activity. Less than an hour’s drive west from Muscat city, this quiet town is a regular stop for the locals for some fair-priced tailoring and other shopping. During our stay in Seeb we scoured the main street and the corniche in search of squid kebabs – the first we did slightly poorly at, but the squid kebabs we managed to enjoy fresh out of fire and concluded them being worth our rials even if they don’t top the ones I’ve munched in Cambodia and Vietnam on my earlier journeys. I also ended up spending a couple of rials on Omani halwa (softer and gooeyer than its Middle Eastern counterpart and made mostly out of dried fruit instead of nuts and almonds) and local coffee to take as souvenirs to be indulged in on those social nights to come along the way.
The lure of the squid manPre-empting our morning flight out of Muscat the next day we decided to come back from Seeb in good time and spent our evening recovering over some excellent Moroccan tagines and thé à la menthe in one of the centres of Muscat we hadn’t yet explored. Back at the hotel well before midnight, we should surely wake up to the six alarms we set to start at around 7am and safely embark the plane scheduled to leave at 10am.
Next picture – a déjà vu from my Parisian times when we had a certain TGV to catch with my flatmate and I shook her up too late for standing a chance at catching it – “T! T!!!!! T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We’ve missed the plane!! It’s 11am!!!!”. What followed from this was a trip to the Gulf Air office with one of T’s well-renowned stories that he has a habit of making up at tough spots. As I was focusing on looking miserable and ashamed, T blabbered away to the clerk about how our rental car had broken up on the way back to Muscat this morning and we couldn’t make it to the airport on time despite having got up at 4am in order to drive the distance from Nizwa (a town in central Oman, in the Hajar Mountains) specifically reserving enough time to catch our plane. A couple of remarks about how beautiful Oman is but how crappy it is to have a car break down here as the distances are great and roads winding was all it took to get the clerk to issue new tickets for us for the same evening, with a layover in Bahrain airport overnight. After the clerk said we would not be charged for the re-issuance this time, T nicely topped the story off with a joke about sending the bill to Europcar even if that would have been the case. Hurrah! Bravo! Academy award! And good luck on your career as an act… I mean politician, T! And too bad for your brand value, Europcar. We walked out of the office with our new tickets and couldn’t resist to high five already before turning the corner.
We suddenly had an extra afternoon in our hands in Muscat. Without further ado, I spotted an ad for dolphin watching trips and within 30 minutes we were at the marina sitting on a boat with some well-to-do Emirati tourists. We got a nice and speedy (read: bumpy) ride along the coastal corners around Muscat and were offered various snacks by the smiling women of the party which seemed to appear regularly out of some miracle secret pockets inside their abeyyas. We didn’t see any dolphins, however, as they apparently come close to the shoreline in the mornings to eat and then bugger off further out of reach of these kinds of trips. Oh well, we’ll just have to come back for the bottle-noses or try catch them elsewhere another time.
An apparently famous sea arch.
With apologies to those who are bored of sunset pictures by now...With some nice sunset pics stored on our cameras’ memory cards we rolled up at the Muscat airport later that evening, well in time for our flight.
Hard Come, Easy Go.....
19th – 20th October 2009 – Days 21-22 – Muscat, Wadi Shab and Wahiba Sands, Oman
With our total bill for the Dubai visit rising to roughly 250 € for what was effectively two nights stayed over and less than two days spent exploring this tower town (without only two of these €s spent on conventional shopping in the form of a skirt for me!), we courageously turned our back on all the glitter in order to head back to the more cozy coast on the Omani side.
Bus ride back from Dubai started at 7am, and the bus can be described cozy in a similar fashion than any town in Oman could be; comfortable with no frills and delivers the experience with just enough hassle that you feel the human factor. On this particular ride the human factor presented itself when there was less than 20 kms left to ride until reaching the terminus and the bus driver told everyone to get off and change onto another vehicle waiting outside in front of the bus. Either the first bus must have broke down at a seriously ridiculous moment on the main highway that feeds into Muscat downtown, or there’s some kind of restriction on buses older than certain vintage from being allowed inside the ring road. No explanations given or asked for, as we had to be woken up by the bus driver for the change and were far too sleepy to question anything, the journey continued safely for the last 20 kms. The only other moment that I can recall from the journey was the deliciously fit border guard on the Dubai side while exiting the Emirates. Could I have a stamp, pretty please, sir?
Back in Muscat, we staggered through our day with professional backpacker tactics. This means, of course, hitting the beach area of Shatti al-Qurm for some chilling under the sea breeze while enjoying various treats, ordering them one at a time and from different places so that you have the feeling of moving around when in fact you’re just staying inside a pathetic 100 m strip of beach. We don’t do this kind of thing too often, though, so we allow ourselves to feel good about spilling over to the enemy side. After intoxicating ourselves with some lush juice, fish & chips (yep, guess who’s the true Brit here…) and coffee with ice cream – all neatly within the set 100m strip limit – we booked ourselves in for the big bang to decorate the spending log a bit more: full day tour of some wadi and desert bashing covering a total distance of 600 kms to be driven across the country with a private driver-guide in a 4x4 with lunch and drinks included. Fun starts 8,30am tomorrow morning and comes wearing a price tag of 280€. The guide said that the only thing we need to bring is ourselves wearing hiking shoes and swim gear, but I’m guessing I might want to remember to wear something over that too.
Livin' the hard life in Shatti al-Qurm
Hard come, easy go – you know it.
----
The next morning we wake up at 8.25am and rush downstairs for our rendez-vous with Gabor, our possession for the day. This Hungarian guy turns out to be a lot of entertainment with his stories of experiences in Oman, where he has been living for five years now and running the tour operator business with his partner for the past two years. He is one of these straightforward individuals that I can imagine to split opinions, and we take the positive attitude towards this and feel at ease with him instantly.
Striking a pose to match the Omani coast.
Driving south on the eastern coast of Oman we stop at a sinkhole and some spots by the ocean accessible quickly on his colourfully painted off-roader, apparently unique in Oman and admired by the local guys. You can’t but smile at the camel smirking on the side of the car. After these preliminary shows of what him and his vehicle are made of we reach the first main attraction of the day, Wadi Shab. Gabor explains how the mouth of this wadi used to be accessible by foot until the area flooded under a year ago and leads us over what is now a creek coming out of the mouth of the wadi. A local young entrepreneur is running a monopoly service in crossing visitors over with his little boat which Gabor is not very impressed about as he has to dish unreasonable cash to the kiddo and also pay in advance already for what will be the return crossing later. We start walking up the wadi, which changes from being a gravel path to a more rocky climb on the way with some occasional jumping over the falaj, the local irrigation canal, that runs on the bottom of the wadi.
Taking a wander along the falaj
After about an hour’s walk we reach the end of the wadi, or the point of no further penetration by foot at least. We have come to the mouth of freshwater pools or lagoons which lead into a cave with some funky spots for climbing out of the water to do jumps back into the lagoon inside the cave. We climb and bomb back into the water a couple of times and just generally float around admiring the rock formations above and around us for a good hour before starting to head back. The cave is like a sweet secret haven, tailor-made for cooling ourselves off after the hike. We express our open envy to Gabor for his job and he starts scouting out for our possibilities to join his company for some work – he’s desperately short of staff and is complaining about how difficult it is to recruit suitable individuals for this kind of job who really make an effort towards the guests’ experience and don’t just play around at the company’s expense because they get to drive fancy cars around in scenic settings meeting new people and cashing out on decent salary on top of all that. Apparently the local guys have a bad habit of causing extra work at the garage as a result of some reckless off-road bashing. He starts to paint careers of a guide and a camp chef (that are always taken to the desert trips) for us. We kindly refuse for now but promise to come back to him if our other dream jobs fall through.
Gabor's demonstration of "another day at the office"
After the return crossing back to the parking lot Gabor loops his car around to provide a shady spot for our lunch break. We are offered various treats in small boxes and we feel happy about the first meal of the day, but Gabor mouths his opinion about the undercooked rice in the blunt wording of “I’m very sorry about the rice, it is just shit – I don’t understand how these people can toss up even in the simplest thing like this”.
As we drive further south to reach the Wahiba Sands I have “a micro nap” of a good half an hour in which time Gabor and T exchange life stories – Gabor having to tell his again later in the evening due to my badly timed doze-off. Dune bashing at the sands remains slightly disappointing due to the fact that by the time we get to the furthest town down before the sands begin and deflate our tires, there’s only an hour left until sunset. Gabor knows the limits of his car and skills, not being a Bedouin-level expert at desert driving just yet, and provides us with the best he possibly has time for before the darkness sets upon the dunes making them too hard to read well enough to avoid getting stuck. Gabor tells the story of his last failed attempt and the resulting dig-out mission and we insist on him not trying to cross his limits.
"The only Hungarian-speaking tour guide in Oman" bashes some dunes
M bashes some dunes in her own way
A few lucky dunes escaped a bashing...for now.
At sunset we pop into the nearby house of Gabor’s bedouin friend for a brief moment of Omani coffee, or kahwah, and dates. Despite T’s immense effort at coffee drinking (two cups downed for a non-coffee-drinker is fair enough), I master to paint us black as I receive a cup with my left hand, something which earns me a blunt displeased remark from Gabor. Luckily this mistake goes fairly unnoticed as the children of the house are putting up a right show off in front of the visitors with the little girl tricking her older brothers to mistreat her and her crawling back to mommy and the guests for some attention-seeking weeps before running off again to aggravate the boys some more. A case in point in revealing the true power structure of the families in Arab countries.
We head back into the darkness for the three hour drive back up to Muscat and hear some more great stories of the Omani way of life in the view of an expat worker. We tell Gabor about our troubles with getting a rental car and he makes some phone calls to check the situation concerning driving without IDP in Oman and gets confirmation from his friends about IDP not being necessary for renting and driving. He then promises to try sort out a car for us the next morning and we schedule a date at his office for this. He suggests we should not miss out on the Grand Mosque either so we agree to show up after a visit to the mosque first. In the end, Gabor leaves us at the InterContinental in Muscat and we head inside to splash yet some more cash under the pretext of celebrating my upcoming birthday. We dine in true expat style with a bottle of import rosé followed by some stinking cocktails which we could well have skipped... But once having opened the money-spending flood gates they just seem to be stuck open and result in other gates popping open with the flow. One of the white and orange coloured taxis carry us back to our hotel and yet again we strongly doubt our ability to make it to Gabor’s office (let alone the Mosque) in time.
With our total bill for the Dubai visit rising to roughly 250 € for what was effectively two nights stayed over and less than two days spent exploring this tower town (without only two of these €s spent on conventional shopping in the form of a skirt for me!), we courageously turned our back on all the glitter in order to head back to the more cozy coast on the Omani side.
Bus ride back from Dubai started at 7am, and the bus can be described cozy in a similar fashion than any town in Oman could be; comfortable with no frills and delivers the experience with just enough hassle that you feel the human factor. On this particular ride the human factor presented itself when there was less than 20 kms left to ride until reaching the terminus and the bus driver told everyone to get off and change onto another vehicle waiting outside in front of the bus. Either the first bus must have broke down at a seriously ridiculous moment on the main highway that feeds into Muscat downtown, or there’s some kind of restriction on buses older than certain vintage from being allowed inside the ring road. No explanations given or asked for, as we had to be woken up by the bus driver for the change and were far too sleepy to question anything, the journey continued safely for the last 20 kms. The only other moment that I can recall from the journey was the deliciously fit border guard on the Dubai side while exiting the Emirates. Could I have a stamp, pretty please, sir?
Back in Muscat, we staggered through our day with professional backpacker tactics. This means, of course, hitting the beach area of Shatti al-Qurm for some chilling under the sea breeze while enjoying various treats, ordering them one at a time and from different places so that you have the feeling of moving around when in fact you’re just staying inside a pathetic 100 m strip of beach. We don’t do this kind of thing too often, though, so we allow ourselves to feel good about spilling over to the enemy side. After intoxicating ourselves with some lush juice, fish & chips (yep, guess who’s the true Brit here…) and coffee with ice cream – all neatly within the set 100m strip limit – we booked ourselves in for the big bang to decorate the spending log a bit more: full day tour of some wadi and desert bashing covering a total distance of 600 kms to be driven across the country with a private driver-guide in a 4x4 with lunch and drinks included. Fun starts 8,30am tomorrow morning and comes wearing a price tag of 280€. The guide said that the only thing we need to bring is ourselves wearing hiking shoes and swim gear, but I’m guessing I might want to remember to wear something over that too.
Livin' the hard life in Shatti al-QurmHard come, easy go – you know it.
----
The next morning we wake up at 8.25am and rush downstairs for our rendez-vous with Gabor, our possession for the day. This Hungarian guy turns out to be a lot of entertainment with his stories of experiences in Oman, where he has been living for five years now and running the tour operator business with his partner for the past two years. He is one of these straightforward individuals that I can imagine to split opinions, and we take the positive attitude towards this and feel at ease with him instantly.
Striking a pose to match the Omani coast.Driving south on the eastern coast of Oman we stop at a sinkhole and some spots by the ocean accessible quickly on his colourfully painted off-roader, apparently unique in Oman and admired by the local guys. You can’t but smile at the camel smirking on the side of the car. After these preliminary shows of what him and his vehicle are made of we reach the first main attraction of the day, Wadi Shab. Gabor explains how the mouth of this wadi used to be accessible by foot until the area flooded under a year ago and leads us over what is now a creek coming out of the mouth of the wadi. A local young entrepreneur is running a monopoly service in crossing visitors over with his little boat which Gabor is not very impressed about as he has to dish unreasonable cash to the kiddo and also pay in advance already for what will be the return crossing later. We start walking up the wadi, which changes from being a gravel path to a more rocky climb on the way with some occasional jumping over the falaj, the local irrigation canal, that runs on the bottom of the wadi.
Taking a wander along the falajAfter about an hour’s walk we reach the end of the wadi, or the point of no further penetration by foot at least. We have come to the mouth of freshwater pools or lagoons which lead into a cave with some funky spots for climbing out of the water to do jumps back into the lagoon inside the cave. We climb and bomb back into the water a couple of times and just generally float around admiring the rock formations above and around us for a good hour before starting to head back. The cave is like a sweet secret haven, tailor-made for cooling ourselves off after the hike. We express our open envy to Gabor for his job and he starts scouting out for our possibilities to join his company for some work – he’s desperately short of staff and is complaining about how difficult it is to recruit suitable individuals for this kind of job who really make an effort towards the guests’ experience and don’t just play around at the company’s expense because they get to drive fancy cars around in scenic settings meeting new people and cashing out on decent salary on top of all that. Apparently the local guys have a bad habit of causing extra work at the garage as a result of some reckless off-road bashing. He starts to paint careers of a guide and a camp chef (that are always taken to the desert trips) for us. We kindly refuse for now but promise to come back to him if our other dream jobs fall through.
Gabor's demonstration of "another day at the office"After the return crossing back to the parking lot Gabor loops his car around to provide a shady spot for our lunch break. We are offered various treats in small boxes and we feel happy about the first meal of the day, but Gabor mouths his opinion about the undercooked rice in the blunt wording of “I’m very sorry about the rice, it is just shit – I don’t understand how these people can toss up even in the simplest thing like this”.
As we drive further south to reach the Wahiba Sands I have “a micro nap” of a good half an hour in which time Gabor and T exchange life stories – Gabor having to tell his again later in the evening due to my badly timed doze-off. Dune bashing at the sands remains slightly disappointing due to the fact that by the time we get to the furthest town down before the sands begin and deflate our tires, there’s only an hour left until sunset. Gabor knows the limits of his car and skills, not being a Bedouin-level expert at desert driving just yet, and provides us with the best he possibly has time for before the darkness sets upon the dunes making them too hard to read well enough to avoid getting stuck. Gabor tells the story of his last failed attempt and the resulting dig-out mission and we insist on him not trying to cross his limits.
"The only Hungarian-speaking tour guide in Oman" bashes some dunes
M bashes some dunes in her own way
A few lucky dunes escaped a bashing...for now.At sunset we pop into the nearby house of Gabor’s bedouin friend for a brief moment of Omani coffee, or kahwah, and dates. Despite T’s immense effort at coffee drinking (two cups downed for a non-coffee-drinker is fair enough), I master to paint us black as I receive a cup with my left hand, something which earns me a blunt displeased remark from Gabor. Luckily this mistake goes fairly unnoticed as the children of the house are putting up a right show off in front of the visitors with the little girl tricking her older brothers to mistreat her and her crawling back to mommy and the guests for some attention-seeking weeps before running off again to aggravate the boys some more. A case in point in revealing the true power structure of the families in Arab countries.
We head back into the darkness for the three hour drive back up to Muscat and hear some more great stories of the Omani way of life in the view of an expat worker. We tell Gabor about our troubles with getting a rental car and he makes some phone calls to check the situation concerning driving without IDP in Oman and gets confirmation from his friends about IDP not being necessary for renting and driving. He then promises to try sort out a car for us the next morning and we schedule a date at his office for this. He suggests we should not miss out on the Grand Mosque either so we agree to show up after a visit to the mosque first. In the end, Gabor leaves us at the InterContinental in Muscat and we head inside to splash yet some more cash under the pretext of celebrating my upcoming birthday. We dine in true expat style with a bottle of import rosé followed by some stinking cocktails which we could well have skipped... But once having opened the money-spending flood gates they just seem to be stuck open and result in other gates popping open with the flow. One of the white and orange coloured taxis carry us back to our hotel and yet again we strongly doubt our ability to make it to Gabor’s office (let alone the Mosque) in time.
Sunday 25 October 2009
I ♥ MONEY
17th-18th October 2009 – Days 19-20 – Dubai, United Arab Emirates
The outcome of yesterday’s choice was closer to option 1. I woke up with that familiar crappy feeling and we headed off for the bus to Dubai, which we couldn’t take because it was full. The baking Omani heat, my hangover and M’s inability to come to any kind of a decision left us sitting for a while until a bus to Buraimi, on the Emirati border pulled up. I made up my mind and we got on, and I fell asleep. Next thing I knew we were there, and walked across the border. In another one of those things which are impossible to understand but must be accepted, there are two border crossings in Buraimi, which go to the Emirati town of Al-Ain on the other side of the border. One is for Gulf countries only and takes you directly to the centre of Al-Ain. The other, which we ended up using, leaves out standing on the side of a highway, many kilometres out of town.
Once again, we stood around wandering where the nearest ATM was to pay for a taxi, until a 4x4 pulled up and a cheery voice spoke to the back of our heads. “Hi there! You guys need a lift?”. As I prayed to Allah that my alcohol sweat wouldn’t send our benefactors into immediate violent convulsions, we stepped in and thanked them for their help. To make me feel even better, one of their first words were “Sorry if we smell bad – we’ve been out collecting rocks all morning!”. I breathed a sigh of relief. My odour wasn’t going to kill anyone today. Jeff and Treva were a spritely couple from Missouri who showered us with help, invitations to their house for grilled fish, and drove us around town several times searching for snacks, money, and the bus stop to Dubai. We had to turn down their generous invite because we didn’t have anywhere to sleep in Dubai and felt that we should probably get going. My first act on the bus was, once again to fall asleep.
We decided that we wouldn’t have time to go to Musandam and so we’d just stay in Dubai to look at this huge city. M wants to see the desert and wadis in Oman and we don’t really have time to see both Musandam and the Wahiba Sands.
Dubai is a huge city in all dimensions, full of shiny things, people and money. It’s the biggest shrine to capitalism that I’ve ever seen – shopping malls are scattered all over the city, huge and imposing and offering different themes. M’s choice of Mall for us to visit, for instance, was themed on the Arab explorer Ibn Battuta and had various sections decorated according to the different areas he visited – Tunisia, Egypt, Andalusia, and so forth. An entire section was dedicated to restaurants, there was a 21 screen cinema, and the mall was open (and full of people) until midnight. People don’t only shop at malls, it’s a centre of Emirati social life too.
Ibn Battuta Mall - The large Chinese boats section
East meets West
Despite the shopping overload and the superficial nature of life there (big new cars and designer clothes everywhere you look) I found myself actually quite liking Dubai’s vibe. As I decided this the world looked on in shock and amazement although no-one was more surprised than me. I can’t really put my finger on it. It’s visibly impressive, of course, and it’s also a very functional city with a great public transport system, including waterboats and old abras going across the creek where the gentle sound of water splashing around the boat drowns out the traffic all around.
An oasis of calm...
It’s very Western in one way, although people wander around in all sorts of traditional clothing and there are lively souqs and old quarters too, for instance the Batakiya district with its low-rise sand coloured houses by the creek. In many parts of town you can quite easily forget you’re in a city world renowned for shopping and skyscrapers. I even found myself towards the end imagining that I could quite happily live there. That may be slightly over the top and I’m sure I’d get bored of hanging around in shopping malls and staring at glass giants although it was definitely better than I thought.
M waits for a bus through the skyscraper jungle.
Islam adopts to anything!
It is Dubai - honest! The Batakiya district unveils its charms
We ended up spending two days there (even if the second was by accident having missed the bus back to Muscat in what is becoming quite a trend) before heading back to Oman.
The ultimate Emirati souvenir - the world's largest gold ring. I politely turned down M's request to buy it for her
The outcome of yesterday’s choice was closer to option 1. I woke up with that familiar crappy feeling and we headed off for the bus to Dubai, which we couldn’t take because it was full. The baking Omani heat, my hangover and M’s inability to come to any kind of a decision left us sitting for a while until a bus to Buraimi, on the Emirati border pulled up. I made up my mind and we got on, and I fell asleep. Next thing I knew we were there, and walked across the border. In another one of those things which are impossible to understand but must be accepted, there are two border crossings in Buraimi, which go to the Emirati town of Al-Ain on the other side of the border. One is for Gulf countries only and takes you directly to the centre of Al-Ain. The other, which we ended up using, leaves out standing on the side of a highway, many kilometres out of town.
Once again, we stood around wandering where the nearest ATM was to pay for a taxi, until a 4x4 pulled up and a cheery voice spoke to the back of our heads. “Hi there! You guys need a lift?”. As I prayed to Allah that my alcohol sweat wouldn’t send our benefactors into immediate violent convulsions, we stepped in and thanked them for their help. To make me feel even better, one of their first words were “Sorry if we smell bad – we’ve been out collecting rocks all morning!”. I breathed a sigh of relief. My odour wasn’t going to kill anyone today. Jeff and Treva were a spritely couple from Missouri who showered us with help, invitations to their house for grilled fish, and drove us around town several times searching for snacks, money, and the bus stop to Dubai. We had to turn down their generous invite because we didn’t have anywhere to sleep in Dubai and felt that we should probably get going. My first act on the bus was, once again to fall asleep.
We decided that we wouldn’t have time to go to Musandam and so we’d just stay in Dubai to look at this huge city. M wants to see the desert and wadis in Oman and we don’t really have time to see both Musandam and the Wahiba Sands.
Dubai is a huge city in all dimensions, full of shiny things, people and money. It’s the biggest shrine to capitalism that I’ve ever seen – shopping malls are scattered all over the city, huge and imposing and offering different themes. M’s choice of Mall for us to visit, for instance, was themed on the Arab explorer Ibn Battuta and had various sections decorated according to the different areas he visited – Tunisia, Egypt, Andalusia, and so forth. An entire section was dedicated to restaurants, there was a 21 screen cinema, and the mall was open (and full of people) until midnight. People don’t only shop at malls, it’s a centre of Emirati social life too.
Ibn Battuta Mall - The large Chinese boats section
East meets WestDespite the shopping overload and the superficial nature of life there (big new cars and designer clothes everywhere you look) I found myself actually quite liking Dubai’s vibe. As I decided this the world looked on in shock and amazement although no-one was more surprised than me. I can’t really put my finger on it. It’s visibly impressive, of course, and it’s also a very functional city with a great public transport system, including waterboats and old abras going across the creek where the gentle sound of water splashing around the boat drowns out the traffic all around.
An oasis of calm...It’s very Western in one way, although people wander around in all sorts of traditional clothing and there are lively souqs and old quarters too, for instance the Batakiya district with its low-rise sand coloured houses by the creek. In many parts of town you can quite easily forget you’re in a city world renowned for shopping and skyscrapers. I even found myself towards the end imagining that I could quite happily live there. That may be slightly over the top and I’m sure I’d get bored of hanging around in shopping malls and staring at glass giants although it was definitely better than I thought.
M waits for a bus through the skyscraper jungle.
Islam adopts to anything!
It is Dubai - honest! The Batakiya district unveils its charmsWe ended up spending two days there (even if the second was by accident having missed the bus back to Muscat in what is becoming quite a trend) before heading back to Oman.
The ultimate Emirati souvenir - the world's largest gold ring. I politely turned down M's request to buy it for herM and T's Big Night Out!!!
16th October 2009 – Day 18 – Sohar, Oman
After finally managing to get up early enough to get a bus from Muscat, we find ourselves bound for the northern Omani town of Sohar. From the city bus stop, Sohar seems unremarkable enough and we settle on a plastic table with plastic chairs in the conservatively named Riyadh Restaurant for a drink as we decide what the hell to do from here. Various research missions to travel agents provide us with two bits of information: there are no more buses out of Sohar today; and the cheapest hotel in town costs 100€ a night for a double. Crap. Faced with this kind of situation, a wise traveller would not decide to head to Dubai, MoneyVille USA – but given that wisdom is not one of our foremost properties (even though, given M’s misadventures over the last 17 days, luck seems to be) we decide to do just that. We’ve read on the internet that the border crossing between here at Dubai is only open to Gulf citizens and so we decide to head to the Royal Omani Police to check out the current situation. And that’s where the fun starts. M waits outside while I go in to enquire as to the current status of the border crossing.
- Hi. I’ve come to ask for information – the Buraimi border post.. is it open ?
- Buraimi ? You want a taxi ?
- No no.. I would like to know if it’s open.
I feel already that this exchange is not really going anywhere. A few more fruitless exchanges follow until the guy asks me to follow him outside, and all seems to be going nowhere until he bumps into another guy, and leaves me in policeman #2’s seemingly capable hands.
Policeman #2, it turns out, is not only helpful but very friendly too. Not only that but, as an ex-tour guide, he speaks great English and loves to talk too. He asks me to hold on for a second while he calls a German friend of his. Buraimi, it turns out, is indeed open for EU citizens, so obstacle #1 has been surmounted. Obstacle #2 – Find-A-Cheap-Hotel – is equally easily sorted as our new friend Jaifar drives us there. Enjoying Jaifar’s company and wanting to thank him for his help, we ask him to take us somewhere to get him a drink and so we end up in the overly-opulent Sohar Beach Hotel. There’s a bar here and, so he’s told buy the barmen, there’s a Polish group playing there tonight too! A few beers later we meander off to the nightclub and the Polish group eventually turns up. I’d told Jaifar that Polish folk music was good but we never expected what we got – a Hans-Moleman-from-the-Simpsons lookalike fronted by three girls dressed in what even raging liberals would call supershort miniskirts – the whole ensemble, looking extremely bored, belting out classics from such artists as Enrique Iglesias, the Bangles, and Elton John.
The "Polish Band" feat. bored girls
As I go to the bar to get another beer, I meet Douglas, a Scottish mining expert who’s been living in the Gulf for seven years and has been recently transferred to Sohar. As with most people living far away from home, he’s an interesting character with plenty of stories to tell and the four of us make a good team in this rather surreal setting – discussing Omani culture and Middle Eastern travel (as well as Arabic swear words and miniskirts) with scantily-clad Polish teenagers singing Spice Girls hits in the background. Were we expecting this when we alighted in Sohar this afternoon? M and I agree that we didn’t. Douglas departs with the promise of trying to sort us out a bed with friends of his in the Emirates for tomorrow night and we bid him a fond farewell for now.
Jaifar, it turns out (or so he assures us), is in a fit state to drive us back to the hotel but not before getting us a shawarma each in what he tells us is the best snack joint In town, which we find hard to disagree with! This (typical??) Omani evening ends with us sitting tipsy in a shop doorway chowing down with the friendliest policeman in Oman. Well… why not indeed??? Jaifar drives off home and we leave him with great thanks and another fond farewell. He’s a keen traveller as well as a nice guy and I would hope that somewhere in this wide world we would meet again.
Jaifar and T, very happy after their shawarma
M and Jaifar feat. crooked Omani hat
It’s 3.15am as I write and we have two options for tomorrow:
1) A.k.a “What we want to happen”: We get onto the 9am bus to Dubai and get to the airport where Douglas told us we could get an International Driving License. We then rent a car, drive to either Fujairah or Ras al-Khaimah for the night with one of Douglas’s friends, before heading off to Oman’s Musandam peninsula (which Douglas has told us is extremely beautiful and full of natural wonders).
2) A.k.a “what is more likely to happen”: We get up too late to call Douglas before he gets into work, think “shit”, and head back to square one in Muscat. Watch this space, and good night.
After finally managing to get up early enough to get a bus from Muscat, we find ourselves bound for the northern Omani town of Sohar. From the city bus stop, Sohar seems unremarkable enough and we settle on a plastic table with plastic chairs in the conservatively named Riyadh Restaurant for a drink as we decide what the hell to do from here. Various research missions to travel agents provide us with two bits of information: there are no more buses out of Sohar today; and the cheapest hotel in town costs 100€ a night for a double. Crap. Faced with this kind of situation, a wise traveller would not decide to head to Dubai, MoneyVille USA – but given that wisdom is not one of our foremost properties (even though, given M’s misadventures over the last 17 days, luck seems to be) we decide to do just that. We’ve read on the internet that the border crossing between here at Dubai is only open to Gulf citizens and so we decide to head to the Royal Omani Police to check out the current situation. And that’s where the fun starts. M waits outside while I go in to enquire as to the current status of the border crossing.
- Hi. I’ve come to ask for information – the Buraimi border post.. is it open ?
- Buraimi ? You want a taxi ?
- No no.. I would like to know if it’s open.
I feel already that this exchange is not really going anywhere. A few more fruitless exchanges follow until the guy asks me to follow him outside, and all seems to be going nowhere until he bumps into another guy, and leaves me in policeman #2’s seemingly capable hands.
Policeman #2, it turns out, is not only helpful but very friendly too. Not only that but, as an ex-tour guide, he speaks great English and loves to talk too. He asks me to hold on for a second while he calls a German friend of his. Buraimi, it turns out, is indeed open for EU citizens, so obstacle #1 has been surmounted. Obstacle #2 – Find-A-Cheap-Hotel – is equally easily sorted as our new friend Jaifar drives us there. Enjoying Jaifar’s company and wanting to thank him for his help, we ask him to take us somewhere to get him a drink and so we end up in the overly-opulent Sohar Beach Hotel. There’s a bar here and, so he’s told buy the barmen, there’s a Polish group playing there tonight too! A few beers later we meander off to the nightclub and the Polish group eventually turns up. I’d told Jaifar that Polish folk music was good but we never expected what we got – a Hans-Moleman-from-the-Simpsons lookalike fronted by three girls dressed in what even raging liberals would call supershort miniskirts – the whole ensemble, looking extremely bored, belting out classics from such artists as Enrique Iglesias, the Bangles, and Elton John.
The "Polish Band" feat. bored girlsAs I go to the bar to get another beer, I meet Douglas, a Scottish mining expert who’s been living in the Gulf for seven years and has been recently transferred to Sohar. As with most people living far away from home, he’s an interesting character with plenty of stories to tell and the four of us make a good team in this rather surreal setting – discussing Omani culture and Middle Eastern travel (as well as Arabic swear words and miniskirts) with scantily-clad Polish teenagers singing Spice Girls hits in the background. Were we expecting this when we alighted in Sohar this afternoon? M and I agree that we didn’t. Douglas departs with the promise of trying to sort us out a bed with friends of his in the Emirates for tomorrow night and we bid him a fond farewell for now.
Jaifar, it turns out (or so he assures us), is in a fit state to drive us back to the hotel but not before getting us a shawarma each in what he tells us is the best snack joint In town, which we find hard to disagree with! This (typical??) Omani evening ends with us sitting tipsy in a shop doorway chowing down with the friendliest policeman in Oman. Well… why not indeed??? Jaifar drives off home and we leave him with great thanks and another fond farewell. He’s a keen traveller as well as a nice guy and I would hope that somewhere in this wide world we would meet again.
Jaifar and T, very happy after their shawarma
M and Jaifar feat. crooked Omani hat1) A.k.a “What we want to happen”: We get onto the 9am bus to Dubai and get to the airport where Douglas told us we could get an International Driving License. We then rent a car, drive to either Fujairah or Ras al-Khaimah for the night with one of Douglas’s friends, before heading off to Oman’s Musandam peninsula (which Douglas has told us is extremely beautiful and full of natural wonders).
2) A.k.a “what is more likely to happen”: We get up too late to call Douglas before he gets into work, think “shit”, and head back to square one in Muscat. Watch this space, and good night.
First Steps in the Land of the Benevolent Sultan
14th – 16th October 2009 – Days 16 to 18 – Muscat, Oman
Arriving to Muscat from the exuberantly noisy and dirty Cairo serves as a good reminder of there being some sophistication left in this world still. Muscat airport in the evening looks somewhat like a candy store with spotlights in soft shades of green and purple surrounding the dashingly clean white building, and the airport sure has a good gardener to look after its bushes too. I was aware of that Sultan Qaboos has a very specific taste and that he likes to look after the general outlook of things, and just by seeing the airport you can tell that he has a thing for colours in particular. After all, this is the same man who ordered the Hyatt Hotel in Muscat to tone down its coating because of the pinkish building was apparently too bright – for the Majesty or for the area or what, I’m yet to find out. Now the hotel’s coating is described as ‘peachy’ instead. (Later addition: Unfortunately we never made it to the Hyatt to check out what the new coating looks like so I can’t provide evidence of the Majesty eye for style in this case.)
Omani Urban Design, colour coordination par excellence
Our first impressions of the country were unified in terms of how neat everything is. In the taxi from the airport to our hotel on the Muscat corniche we looked around in amazement at all the buildings and cars being shiny and new (there’s a fine for driving a dirty car) and at people walking on the street looking very proper in their outfits. We came to a slight panic, even, about how quiet it is around you in this capital city. There is virtually no noise, just the humming and swooshing of cars driving past and the odd hooter from taxis asking if we want to hop in for a drive somewhere. People don’t seem to speak much, to us or to each other. For a short moment I started thinking that there’s something wrong with us or that we’re not that welcome to this spotless paradise with our backpacks. As always, I decided not to let this bother me for too long and already from the first night settled on enjoying the silence, peace and beauty of this strange capital which has not got the slightest feel of a capital to it. The first two days in Oman we spent wandering around exploring the corners of Muscat, not really getting too fussed about the pace of which we were doing things. First “morning” for us started late at 5pm, and we did nothing at all apart from walking to along the corniche in Mutrah, the port area of Muscat where we were staying, and paying a quick visit to the souq. Mutrah has hotels, a couple of restaurants, a museum, a souq and the fish market which you can breathe in as you’re waiting for a microbus right next to it at the aptly named Fish roundabout.
Haggling for bargains (or not) in Muttrah souq
The second day we improved our standards enough to rise at 11.50am only to rush out from the hotel as we had to check out at noon. As we hadn’t sorted our lives out by this point enough to know where we’d even be continuing to from Muscat, we swiftly checked in at another hotel next door for 30 % lower price. We had at least investigated our surroundings as much the night before to know this was officially the cheapest hotel in town. After the downgrade in price but not in quality, we set out to explore the town a bit further and possibly to rent a car.
The Muttrah corniche by night
Muscat is laid out on the rocky coast of the Gulf of Oman, and pretty much everything is centered in or around three main areas of town called Mutrah, Ruwi and Qurm. All of these are separated by 2-3 km’s distance from each other and require a microbus or taxi ride if you don’t have a car at your use and happen to be lazy like us. In other words, no one walks in this town anyway so it’s easier to just do what the locals do and jump onto the microbus. On our first day in Muscat we had nervously looked around for where and how you could get on these things but it was only on the second day that we were awake enough to crack the formula (they just stand at roundabouts and you get in – simple as pie).
On one of these buses it’s a 10-minute ride to Ruwi which is the transport hub of town to inquire about buses and car rental and to do further research at an internet café. After a visit to the bus station, a better look at “the Bible” (Lonely Planet) and a 3-hour session on the net it turned out buses don’t go to too many places in Oman, at least not very often, and that by renting a car you can see much more as most of the attractions are in its nature and cannot be reached via public transport, and most often a 4x4 is needed as well. Best place to get a car quickly in Muscat is the airport so we got a taxi there (37 kms), negotiated one from one of the rental companies and at the point of handing my license in for the paperwork, I realized I’d left my wallet at the internet café. Back to Ruwi on the microbus we went, me holding my breath and thinking about all the places I’d have to start calling in case the wallet would not be found. Gladly the guys at the café had found my wallet and made sure I checked that every Rial of cash was still in there as well, again an example of Omani society at its finest. I had to insist five times to leave a tip to the guy running the café and once he finally accepted my small token of gratitude, he passed it on to the other guy hanging around keeping him company. Go figure. I called the lady at the car rental agency in the airport to say we could come pick up the car now, but stupidly made sure my license would actually be valid as it’s not an international driving permit, and was told that would not do. Disappointed at the fact that I wouldn’t get to drive on the wide, new roads in decent traffic, we concluded that it would be for the better to drop the car rental for now and just take a bus the next day to get moving somewhere at least.
The evening we spent visiting the Sultan’s palace in old Muscat. You can get a surprisingly close look at it without any guards patrolling around making you feel uncomfortable as the Sultan is a man close to his people in all respects. We admired some more of the nightly skyline of Muscat on the walk back to the hotel, passing by some beautifully lit rocks in pastel colours, all in perfect harmony.
Omani rock decoration - colour coordination par excellence
Arriving to Muscat from the exuberantly noisy and dirty Cairo serves as a good reminder of there being some sophistication left in this world still. Muscat airport in the evening looks somewhat like a candy store with spotlights in soft shades of green and purple surrounding the dashingly clean white building, and the airport sure has a good gardener to look after its bushes too. I was aware of that Sultan Qaboos has a very specific taste and that he likes to look after the general outlook of things, and just by seeing the airport you can tell that he has a thing for colours in particular. After all, this is the same man who ordered the Hyatt Hotel in Muscat to tone down its coating because of the pinkish building was apparently too bright – for the Majesty or for the area or what, I’m yet to find out. Now the hotel’s coating is described as ‘peachy’ instead. (Later addition: Unfortunately we never made it to the Hyatt to check out what the new coating looks like so I can’t provide evidence of the Majesty eye for style in this case.)
Omani Urban Design, colour coordination par excellenceOur first impressions of the country were unified in terms of how neat everything is. In the taxi from the airport to our hotel on the Muscat corniche we looked around in amazement at all the buildings and cars being shiny and new (there’s a fine for driving a dirty car) and at people walking on the street looking very proper in their outfits. We came to a slight panic, even, about how quiet it is around you in this capital city. There is virtually no noise, just the humming and swooshing of cars driving past and the odd hooter from taxis asking if we want to hop in for a drive somewhere. People don’t seem to speak much, to us or to each other. For a short moment I started thinking that there’s something wrong with us or that we’re not that welcome to this spotless paradise with our backpacks. As always, I decided not to let this bother me for too long and already from the first night settled on enjoying the silence, peace and beauty of this strange capital which has not got the slightest feel of a capital to it. The first two days in Oman we spent wandering around exploring the corners of Muscat, not really getting too fussed about the pace of which we were doing things. First “morning” for us started late at 5pm, and we did nothing at all apart from walking to along the corniche in Mutrah, the port area of Muscat where we were staying, and paying a quick visit to the souq. Mutrah has hotels, a couple of restaurants, a museum, a souq and the fish market which you can breathe in as you’re waiting for a microbus right next to it at the aptly named Fish roundabout.
Haggling for bargains (or not) in Muttrah souqThe second day we improved our standards enough to rise at 11.50am only to rush out from the hotel as we had to check out at noon. As we hadn’t sorted our lives out by this point enough to know where we’d even be continuing to from Muscat, we swiftly checked in at another hotel next door for 30 % lower price. We had at least investigated our surroundings as much the night before to know this was officially the cheapest hotel in town. After the downgrade in price but not in quality, we set out to explore the town a bit further and possibly to rent a car.
The Muttrah corniche by nightMuscat is laid out on the rocky coast of the Gulf of Oman, and pretty much everything is centered in or around three main areas of town called Mutrah, Ruwi and Qurm. All of these are separated by 2-3 km’s distance from each other and require a microbus or taxi ride if you don’t have a car at your use and happen to be lazy like us. In other words, no one walks in this town anyway so it’s easier to just do what the locals do and jump onto the microbus. On our first day in Muscat we had nervously looked around for where and how you could get on these things but it was only on the second day that we were awake enough to crack the formula (they just stand at roundabouts and you get in – simple as pie).
On one of these buses it’s a 10-minute ride to Ruwi which is the transport hub of town to inquire about buses and car rental and to do further research at an internet café. After a visit to the bus station, a better look at “the Bible” (Lonely Planet) and a 3-hour session on the net it turned out buses don’t go to too many places in Oman, at least not very often, and that by renting a car you can see much more as most of the attractions are in its nature and cannot be reached via public transport, and most often a 4x4 is needed as well. Best place to get a car quickly in Muscat is the airport so we got a taxi there (37 kms), negotiated one from one of the rental companies and at the point of handing my license in for the paperwork, I realized I’d left my wallet at the internet café. Back to Ruwi on the microbus we went, me holding my breath and thinking about all the places I’d have to start calling in case the wallet would not be found. Gladly the guys at the café had found my wallet and made sure I checked that every Rial of cash was still in there as well, again an example of Omani society at its finest. I had to insist five times to leave a tip to the guy running the café and once he finally accepted my small token of gratitude, he passed it on to the other guy hanging around keeping him company. Go figure. I called the lady at the car rental agency in the airport to say we could come pick up the car now, but stupidly made sure my license would actually be valid as it’s not an international driving permit, and was told that would not do. Disappointed at the fact that I wouldn’t get to drive on the wide, new roads in decent traffic, we concluded that it would be for the better to drop the car rental for now and just take a bus the next day to get moving somewhere at least.
The evening we spent visiting the Sultan’s palace in old Muscat. You can get a surprisingly close look at it without any guards patrolling around making you feel uncomfortable as the Sultan is a man close to his people in all respects. We admired some more of the nightly skyline of Muscat on the walk back to the hotel, passing by some beautifully lit rocks in pastel colours, all in perfect harmony.
Omani rock decoration - colour coordination par excellenceMonday 19 October 2009
Stopover
13th October 2009 – Day 15 – Manama and Muharraq, Bahrain
Bahrain announces an outbreak of Flag Flu
I woke up at 7.30, probably the earliest I’ve woken up since the trip began. As I looked around to consider my surroundings I noted two things. Firstly, I was on a plane. Secondly, I was hungover. What the hell was going on?? Ah yes… I’m in Bahrain. My head is rattling, I’m falling asleep on my feet, and I have to entertain myself on a hot Gulf day in a country I know nothing about for the next 10 hours. Just in order to keep some sense of continuity now that we’re in a different continent, we check into a cybercafé for a few hours so that M can finish her thesis. It gets sent off safely to Helsinki, the world cheers, we breathe a sigh of relief heavy enough to set off this season’s typhoon season in the Bay of Bengal, and then we head off to an Indian restaurant where we get service the kinds of which we would more expect in a tourist market in Cairo. “This one? Take this one. No? Are you sure? It’s very good! I’m sure you will like it. Will you take it? No? OK, now there is this one. Shall I get this one for you? Shall I? One Chicken korma, OK. Now you must choose a soup. Here is the soup menu. Look at that. So which soup? And which bread? And a Cola? How about two Colas?” It went on like this for about 10 minutes until we managed to order something which didn’t include half of the menu, ate it and then wandered around, as one tends to do in a place where there is not much else to do.
Old and new rub shoulders in Manama.....Manama is a funny place – it feels like a small village yet it’s quite big – One street can feature enormous, gleaming glass skyscrapers, some with typically Gulf-style modern architecture, and one block away you’ll find small streets with small shops, men in dishdashas sitting around on benches discussing not much, and tiny alleyways reminiscent of the Aladdin cartoons I watched as a kid. It’s also full of foreign workers – both South Asian and European, and this has brought a very cosmopolitan style to the city. Women is full abeyyas walk next to other women in saris and still others in t-shirts and shorts the likes of which you’d see in any European city (perhaps apart from Helsinki where it’s too cold for it). A city of contrasts, which in only a day, we didn’t really have time to understand. What I did understand was that when you’ve got a dodgy stomach, the worst thing you can do is to gorge yourself on Egyptian jungle juice and my intestines mounted an enormous protest which I needed to go to deal with urgently.
.....and in most places, new kicks old's butt.Modernisation and oil money has brought great things to the Gulf. It has also brought with it an evil side and it was into one of these evils that I went to deal with my stomach – an outlet of Starbuck’s on the imaginatively named Government Avenue. Here was Bahrain in a nutshell – an American outlet, where Europeans came to buy coffee and tea from Filipinos and Indians. The amount of foreigners in Bahrain is pretty staggering and from what I saw, the foreigners did most of the work. Most of the shops are run by foreigners; the cafés are manned by foreigners, and so on. Only the state institutions were run by Arabs, it seemed – immigration control, and what I believe is the world’s most lethargic post office, where it took us about an hour to get to the front of the queue and buy stamps for the postcards we’d bought. We didn’t see any police or army – I suppose in a place like that no-one can be bothered to commit crime and in any case, most people work or have oil money thrown at them to allow them to continue sitting around on benches discussing not much.
Having wandered around the souq where we were greeted by salespeople with various South Asian accents, and gaped at the Bab Al-Bahrain gate (probably the only tourist attraction in the entire country which isn’t made of glass), we hopped onto a minibus across the bridge to Muharraq town where we took some pictures of the Manama skyline like good tourists and got on another bus back to the airport. I managed not to disgust the other passengers with my booze breath this time and snoozed happily until we landed in Muscat.
Dishdasha v. Big Mac - the Gulf in a nutshellThursday 15 October 2009
Goodbye to: Ruben, Natalie, Cairo, Sandals
11th October 2009 – Day 13 – Cairo, Egypt
As M wrote her thesis and Ruben and Natalie disappeared off to the Egyptian museum and the Khan al-Khalili souq, I pondered what to do. Walk around by myself? Go to the French consulate to start the Sudan visa process? Join Ruben and Natalie? This pondering process ended up taking the best part of a day and by the time I came to my senses I was already sitting on a bench in the hostel drinking beer and the sun had gone down. Ah well. The last 12 days have been pretty hectic and it’ll do me some good to have a lazy day.
In the evening, we go to ”Café Riche” in an extravagant show of opulence before throwing Ruben and Natalie into a taxi bound for the airport and wave goodbye to them – they’re heading back to Europe. M and I are going to have to face the next 4 months travelling alone and with only each other for company – let’s see who comes off better out of that one :) Having Ruben and Natalie around has been good – I don’t think we really have the same travelling style but we’ve seen a lot and have some good fun together and it’ll be strange to head off without them. We head back to Dahab Hostel for further beer for me, and further thesis for M. These days are starting to get strangely monotonous, aren’t they ?
This is the first day of my new life without sandals. The previous ones had a stench so engrained to them that I put them into an incinerator in Alexandria, and their presence in the city will probably poison the water supply there for years to come.
12th October 2009 – Day 14 – Cairo, Egypt
1) M continues writing thesis
2) T packs bags and then proceeds to abuse Egyptian jungle juice.
The plane departs to Bahrain at the end of an extremely long day at 4.45am. We pay the taxi driver EP50 for an extra hour's wait when MS Word starts to act up on M on the last minute before supposed sending of the G. The G still does not get sent from Cairo the same night.
As M wrote her thesis and Ruben and Natalie disappeared off to the Egyptian museum and the Khan al-Khalili souq, I pondered what to do. Walk around by myself? Go to the French consulate to start the Sudan visa process? Join Ruben and Natalie? This pondering process ended up taking the best part of a day and by the time I came to my senses I was already sitting on a bench in the hostel drinking beer and the sun had gone down. Ah well. The last 12 days have been pretty hectic and it’ll do me some good to have a lazy day.
In the evening, we go to ”Café Riche” in an extravagant show of opulence before throwing Ruben and Natalie into a taxi bound for the airport and wave goodbye to them – they’re heading back to Europe. M and I are going to have to face the next 4 months travelling alone and with only each other for company – let’s see who comes off better out of that one :) Having Ruben and Natalie around has been good – I don’t think we really have the same travelling style but we’ve seen a lot and have some good fun together and it’ll be strange to head off without them. We head back to Dahab Hostel for further beer for me, and further thesis for M. These days are starting to get strangely monotonous, aren’t they ?
This is the first day of my new life without sandals. The previous ones had a stench so engrained to them that I put them into an incinerator in Alexandria, and their presence in the city will probably poison the water supply there for years to come.
12th October 2009 – Day 14 – Cairo, Egypt
1) M continues writing thesis
2) T packs bags and then proceeds to abuse Egyptian jungle juice.
The plane departs to Bahrain at the end of an extremely long day at 4.45am. We pay the taxi driver EP50 for an extra hour's wait when MS Word starts to act up on M on the last minute before supposed sending of the G. The G still does not get sent from Cairo the same night.
Faculty meeting
9th - 10th October 2009 – Days 11-12 – Bahariya Oasis to Alexandria to Cairo, Egypt
We’re being bookworms with T again. Sitting on the train back from Alexandria to Cairo the trip seems to take forever so we’ve decided to be useful at least. Coming here on the same route the opposite way it took nearly four hours when it should have taken three. Now coming back we spent (and I quote T) “and hour and a half on a stretch between stations that should have taken eight minutes”. So I’m sure you get our drift. Inch’allah we’ll catch the last metro to our hostel in Cairo.
Sure enough though, reading should be a very appropriate activity while coming from Alexandria, the Mediterranean cradle of civilization and early appreciation for bibliography. We didn’t bother to visit the actual library as it is merely a newly built campus library (the university of Alexandria can be found behind it) with only some small bits left from the original that got burnt down in one of Caesar’s stunts I think it was – the more knowledgeable please correct me at free will. We visited the front door, however, on our quest to find a place to get online and were told the entrance is EP 10 and you must leave your bag outside. For more tourist info, get your own guidebook.
Our guidebook around Alexandria was called Ahmed, a friend of T’s and Rubén’s from the ever-notorious food serving establishment in Helsinki (that hardly needs more advertisement) where we have all worked (although me not at the same time with Ahmed so he was a new face to me). Ahmed moved back out to Alexandria from Finland a while ago so he was there to greet us at the train station upon our arrival from Cairo on Friday night. We had first taken a bus to Cairo from the Bahaariya Oasis the same morning and were happy to see a local face expecting that he might lead us to some hidden jewel of a hostel and take us around town for some nightly action – at least judging by Rubén’s comments on the train on the way there and the sneaky questions to Ahmed about if the dancing is good around here etc etc. What actually happened was that we followed Trotamundos’ (the Spanish Routard guidebook) advice on where to go sleep and Ahmed had to ask around on the way because he didn’t know any better than us. The hometown syndrome of not knowing where everything is, but just knowing your own way around. We found the place in the end but it only had place for two so we descended one floor down in the same building (here and in Cairo the hostels seem to be clustered onto different floors inside the same building) to another hostel which wasn’t smothered with cleanliness but served its purpose to us as it had toilets and showers and a view over the 20 km long corniche stretching out right below the window.
We showered and Ahmed took us around town to the extent that we simply yearned to get to bed, not because of the wild nightlife but because of the long rides on the microbuses along the corniche to get from one place to another. We took one microbus to visit a fort at one end of the stretch and walked around a bit, then took another to go all the way to the other end of the bay and round the bend to see the last king’s palace and gardens. The palace grounds are nowadays a hangout for the local youth to come and snog in the shadows of the trees and inside their cars as PDAs (public displays of affection) are not part of the culture here. I read on Trotamundos – and Ahmed confirmed the info – that you get the odd copper patrolling around in the garden and fining people for this pastime. Imagine a job as one of those coppers!! “Right you lovebirds there, I can see you – now cut the contact or you’ll get a fat ticket.” Now that’s one place where corruption should not only let flourish but is needed to do so. One last microbus ride back to our hostel and we finally got to bed at 3.30am.
One half of the 20 km-long corniche, as viewed from our hostel window.
Natalie and Rubén, being on speed or whatever they feed the babies in Spain, got up around 8.30am and went shopping. Me and T were planning to get up too, I was supposed to write some G (my neverending thesis) and wanted to see the catacombs before starting on the writing. Hmmm, yeah didn’t quite happen. We got up at 11am and pretty much went to discuss with the hostel keeper about changing rooms to a double straight away as Natalie and Rubén were going to leave to Cairo the same night but we were planning to stay in Alexandria for a second night so I could use the plug at the hostel for my G purposes. We successfully changed rooms to a smaller one and soon after that the Spaniards came back to greet us quickly in the form of picking up their bags from the hostel before getting their train. All we had to do now was to find an internet café to google up the contact details of the hostel we had stayed at in Cairo earlier and which we had booked for the night as part of our earlier made plan to return to Cairo tonight, so as to avoid double-booking in two different cities.
The search for the internet café started well as we entered a Brazilian style coffee shop to get me the first (and hopefully not last) decent coffee of the trip. I was surrounded by the lovely fumes of my take-away latte for a good while I tell ya. As we’re searching, we decide to buy one of these payphone cards so that we can call both the hostel in Cairo and Ahmed cheaper. We keep searching and we see at least three places with free WiFi inside but no actual old school net cafés. After walking through a couple of barrios we come to the faculty of medicine of some university and in my style I suggest we should just ask instead of wandering endlessly. I mean, these people are students, they’ll speak English and will know their way around town too.
So I approach a lady in a pink veil. She speaks English but I’m not sure she understands what I’m saying. She’s very helpful though, and asks a man who is sitting under a huge sheet pronouncing that a “conference on anesthesia and first aid” is taking place at the faculty. They point us inside of the faculty buildings and tell us to “just ask anyone” which we take to be a bit peculiar but follow orders all the same. Once inside, we are approached by a young man who looks to be a janitor of some sort. We explain to him that we have been pointed inside and that we are looking for an internet café – so no loss of information in our message should have happened during our entry. The man asks us to follow him and takes us up the stairs onto what looks like one of the departments of the faculty with offices and secretaries. He talks to some older ladies inside one of the offices and we try to say a word in between just very cordially explaining why we’re here, but sounding all the more puzzled as to why in the world would there be an internet café inside the faculty office.
It seems no one else is noticing this tiny little discrepancy, however, and a woman in a grey veil takes action to lead us along the corridor further inside the faculty. She soon disappears into an office through a shiny wooden door which is slightly open and has a big name plate on the door: “Prof. Dr. Arab name. Faculty of Medicine. Dean”. We wait outside. T sits onto one of the sinking black sofas which are forming some sort of a waiting lounge in front of the office. I start blabbering nervously about that we shouldn’t sit down unless we’re invited to do so as I haven’t seen anyone do that over here. Or never mind that I wouldn’t do it anyway in a business context. T looks like he doesn’t care and also points this out. I sit down too. I soon get up again. The woman in the grey veil finally comes out and informs us that the dean of the faculty will be available for us shortly and that we should sit and wait. She asks if we want coffee or tea. We look at each other with T and start trying to explain the situation again from the beginning. “We were just looking for an internet café.” She’s nodding away calmly but starts to look like she doesn’t really understand.”IN-TER-NET café?” we try again. She asks again if we want coffee or tea. We deny cordially. We finally realize we’re really not getting through to her. Shit shit shit. She confirms again that we have a meeting with the dean in just a little while and asks if everything’s ok with us or do we need anything else. We give up and smile and nod as sign of everything being ok, and she smiles back and walks away.
What has just happened? We have asked a stranger on the street for directions to the nearest internet café. Less than 20 minutes later we have a meeting with the dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Alexandria. Someone tell me, how is this even possible… We have a quick panic discussion session while sitting on the sofa. T suggests we should just bail out with the excuse of pretending to very busy and needing to catch a train. Ha ha. I can’t bring myself to just run out of the situation like that. I suggest we go inside and explain to the dean what has happened. Just as bad of an idea. Besides, he doesn’t sound like the nicest man from what we can hear through the open door. Slightly busy and uptight maybe. Probably not going to take our incident with humour. Plan C includes that we get up and try ask anyone else if they speak English. We wander to the door of an office that is next to the one where the woman in the grey veil is working. We start asking and explaining the same story all over again and add some nervous laughter about not meaning to cause any hassle and how we were just pointed inside the building so we just thought to come and try, but that under no circumstance do we need to meet the dean of the faculty. A man asks if we want coffee or tea. For crying out loud, do these people not understand the word ‘internet café’???? This IS a university, isn’t it? I keep it in and we try once more. One of the younger looking secretaries understands and smiles half-heartedly. The woman in the grey veil has come out of her office next door to see what the corridor huddle is about. Thankfully the younger woman explains something to the others in Arabic and takes us downstairs, “cyber café” she says and nods as we leave. I bend over backwards trying to tell her that she should explain to the others that this was a pure mistake and that we didn’t mean to bother anyone. I probably sound like a lunatic, but she doesn’t seem to mind either way. Back downstairs, she tells us that the cyber café is closed. We thank her and a mutual exchange of smiles takes place. We walk out the door and quickly pace up back to the direction we came from. Dear me. Cyber café. Would that have made all the difference? I can’t believe that either. Another close call for M & T on their long list of incredible incidents.
The course of the day changed there and then. By the time we got out of the university and walked back to the corniche to try yet again to find an internet café, the time has passed well onto the afternoon. This is when we come to the library and try there as our last attempt but think it’s not worth going inside and paying the fee and dropping our bags off to a separate cloakroom not knowing what we’ll get this time. Besides, we’ve seen enough of the one in Helsinki (the Helsinki University information center is called Alexandria), right? It’s 2.30pm by this point. We’ve probably lost the chance to cancel the reservation in Cairo by now anyway and I’ve wasted half of the day away from G writing already and haven’t even seen the catacombs yet. We text Rubén to announce that they should not try and cancel our share of the hostel in Cairo when they get there, because we will be coming there tonight as well. Our reasoning is clear. After all, the hostel in Cairo is better quality and we’re going to have to pay for them both at this point so we might as well also get the most out of what we’re paying for. Also this way we can sort out some paperwork needed for the Sudanese visa still before going to Oman so we don’t waste too much time with all of that after getting back. And I just need a fresh start for the G writing from the next morning.
The rest of the day goes past quickly as we sit down for full-on lunch at an Italian place on the corniche. More of the better end, the place still provides TV screens to watch Zambia-Egypt World Cup Qualifiers while we work through both the appetizers and main course, both at very reasonable prices too. EP 150 for two persons’ guava juices, bottled water, good size appetizers, pasta and fish for the main courses and espresso and tea to digest it all. Egypt won 1-0 as well – people kept blocking my view to the screen towards the end. Who would have thought from a posh place, but once again football just touches the masses.
We used the payphone card to call Ahmed and we were supposed to meet him later but we ran out of time before he made it into town, so we spent the early evening riding the trams (they have some here!) and doing some shopping for mandatory supplies the likes of toilet paper and wet wipes. We also tried to find the catacombs but we learned they’d shut at 4.30pm when we go to ask at the tourist info office at 5.30pm. There went that as well. We called Ahmed again from the train station to say bye before getting on the train. Maybe we’ll be back to Alexandria, or Al-Iskanderia as it’s known in Arabic, after we return from Oman. Now I know who the kebab dish is named after as well – Alexander sure must have been Great to have had a kebab named after him as well.
The train left from Alexandria at 9.00pm and it is now 1.25am and we’re still rattling on. I think we’ve missed the last metro. Rubén and Natalie are waiting for us in the Hard Rock Café in Cairo. I don’t even dare to think where we would end up next if we start asking for directions to get there. “HARD ROCK?” Taxi for us I thinks – straight to the hostel, please.
We’re being bookworms with T again. Sitting on the train back from Alexandria to Cairo the trip seems to take forever so we’ve decided to be useful at least. Coming here on the same route the opposite way it took nearly four hours when it should have taken three. Now coming back we spent (and I quote T) “and hour and a half on a stretch between stations that should have taken eight minutes”. So I’m sure you get our drift. Inch’allah we’ll catch the last metro to our hostel in Cairo.
Sure enough though, reading should be a very appropriate activity while coming from Alexandria, the Mediterranean cradle of civilization and early appreciation for bibliography. We didn’t bother to visit the actual library as it is merely a newly built campus library (the university of Alexandria can be found behind it) with only some small bits left from the original that got burnt down in one of Caesar’s stunts I think it was – the more knowledgeable please correct me at free will. We visited the front door, however, on our quest to find a place to get online and were told the entrance is EP 10 and you must leave your bag outside. For more tourist info, get your own guidebook.
Our guidebook around Alexandria was called Ahmed, a friend of T’s and Rubén’s from the ever-notorious food serving establishment in Helsinki (that hardly needs more advertisement) where we have all worked (although me not at the same time with Ahmed so he was a new face to me). Ahmed moved back out to Alexandria from Finland a while ago so he was there to greet us at the train station upon our arrival from Cairo on Friday night. We had first taken a bus to Cairo from the Bahaariya Oasis the same morning and were happy to see a local face expecting that he might lead us to some hidden jewel of a hostel and take us around town for some nightly action – at least judging by Rubén’s comments on the train on the way there and the sneaky questions to Ahmed about if the dancing is good around here etc etc. What actually happened was that we followed Trotamundos’ (the Spanish Routard guidebook) advice on where to go sleep and Ahmed had to ask around on the way because he didn’t know any better than us. The hometown syndrome of not knowing where everything is, but just knowing your own way around. We found the place in the end but it only had place for two so we descended one floor down in the same building (here and in Cairo the hostels seem to be clustered onto different floors inside the same building) to another hostel which wasn’t smothered with cleanliness but served its purpose to us as it had toilets and showers and a view over the 20 km long corniche stretching out right below the window.
We showered and Ahmed took us around town to the extent that we simply yearned to get to bed, not because of the wild nightlife but because of the long rides on the microbuses along the corniche to get from one place to another. We took one microbus to visit a fort at one end of the stretch and walked around a bit, then took another to go all the way to the other end of the bay and round the bend to see the last king’s palace and gardens. The palace grounds are nowadays a hangout for the local youth to come and snog in the shadows of the trees and inside their cars as PDAs (public displays of affection) are not part of the culture here. I read on Trotamundos – and Ahmed confirmed the info – that you get the odd copper patrolling around in the garden and fining people for this pastime. Imagine a job as one of those coppers!! “Right you lovebirds there, I can see you – now cut the contact or you’ll get a fat ticket.” Now that’s one place where corruption should not only let flourish but is needed to do so. One last microbus ride back to our hostel and we finally got to bed at 3.30am.
One half of the 20 km-long corniche, as viewed from our hostel window.How to (not) look like a local in Alexandria.
Natalie and Rubén, being on speed or whatever they feed the babies in Spain, got up around 8.30am and went shopping. Me and T were planning to get up too, I was supposed to write some G (my neverending thesis) and wanted to see the catacombs before starting on the writing. Hmmm, yeah didn’t quite happen. We got up at 11am and pretty much went to discuss with the hostel keeper about changing rooms to a double straight away as Natalie and Rubén were going to leave to Cairo the same night but we were planning to stay in Alexandria for a second night so I could use the plug at the hostel for my G purposes. We successfully changed rooms to a smaller one and soon after that the Spaniards came back to greet us quickly in the form of picking up their bags from the hostel before getting their train. All we had to do now was to find an internet café to google up the contact details of the hostel we had stayed at in Cairo earlier and which we had booked for the night as part of our earlier made plan to return to Cairo tonight, so as to avoid double-booking in two different cities.
The search for the internet café started well as we entered a Brazilian style coffee shop to get me the first (and hopefully not last) decent coffee of the trip. I was surrounded by the lovely fumes of my take-away latte for a good while I tell ya. As we’re searching, we decide to buy one of these payphone cards so that we can call both the hostel in Cairo and Ahmed cheaper. We keep searching and we see at least three places with free WiFi inside but no actual old school net cafés. After walking through a couple of barrios we come to the faculty of medicine of some university and in my style I suggest we should just ask instead of wandering endlessly. I mean, these people are students, they’ll speak English and will know their way around town too.
So I approach a lady in a pink veil. She speaks English but I’m not sure she understands what I’m saying. She’s very helpful though, and asks a man who is sitting under a huge sheet pronouncing that a “conference on anesthesia and first aid” is taking place at the faculty. They point us inside of the faculty buildings and tell us to “just ask anyone” which we take to be a bit peculiar but follow orders all the same. Once inside, we are approached by a young man who looks to be a janitor of some sort. We explain to him that we have been pointed inside and that we are looking for an internet café – so no loss of information in our message should have happened during our entry. The man asks us to follow him and takes us up the stairs onto what looks like one of the departments of the faculty with offices and secretaries. He talks to some older ladies inside one of the offices and we try to say a word in between just very cordially explaining why we’re here, but sounding all the more puzzled as to why in the world would there be an internet café inside the faculty office.
It seems no one else is noticing this tiny little discrepancy, however, and a woman in a grey veil takes action to lead us along the corridor further inside the faculty. She soon disappears into an office through a shiny wooden door which is slightly open and has a big name plate on the door: “Prof. Dr. Arab name. Faculty of Medicine. Dean”. We wait outside. T sits onto one of the sinking black sofas which are forming some sort of a waiting lounge in front of the office. I start blabbering nervously about that we shouldn’t sit down unless we’re invited to do so as I haven’t seen anyone do that over here. Or never mind that I wouldn’t do it anyway in a business context. T looks like he doesn’t care and also points this out. I sit down too. I soon get up again. The woman in the grey veil finally comes out and informs us that the dean of the faculty will be available for us shortly and that we should sit and wait. She asks if we want coffee or tea. We look at each other with T and start trying to explain the situation again from the beginning. “We were just looking for an internet café.” She’s nodding away calmly but starts to look like she doesn’t really understand.”IN-TER-NET café?” we try again. She asks again if we want coffee or tea. We deny cordially. We finally realize we’re really not getting through to her. Shit shit shit. She confirms again that we have a meeting with the dean in just a little while and asks if everything’s ok with us or do we need anything else. We give up and smile and nod as sign of everything being ok, and she smiles back and walks away.
What has just happened? We have asked a stranger on the street for directions to the nearest internet café. Less than 20 minutes later we have a meeting with the dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Alexandria. Someone tell me, how is this even possible… We have a quick panic discussion session while sitting on the sofa. T suggests we should just bail out with the excuse of pretending to very busy and needing to catch a train. Ha ha. I can’t bring myself to just run out of the situation like that. I suggest we go inside and explain to the dean what has happened. Just as bad of an idea. Besides, he doesn’t sound like the nicest man from what we can hear through the open door. Slightly busy and uptight maybe. Probably not going to take our incident with humour. Plan C includes that we get up and try ask anyone else if they speak English. We wander to the door of an office that is next to the one where the woman in the grey veil is working. We start asking and explaining the same story all over again and add some nervous laughter about not meaning to cause any hassle and how we were just pointed inside the building so we just thought to come and try, but that under no circumstance do we need to meet the dean of the faculty. A man asks if we want coffee or tea. For crying out loud, do these people not understand the word ‘internet café’???? This IS a university, isn’t it? I keep it in and we try once more. One of the younger looking secretaries understands and smiles half-heartedly. The woman in the grey veil has come out of her office next door to see what the corridor huddle is about. Thankfully the younger woman explains something to the others in Arabic and takes us downstairs, “cyber café” she says and nods as we leave. I bend over backwards trying to tell her that she should explain to the others that this was a pure mistake and that we didn’t mean to bother anyone. I probably sound like a lunatic, but she doesn’t seem to mind either way. Back downstairs, she tells us that the cyber café is closed. We thank her and a mutual exchange of smiles takes place. We walk out the door and quickly pace up back to the direction we came from. Dear me. Cyber café. Would that have made all the difference? I can’t believe that either. Another close call for M & T on their long list of incredible incidents.
The course of the day changed there and then. By the time we got out of the university and walked back to the corniche to try yet again to find an internet café, the time has passed well onto the afternoon. This is when we come to the library and try there as our last attempt but think it’s not worth going inside and paying the fee and dropping our bags off to a separate cloakroom not knowing what we’ll get this time. Besides, we’ve seen enough of the one in Helsinki (the Helsinki University information center is called Alexandria), right? It’s 2.30pm by this point. We’ve probably lost the chance to cancel the reservation in Cairo by now anyway and I’ve wasted half of the day away from G writing already and haven’t even seen the catacombs yet. We text Rubén to announce that they should not try and cancel our share of the hostel in Cairo when they get there, because we will be coming there tonight as well. Our reasoning is clear. After all, the hostel in Cairo is better quality and we’re going to have to pay for them both at this point so we might as well also get the most out of what we’re paying for. Also this way we can sort out some paperwork needed for the Sudanese visa still before going to Oman so we don’t waste too much time with all of that after getting back. And I just need a fresh start for the G writing from the next morning.
Open hood and trunk day on the corniche. Free parking.
The rest of the day goes past quickly as we sit down for full-on lunch at an Italian place on the corniche. More of the better end, the place still provides TV screens to watch Zambia-Egypt World Cup Qualifiers while we work through both the appetizers and main course, both at very reasonable prices too. EP 150 for two persons’ guava juices, bottled water, good size appetizers, pasta and fish for the main courses and espresso and tea to digest it all. Egypt won 1-0 as well – people kept blocking my view to the screen towards the end. Who would have thought from a posh place, but once again football just touches the masses.
We used the payphone card to call Ahmed and we were supposed to meet him later but we ran out of time before he made it into town, so we spent the early evening riding the trams (they have some here!) and doing some shopping for mandatory supplies the likes of toilet paper and wet wipes. We also tried to find the catacombs but we learned they’d shut at 4.30pm when we go to ask at the tourist info office at 5.30pm. There went that as well. We called Ahmed again from the train station to say bye before getting on the train. Maybe we’ll be back to Alexandria, or Al-Iskanderia as it’s known in Arabic, after we return from Oman. Now I know who the kebab dish is named after as well – Alexander sure must have been Great to have had a kebab named after him as well.
All aboard! Women have their own section here too.
"Special price for you my friend!" M looks after the shop while the owner helps us to find the right platform, car and seats on the train. No baksheesh asked either.
The train left from Alexandria at 9.00pm and it is now 1.25am and we’re still rattling on. I think we’ve missed the last metro. Rubén and Natalie are waiting for us in the Hard Rock Café in Cairo. I don’t even dare to think where we would end up next if we start asking for directions to get there. “HARD ROCK?” Taxi for us I thinks – straight to the hostel, please.
Lazy (for some) days
8th October 2009 – Day 10 – Bahariya Oasis, Egypt
1) M does thesis.
2) T attempts to do laundry, which still stinks despite valiant efforts.
3) Otherwise lazy day.
1) M does thesis.
2) T attempts to do laundry, which still stinks despite valiant efforts.
3) Otherwise lazy day.
A familiar sight this week in Egypt.
Is the sun finally setting on M's thesis..?
Off to the Oasis
7th October 2009 – Day 9 – Bahariya Oasis, Egypt
It’s taken all of nine days but it’s finally happened – I have loud and explosive diarrhoea. I always seem to pick it up when I leave Europe so I’m not too worried about it but it’s annoying all the same. After a large explosion in Hurghada last night, we took a night bus up to Cairo where I proceeded to explode in a café on Midan Tahrir and again in the public toilets in Giza’s El Monib bus station. A five hour bus ride later, we’re in the beautiful Bahariya Oasis where my stomach has obliged and redecorated the toilets in the Sahara Camp where we’ve shacked up for the night.
Cairo was loud and hectic as before – after a bumpy, sleepless night on the bus we rolled into Cairo early, and after searching for a café for my newly-adopted morning ablutions, we headed off to Turgoman bus station in the centre of town for a bus to Bahariya. The guy told us that El Monib was the only bus station they left from so we took a metro ride down into the far reaches of Giza and after a long search during which we asked directions from Metro workers, firemen, policemen and various others, we finally found a microbus station under a fly-over, beyond which was hidden the bus station. Hurrah!
The bus left an hour later than we thought giving us 2 hours to kill. The girls left to wander around the university district and Ruben and I who were tired and feeling like crap/pissed off at the world respectively stayed behind the watch the bags. Being scientifically-minded individuals, we killed some flies and put them in front of an ant, which wandered off in search of help and came back with an army, who carried the fly across the road, up a 40cm vertical wall to the pavement, and across towards the roadside café we were sat at. Our curiosity satisfied and after some high praise directed at ant society in general, we saw M and Natalie came back armed with toilet paper and snacks. The bus pulled up and we departed towards the desert.
Arrival in Al-Bawiti, main town of the Bahariya Oasis,was like at any small town which makes a proportion of its living from tourism. We got our bags and were immediately swooped on by touts from every camp and hotel in town, hounding us until one of them got the idea that we needed time and apologized, taking the others away and giving us time to talk. We eventually left with him to a camp which was beautiful but had a price tag to match and we’ve ended up in the only marginally less nice Sahara Camp. Our new friend Loly had a word with the owner and then looked at us and said “I have to tell you – there will be a Bedouin wedding party here tonight. Is that OK with you?”. It sure was! So here we sit, Bedouin music rattling out from tinny loudspeakers, under a thatched roof, the others enjoying their food while I give my stomach a break, occasionally rewarding it for its watertightness with a Pringle or two. I’m looking on enviously as they throw down their home-made rice with chicken and vegetables but, inch’allah, my stomach will soon decide to cooperate again and I can join in the fun.
Ruben and Natalie are off on a desert safari tomorrow but M and I are staying here – M has her thesis to finish and I’ll spend half of the day nervously eyeing the toilets. A few nights in the desert, though, in this friendly and atmospheric camp site with its wooden huts, is exactly the kind of lazy setting we need to get our energy levels back up to be ready for a weekend in Alexandria and Cairo.
T and stomach have a half-time team talk.
It’s taken all of nine days but it’s finally happened – I have loud and explosive diarrhoea. I always seem to pick it up when I leave Europe so I’m not too worried about it but it’s annoying all the same. After a large explosion in Hurghada last night, we took a night bus up to Cairo where I proceeded to explode in a café on Midan Tahrir and again in the public toilets in Giza’s El Monib bus station. A five hour bus ride later, we’re in the beautiful Bahariya Oasis where my stomach has obliged and redecorated the toilets in the Sahara Camp where we’ve shacked up for the night.
Cairo was loud and hectic as before – after a bumpy, sleepless night on the bus we rolled into Cairo early, and after searching for a café for my newly-adopted morning ablutions, we headed off to Turgoman bus station in the centre of town for a bus to Bahariya. The guy told us that El Monib was the only bus station they left from so we took a metro ride down into the far reaches of Giza and after a long search during which we asked directions from Metro workers, firemen, policemen and various others, we finally found a microbus station under a fly-over, beyond which was hidden the bus station. Hurrah!
The bus left an hour later than we thought giving us 2 hours to kill. The girls left to wander around the university district and Ruben and I who were tired and feeling like crap/pissed off at the world respectively stayed behind the watch the bags. Being scientifically-minded individuals, we killed some flies and put them in front of an ant, which wandered off in search of help and came back with an army, who carried the fly across the road, up a 40cm vertical wall to the pavement, and across towards the roadside café we were sat at. Our curiosity satisfied and after some high praise directed at ant society in general, we saw M and Natalie came back armed with toilet paper and snacks. The bus pulled up and we departed towards the desert.
T's sandals were denied entry to our cute little camp home due to health and safety regulations.
Arrival in Al-Bawiti, main town of the Bahariya Oasis,was like at any small town which makes a proportion of its living from tourism. We got our bags and were immediately swooped on by touts from every camp and hotel in town, hounding us until one of them got the idea that we needed time and apologized, taking the others away and giving us time to talk. We eventually left with him to a camp which was beautiful but had a price tag to match and we’ve ended up in the only marginally less nice Sahara Camp. Our new friend Loly had a word with the owner and then looked at us and said “I have to tell you – there will be a Bedouin wedding party here tonight. Is that OK with you?”. It sure was! So here we sit, Bedouin music rattling out from tinny loudspeakers, under a thatched roof, the others enjoying their food while I give my stomach a break, occasionally rewarding it for its watertightness with a Pringle or two. I’m looking on enviously as they throw down their home-made rice with chicken and vegetables but, inch’allah, my stomach will soon decide to cooperate again and I can join in the fun.
Ruben and Natalie are off on a desert safari tomorrow but M and I are staying here – M has her thesis to finish and I’ll spend half of the day nervously eyeing the toilets. A few nights in the desert, though, in this friendly and atmospheric camp site with its wooden huts, is exactly the kind of lazy setting we need to get our energy levels back up to be ready for a weekend in Alexandria and Cairo.
T and stomach have a half-time team talk.
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