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.
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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment