Trip to Dubai and Oman

My apologies for the delay, but finally it is here: the report from my travel to the United Arab Emirates and Oman!

Ever since I saw an episode of a Dutch tv show called "3 op reis" about Oman a couple of years ago, I fell in love with the beauty of this country and it was very high on my to-go-list. This autumn I finally got a chance to go there. From Prague, I could book a relatively cheap ticket to Dubai. From there I would travel over land to Oman, a road trip through the desert, that turned out to be less empty than I expected. More about that will follow later.

First I will introduce Dubai, which is one of the craziest cities in the world. It is located in the United Arab Emirates, however, only 20% of its inhabitants is Emirati. 50% of the population is Indian or Pakistani. All of these people come to Dubai to earn money, which is quite there, because there is no income tax at all and the salaries are high. Due to the large amount of oil in the Emirates, the government just doesn't know what to do with all the money, which is why they started building crazy stuff, such as the highest tower in the world and or an artificial group of islands shaped like the world. Now let me tell you about my experiences.

I arrived in Dubai in the evening and quite unexpectedly I got through the passport control easily. When I got out of the airport, I got on a taxi to take me to Zulekha Hospital: the landmark near to the place where my Couchsurfing host Nicknack was living. The ride was however not a big success and it took me over 40 minutes to cross 11 kilometres. Nicknack, a 26 years old Thai guy, picked me up from the hospital with his own car and took me to his great apartment. It became clear to me that indeed it was easy to live a wealthy life here. In the evening we went to the famous Dubai mall. Just outside the mall, I bought my host a beer, that cost me 8 euros, but for that money we did have an amazing view on Burj Khalifa (that highest tower in the world). Even at night it was very impressive.

The next day was more or less a typical tourist day for me. I visited all famous places in Dubai, including Burj Al-Arab, the beach at Dubai Marina and Al-Ahmadiyah school. I could use 200 words to describe all this, but the pictures below speak for themselves:

I had to be home at a reasonable time though, as Nicknack told me he would cook a real Thai meal for me and his Lebanese friend who would also stay at his place that night. When I got home, at first I thought I was at the wrong address. The appartment was suddenly filled with Thai people, all speaking in their own language! It seemed like I arrived at a dinner party for the entire Thai community in Dubai. I did have a good time with all of them though, ate squid for the first time (like I expected in advance: I didn't like it), went out to a club in the basement of the Crowne Plaza Hotel with Nicknack, his Kenyan flatmate, his Lebanese friend Max and the last two remaining Thai girls Kim and Noyna and found out that parties in Dubai can be pretty good:

The next day I would go to Oman. However, at the bus station I suffered my first setback: even though I arrived 45 minutes in advance, the bus was already full and there were like 40 people waiting outside the bus. In a very chaotic situation I found out that there might be an extra bus, however, it was not sure when and if at all this bus would come. In the meantime, I had some tea with Ali, a Pakistani businessman in his late fifties on his way to meet a friend in Oman, and Tariq, an Indian student who was going to visit his parents in Muscat.

When we finished our tea and headed back to the bus station (which was not more than just some sand next to the road with a sign "bus" next to it), we got in touch with Farook, an Indian businessman who owned a car, but didn't want to drive to Muscat alone. After some time, the two businessman negotiated a deal: we would not wait for a bus to come, but go on a roadtrip to Oman with the four of us.

This road trip was one of the most special memories from my trip. Four men, that didn't know eachother when they got up that morning, spending 8 hours driving through the Arab desert, waiting for a visum for Oman at the Hatta-border and driving through typically Omani villages, sometimes stopping over for some Arab tea in a local teahouse. The tea was also one of the highlights of my trip by the way. I could get used to the quiet life of drinking tea in a tea house all day.

We arrived in the Muscat area shortly after midnight. This could have been a bit of a problem for me, as I didn't arrange a place to sleep in advance. Luckily Ali and his Omani friend Shabeer were willing to help me find accomodation. And even though it was late at night, Shabeer insisted on showing us around the area. He was clearly the kind of man that always expects to get what he wants, so we had no other choice than to go with him. After one crazy ride in the middle of the night we ended up at a fastfood chain, where my new Omani friend ordered enough food for the four of us (including his personal assistant/bodyguard Sohail from Bangladesh) to feed three local families. It was also at that moment that I was offered to stay at Shabeer's place during my stay in Oman. An offer that I gladly accepted.

The stay in Oman was hectic: it involved a lot of driving around, visiting sights in the area, drinking tea (at least three times per day), visits to the mosque (during which I had to enjoy myself for one hour, as non-muslims are not allowed to enter the mosque) and also a meetup with Mehdi: the only friend in the region that I made prior to my visit. The meetup took only two hours, during which we took a walk through the city and talked about everything, from general topics like the mindset of Omani people to really personal topics. It was a very interesting conversation that improved my understanding of what it's like to be young in a country like Oman and of the Arab culture in general. This is a photo of the two of us together, you can imagine that quite a lot of people were looking at us when we were walking the street together:

On Monday I was facing a difficult decision. Initially, I was planning to go back to Dubai on this day, however, Shabeer told me that if I would stay he would show me a beautiful beach and take me to the countryside. It was hard for me, but I decided to stay in Oman at the expense of visiting Abu Dhabi, as I had heard that there was not so much to do there. So on Tuesday I went back to Dubai, again by car, together with Ali and Farook.

For my last night in the Middle East, I arranged that I could stay at Nicknack's place again. The next morning, my flight left only in the evening so I had one full last day in Dubai, I went to visit the last remaining sights in Old Dubai and in the afternoon I met up with Noyna again. Together we went to some kind of park for kids near the Dubai creek, where we sat down for a while. I realized that this was going to be my last moment of warm weather for 2011.

So now I'm back in Prague, back in the normal world, where winter is starting already. Ah well, just 5 months left and then spring will start again...