Gym's Ramblings: Oman

As you know, prior to landing in Oman, the last port we visited was Mumbai. The contrasts between Mumbai and Muscat are unbelievable. Two places could not be more different.

The Sultanate of Oman occupies the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. The capital, Muscat, is a city of about 900,000 inhabitants, which looks like a beautiful gem of a place as you approach it from the Arabian Sea. Sailing in you notice right away the two ancient Portuguese forts, which guard the approaches to the city. These forts are perched on top of rocky ridges that frame the ‘old town’ and the port where the Nautica docked. It is not a huge port, so our ship featured prominently in the harbor amongst a couple of very pretty, anchored wooden dhows.

From the ship the ‘old town’ appears to be completely hemmed in by rugged hills and you do not realize when you first come in by sea that by far the larger portion of the city lays on the other side of those hills. Muscat has three distinct regions: the ‘old town’, Muttrah and Ruwi. Our tour of the area concentrated mainly on the ‘old town’ but we also went beyond the gated walls, which enclose the area of the port to see the thriving and very modern city in behind the ‘old town’.

Muscat is built for cars and everyone has one and why wouldn’t they when gasoline is literally cheaper than water. I don’t read Arabic but the signs at the Shell station were pretty clear that gasoline was 0.14-0.18 Rials per liter. That would make it about worth about 0.36 cents per liter at the cheapest. So can you guess what Oman’s main export is? Oil, of course! In fact, aside from tourism, I don’t think they have much else to rely on, but what a beautiful modern country they have built with basically a one-horse economy.

While I am on the subject of oil let me ramble a bit. For fun, let’s compare Oman to Alberta. They look about the same size to me in terms of areal extent. The populations are almost identical at 3 Millionish each. The similarities stop there though. Oman exports 1 Million barrels of oil per day and I think Alberta exports about triple that amount. Oman has free health care, free university for tens of thousands of students and pays no taxes and Alberta, well, you know where I am going with this…

Now I don’t advocate totalitarianism, but I just look around Oman and I listen to what they have and I see what it would be like if Alberta was an independent petro-state that did not have to prop up the poorer provinces in the confederation.

Enough of the rambling, as I indicated yesterday we visited the Grand Mosque of Muscat. It was incredible. The main chandelier is 14 meters long and contains 11,222 crystals of Austrian origin. The teak ceiling inspired by the roofs of ancient forts is from Indonesia. The second largest hand-made carpet in the world that is situated in the main prayer hall weighs 21 tons and was made by 600 Iranian women in about a year. The exquisite marble lining the walls is from India and the stained glass windows were made in Spain. Together it all takes the breath away and our pictures do not begin to show you what it was like. The one thing I will say though is that we had free access to the entire mosque and as you can see by the pictures in the last installment, we were also allowed to take a picture of the Koran. All visiting tourists to the mosque had to be dressed appropriately, no ifs, ands or buts. The dress code was made clear before we left the ship but there is always going to be someone, isn’t there? On our tour, two ladies from New York (figures doesn’t it?) were miffed when they had to buy robes to cover up before they were allowed to enter. Of course my dear wife was prepared with a long-sleeved shirt, long pants and a nice scarf she’d picked up in Vietnam.

We also visited the Main Souk in the old town and I purchased the original Aladdin’s lamp for somewhere between 2-3 Rials, such a bargain. Then, the Linda stayed on the bus while I visited the fish market. Finally, we did a quick self-guided walking tour of one of the Sultan’s 10 palaces. Attached are pictures of all of these things for your viewing pleasure.

It is about 11am Dubai time as I finish this installment. We are just cruising into Dubai’s cruise ship terminal. And thank god because we are low on fuel, liquor, foie gras and caviar! We will be docked here for 3 days and will hopefully see most of the highlights of this awesome city. After Dubai we visit Fujairah, which, like Dubai is in the United Arab Emirates. We then say goodbye to the U.A.E and the Persian Gulf as we circle back to Oman again with an encore visit to Muscat and also a stop in Salalah, Oman. I will therefore have more on Oman later.

Cheers for now!