Travelling in Oman

[mcflux]

I just thought I'd start an ask-me-anything thread regarding a holiday I recently went on, to Oman. I figured that this might help dispel some preconceptions about traveling to certain parts of the Middle East. Plus - from a forum-relevant perspective, the roads are AWESOME & they love their F-Trucks and Mustangs over there.

Firstly, here's where Oman is:



It's perhaps 25% larger than Victoria. We did a road trip from the capital (Muscat) to a city in the south called Salalah, which was dead-on 1000kms, most of which was through the desert. We also did a bunch of road trips throughout the northern coast & its mountain backdrop.

Geographically, there's a strip of coast along the north-east of the country, with the Hajar mountains running parallel to this coast. The guts of the country is proper desert, and the southern portion ("Dhofar" province, close to Yemen) also consists of a coastal plain surrounded by a mountain range. During their monsoon Khareef season, Dhofar is green, wet, & misty.

THE PEOPLE

Culturally, they're very welcoming and easygoing people; a blend of africans, arabs, and indians/pakistanis. Muscat & the northern coast has a multicultural metropolitan population. Nizwa, a traditional area inland & perhaps Oman's most conservative area, is less multicultural but women are still fine to walk around uncovered. My wife felt safer throughout Oman than she does when we're in Melbourne, although the roadside coffee houses tend to be a sausage-fest (think mini versions of Aussie pubs 50 years ago, minus the rowdy factor). Salalah down south has a bit of a "Darwin" factor to it with the way of life down there.

We met all kinds of people while we were traveling through Oman. Most - particularly inland & in Dhofar - were happy/excited to see white tourists. One random guy at a desert road stop shouted us our lunch just because he was happy that we were visiting his country. Nobody ever gave us (in particular my wife) the stink-eye for dressing in western clothes. The women there wear all kinds of clothing from the full-on Burqa to western clothes. The men tend to wear traditional plain arab clothing but there were some in western clothes.

Although it's best to be covered from shoulders-to-knees at the beach, there were many tourists ignoring these guidelines & the locals didn't seem to mind. French girls in bikinis I understand the locals not minding, but rotund middle-aged men in speedos should be banned anywhere :P

RELIGION

I will leave this brief and will not encourage any ongoing discussion regarding religion (readers feel free to PM me if you have questions), I don't want to see this thread closed.

You're free to practice any (or no) religion in Oman and the muslims there are open/welcoming to any non-muslim.

There are mosques *everywhere*, ranging from an outline made from discarded bricks & desert rocks at a roadside, to the most opulent building (Muscat's Grand Mosque) that I have ever been in. Most mosques however are small modest buildings with a brightly-coloured dome & minaret, usually with a side-building added (takeaway food, clothing, etc).

The Grand Mosque is open to public every day, except Fridays (Islam's "Sunday"). My wife & I had an enlightening discussion with a mosque employee regarding Islam, Sharia Law, etc. His role is to engage with visitors from all religious backgrounds (or in our case - atheists).

GETTING AROUND

There's next to no public transport in Oman, and the private taxis are unmetered - we avoided them & used hire cars (or our mate's Ranger for the cross country roadtrip we did).

Hire car costs were on-par with Aussie prices, but the fuel here is 60c/L! The locals are outraged as fuel costs are at an all time high.

The roads. Wow. AFF readers, Oman has an AWESOME road network, if you came here & hired a muscle car (or motorbike) you could get around most of the country & have a blast. Most major roads are multi-lane divided highways, or in the middle of the desert it's a widened two-way highway (currently being duplicated). Speed "limit" is 120kph, but the speed cameras (& cops) are cool with 140kph. In the more remote parts we were belting along at 160+, which was unnerving at times when a truck was coming the other way, or when you'd pass a group of camels at the roadside.

The cities weren't too difficult to navigate, they're not quite grid-style (& the older suburbs have a lot of little rabbit-warren laneways) but the main roads are quite easy to get from A-to-B.

4WDs are needed for desert (off-road) driving, and for a particular mountain area where the roads were sealed but steep. Turns out I'm not a great fan of dune-bashing, but my wife loves it.

FOOD

Omani food is more of a blend of other cultural foods, rather than being distinctly Omani. They have Shawarma which is their take on a kebab/souva. You can get Shawarma anywhere and it's condsidered fast food. 300 Baisa (about $1) gets you a Shawarma wrap that's about 2/3 the size of a kebab.

Shuwa is spiced/marinated lamb (mutton? goat?) that's slow-cooked in an earth oven for up to 3 days. Very tasty, but expensive!

Karak Chai is a blend between full-on Indian chai and British tea. Available everywhere, and the best stuff comes from roadside food stalls next to servos. A small cup (2/3 the size of a small tea here) costs 100 Baisa, or ~30c.

Omani coffee is like a much milder version of Turkish coffee, laced with cardamom. You have little cups of it along with dates.

There's curry outlets everywhere & having curried swordfish for breakfast with a side of garlic naan is a great start to the day.

Alcohol is hard to come across, unless you're at a hotel or resort, but for the most part I didn't really feel like sinking tins.

All the meat - with the exception of specific non-Halal areas in some supermarkets - is Halal. Having said that I had the 2nd best burger I've ever had and it was a Halal burger from a hotel in Muscat. (The best burger I've had was an actual US one)

1000 Baisa = 1 Rial = $3.40.

TECH/COMMS

My wife used an Omantel SIM (their Telstra) in her iphone & we went everywhere using that. Wifi is everywhere, & if we didn't have our Omani friend travelling with us down south we would have relied on Google Translate instead, an app that translates (voice or text, and in some cases images). Having said that, hotel/servo staff were good with English and we could get by on our own using a mix of English, basic Arabic and hand gestures.

Pics aren't loading for some reason, but I'll get around to that later

Thanks for reading!

[mcflux]

Their winter temperatures are spot-on.

[mcflux]

Some of the roads

[George V]

Never been there.

Roads looks empty. I do like winding roads by the sea with rolling hills in tropics especially when there is next to no traffic, a drivers dream.

Re locals - Africans, Indians / Pakistanis are all are guest workers. Cuisine and fast food will have a major influence from that combination. Re meat - it is goat meat not lamb.

Glad you enjoyed your trip.

Regards,
George V

[FTE217]

Nice trip and description mate.
I travel to Dubai on business a few times nowadays - I call it the Vegas of the middle east.
Still weird how it all operates and has similarities to what you experienced.
I'm there when its above 50c !
I just stopped over in Qatar/Doha the other week on the way back from Europe with the family.
Now that was another interesting place to check out. The water was greeny blue !
All the roads are perfecto - doesn't surprise me.
Americano cars have been their fav for as as long as I can recall followed by Euro exotics ofcourse.
I checked up on google which is the richest middle east country and Qatar came up first being that per capita avg wage was over $100k...interesting.
Nice pics.
We do business with Saudi,Kuwait obviously UAE,Jordan have met some really nice people despite their religious beliefs.

[mcflux]

Originally Posted by George V

Never been there.

Roads looks empty, probably a drivers dream. I do like winding roads by the sea in tropics especially then there ars next to no traffic.

There's decent traffic in the cities, but it's fairly light on the highways once you hit rural areas. There are roads along the coast an hour from Muscat that in my opinion rival the Great Ocean Road for the scenery, but with 4 lanes instead of 2.

The coastal/mountain road near the Yemen border is an engineering marvel!

[mcflux]

Originally Posted by FTE217

Nice trip and description mate.
I travel to Dubai on business a few times nowadays - I call it the Vegas of the middle east.
Still weird how it all operates and has similarities to what you experienced.
I'm there when its above 50c !
I just stopped over in Qatar/Doha the other week on the way back from Europe with the family.
Now that was another interesting place to check out. The water was greeny blue !
All the roads are perfecto - doesn't surprise me.
Americano cars have been their fav for as as long as I can recall followed by Euro exotics ofcourse.
I checked up on google which is the richest middle east country and Qatar came up first being that per capita avg wage was over $100k...interesting.
Nice pics.
We do business with Saudi,Kuwait obviously UAE,Jordan have met some really nice people despite their religious beliefs.

I've never been to Dubai, it would definitely be an interesting city to visit. Unfortunately the two times we've been traveling via Doha we haven't had a long enough stopover to score the free city tour.

The traffic mix in the cities was a fairly even blend of US new-school muscle & SUVs/pickups, small asian & euro econoboxes, large luxury Lexus/Infiniti/Euro saloons, and of course Landcruisers everywhere. There were even a few VT-VE SS's. Only a handful of exotics, unlike what I imagine Dubai would be like.

Out in the sticks it's mostly 70-series Cruisers & old V8 Lexus sedans (the 'commodores' for the local bogans)

50*C? Yeah pass on that! Winter was perfect, low 30s every day, low 20s every night, except up in the mountains where it was half that.

Arab Drift-Spec Commodore:

[mcflux]

This is why: http://fordforums.com.au/announcement.php?f=5&a=2

In short, the following things are not permitted:

1. Posts about or containing references to: religion, race, politics, sensitive or controversial subjects except at the discretion of the admin team.

So technically I've breached the T&C but I figured merely mentioning the religious aspects there in a travel-guide style would suffice. There's a lot more to the country than their religion but I get what you're saying, discussing it without fear would be a good thing.

[Syndrome]

Originally Posted by Ghia5L

This is why: http://fordforums.com.au/announcement.php?f=5&a=2



So technically I've breached the T&C but I figured merely mentioning the religious aspects there in a travel-guide style would suffice. There's a lot more to the country than their religion but I get what you're saying, discussing it without fear would be a good thing.

World events in the last year have clearly shown that although people can be bullied into silence, they cannot be bullied into changing their opinion. It is clear why the forum owners made these rules as people will have differing opinions and political debates are never civil. Why else would people go to war? The only fear is that of people not being able to identify what is a threat to them.

[malazn mafia]

Loved that crooked Toyota painted onto the tailgate of that Hilux with a paintbrush. And makes Australia's road network look third world. The attitude to speed on low risk, high speed long distance driving is much better than our strictly death-by-boredom 110kph...

[mcflux]

Originally Posted by Syndrome

The only fear is that of people not being able to identify what is a threat to them.

And that's why I made a thread about my experiences traveling through a Muslim country - I identified quite quickly that the people here were a non-threat

[Stefan]

Thread Title

Travelling in a Muslim country

Originally Posted by Ghia5L

RELIGION

I will leave this brief and will not encourage any ongoing discussion regarding religion

Why call the thread traveling in a Muslim country but them not discuss the fact it is a Muslim country.

Why not call the thread travelling in Oman, If I go to the UK, I don't tell people I went to a Christian country, I just went to the UK.

[Ben73]

It's called Oman because that's what you say to yourself when you realize where you are.

[mcflux]

Well, my opening post did cover a range of my experiences travelling within a muslim country.

I'm more than happy to discuss aspects of my experiences in Oman, provided the questions fall within T&C, as I wouldn't want to see the thread closed by the moderators :-)

Did you have any forum-allowed questions that I could possibly help answer? I'd be more than happy to oblige, as that's the whole point of my thread.

[Trump]

Originally Posted by FairmontGS

Sad bunch of sacks you all are - bloke does a travelogue on a fascinating destination and all you can do is roll out racist whinges about Islam...

I agree with this man.

Ghia5L, that is an epic journey and experience. Hat is tipped for the brilliant travelogue.

[Charliewool]

Thanks for the excellent travelogue!
May I ask why Oman was chosen as your destination?... And would you return?
(Not knocking your choice.. I also love visiting places that aren't mainstream)

[mcflux]

Cheers guys!

Charliewool - our prime reason was to visit an old friend, who used to live in Melbourne (he came from Oman), but our secondary reason was we've caught the travel bug & came across an advert for an epic resort about 6 months ago, pic at the bottom of this post. We then researched Oman as far as safety, getting around, prices, etc, and decided it was for us.

Would I return? Definitely! Not next year, as going on annual overseas holidays is beyond our means haha, but say in 10 years' time it would be high on the to-do list, if we can afford to go.

If anyone on here knows how to link images using this forum's coding, then I'll be linking future images at 50% size. I'm currently just using [img](image.jpg)[/img]

This is the resort we went to (photo by yours truly). Alila Jabal Akhdar. 'Alila' is the hotel chain, and Jabal Akdar translates to "Green Mountain" (lol, green). It's 2.5kms high and the air begins to thin out here, we were short of breath whilst hiking.



For some reason this photo appears to be of reasonable size?

[mcflux]

I figured I'd post something I'm sure all AFF readers can be happy with!

Here's a pic of my muslim middle-eastern brown Omani mate's Ranger after he bogged it at a beach, down in the southern Dhofar region:



My mate's Ranger is the base model "Commercial", with a 2.5L petrol 4 cylinder & Getrag 5 speed manual. It's good up to 120 but beyond that the gearing is too short, and the 2.5 runs out of puff above 140 (it takes forever to wind out to 170, revving somewhere well north of 4000rpm).

The interior is spartan-as, it still has a single-DIN stereo, but the seating & ride was comfy enough. I drove it most of the way back from Salalah to Muscat, including through a remote detour to drive past some oil camps where the Sultanate gets most of its money from.

*edit* I learned to drive LHD manuals from my SEGA Rally days

[Maka]

Originally Posted by Syndrome

World events in the last year have clearly shown that although people can be bullied into silence, they cannot be bullied into changing their opinion. It is clear why the forum owners made these rules as people will have differing opinions and political debates are never civil. Why else would people go to war? The only fear is that of people not being able to identify what is a threat to them.

Well you do make a good point here Syndrome because of the phenomenon of hostage taking in foreign countries. I'm sure Ghia5L would've done his due diligence & the fact he took his wife with him shows things were/was fine.
Anyway afaik Oman is not a failed state & is a coalition ally.

I thank Ghia5L for taking the time to share his & his wife's recent travel adventures to a interesting & exotic destination. Nice to hear it was a great learning experience & happy life long memories were made.

cheers, Maka

[mcflux]

Here's a link to the top 20 safest countries to visit: http://www.traveller.com.au/the-worlds-safest-countries-finland-named-the-safest-country-on-earth-grwxqe

Qatar is #2, UAE is #3, Oman is #9, Australia is #13.

And here's a bit of a brief modern history on Oman:

The current Sultan has reigned since 1970. Under his father's rule (1930s to 1970) Oman was a desperately poor isolationist country, with a high infant mortality rate, very low literacy and education, a communist rebellion in the southern province of Dhofar, and an Islamist stronghold with guerilla activity in the Nizwa region. In 1970 there were 3 schools, 1 hospital, and 6kms of sealed road within the entire Sultanate. Oil discovery & production was beginning to take off in the 1960s, and the current Sultan capitalised on this through rapid modernisation as well as unification of the country.

We visited one ancient port town in the southern Dhofar region called Mirbat. There was a battle here in 1970 between British SAS/Omani loyalists and communist forces. Mirbat is a town lost in time, some of the streets we drove through look like maps out of CounterStrike, but despite the ruinous nature of many of the streets the locals appeared to be living a cruisey albeit modest life down here. This was perhaps the poorest place we visited, and the tyre tracks on the beach in the 1st pic are from the Ranger. There's a mix of ruins and new houses side by side, the locals are easygoing with their surrounds.

[MITCHAY]

It looks like a nice trip. Not my thing personally but funny to see Commodores being modded badly like they are here

Originally Posted by Syndrome

Getting a head start in acclimatising to a muslim environment?

Jerk comment. You could always move to America and be scared about everything and anything with them.

[Tonz]

Last year I flew to Uganda, visit old friends, we flew Emerites (wow hard to travel anything after that) Adelaide to Dubai, then Kampala, what was interesting was flying way out the Indian ocean and then picking up African coast further down giving this whole area a big miss.

[mcflux]

That's a pretty decent detour, heading back out over the Indian Ocean. What's Uganda (or the part of Uganda you visited) like? What is the poverty like? I'll just say that with Oman, and those photos of Mirbat I posted, there may be poor or dilapidated areas but I didn't witness any poverty as such. I've seen more poverty here in Australia.

[Syndrome]

Originally Posted by Ghia5L

And that's why I made a thread about my experiences traveling through a Muslim country - I identified quite quickly that the people here were a non-threat

In that environment, yes. In other environments NO.

[FTE217]

That resort look pretty dam nice experience Ghia5L.
Interesting place, some of the pics are similar to Doha.
I thought the Hilton in Dubai was pretty darn nice but ofcourse its not a resort.
In the summer there its pretty surreal being its so damn hot.
Yes mate 50c + and I was expected to wear a suit for the week but after the first day having had to walk to this function centre each morn I said NO way am I wearing a suit !
People will always say its not their cup of tea but just once is good to see how the middle east really is for some.
I find it very interesting.
Walking around Doha city is weird and exciting at the same time.
Went to their markets well more so like a Bazaar - so different to our markets lol......
What I notice be it Dubai or Doha hotel staff/cleaners/workers/hospitality are never middle eastern people - all are imports from xyz......

[mcflux]

Syndrome - your point is valid, but I didn't go to Mosul or Aleppo. Just as I'm not in Traralgon at this time of night, because no doubt I'd be in Emergency from an ice junkie or drunk who's assaulted me...

FTE217 - I'm not really a resort guy, but the Mrs loves them, therefore I by default also love them haha

50+C and a suit?!? And you lived to tell the tale!

The Middle East - or at least Oman - is definitely not something for everybody, but I do think it would surprise/impress many.

Bazaars aka Souqs, we went to a couple. We brought home two large bags of Frankincense that looked like shards of ice, probably worth hundreds but we bought one bag for ~$7 & had the 2nd thrown in free (White Privilege Factor<tm>). Being white worked against us at a tourist trap Souq though, we thought we were getting a bargain on some packaged dates, then later that day saw the same dates in the same packaging at a supermarket for half the cost...

Here was the Souq in Salalah that we bought a heap of Frankincense from:



One of the stalls within the old Muttrah Souq (Muscat)



The Muttrah corniche/esplanade (the Souq is in the middle of all this):



One of about 8 entries into the Muttrah Souq:



You can get some rad deals on Genuine<tm> products also:



Lastly, yes I noticed in most of the hotels / resorts we stayed at, ranging from budget to luxury, pretty much all the workers were Indian/Pakistani or Filipino. The head bobble the Indians do ("no, no Sir" or "yes, yes Sir", indistinguishable) is hilarious. And the Filipinos sound like they were all taught by the Ray Romano School of American English<tm>

[Mechan1k]

Really nice write-up Ghia5L.

It's refreshing to see something different ... and amazing to also see the beauty in some of the countries that never get shown in mainstream media at all. If it wasn't for your images and descriptions I would never have known was Oman would have been like.

Thanks for sharing.

[xxx000]

Just been to UAE recently and enjoyed it, thanks for this really good thread on Oman. Will now consider going there sometime

[nuthin' fancy]

Originally Posted by Ghia5L

I've never been to Dubai, it would definitely be an interesting city to visit. Unfortunately the two times we've been traveling via Doha we haven't had a long enough stopover to score the free city tour.

The traffic mix in the cities was a fairly even blend of US new-school muscle & SUVs/pickups, small asian & euro econoboxes, large luxury Lexus/Infiniti/Euro saloons, and of course Landcruisers everywhere. There were even a few VT-VE SS's. Only a handful of exotics, unlike what I imagine Dubai would be like.

Out in the sticks it's mostly 70-series Cruisers & old V8 Lexus sedans (the 'commodores' for the local bogans)

50*C? Yeah pass on that! Winter was perfect, low 30s every day, low 20s every night, except up in the mountains where it was half that.

Arab Drift-Spec Commodore:

image

image

Looks like the Collingwood supporters edition.

Great write up of a destination (nearly) no one has been to.

[scoupedy]

I have no desire to go to any of those types of countries won't even catch me in Bali. Would rather Japan Hong Kong Vietnam I usually prefer 1st world countries.