2002 December 4th Journal Entry Woke up at 10 a.m., which was much too early since I went to bed at 3 a.m. Had breakfast, hopped online briefly, then got dressed and went for a drive around the greater Muscat area. Went to Mutrah. Walked around the rundown parts of town and meandered around the souq. People seemed friendly enough. Quite a few younger people were eager to toss out English greetings as I walked by. People didn't seem too horribly camera shy like in Saudi, except one woman who had a minor freak out on me when her son ran up to me and asked me to take his picture and when I raised my camera she screamed "laa laa laa!!!" (NO! NO! NO!) Chill out lady and get your kid to not ask foreigners like myself to take his picture if you don't want them to do it. After all, youth pictures always work well in travel journal material so who'd pass up the opportunity? Westerners/Asians love people-pictures after all... (Technically, anything resembling a picture, a portrait, a sculpture or a statue is forbidden by Islam as it inevitably always leads idolatry, apparently.) Drove into Muscat proper, but the place was a bit of a non-place so I didn't stay long. Besides, the sun was in the wrong place and didn't lend itself to photography by 3:30 p.m. Returned to the hotel and hung out at the pool for about an hour, meandered around the neighboring beach, chilled out in the health club jacuzzi then came back to my room and worked on editing some more pictures. Went down to the outdoor restaurant/pool area about 8:30 for dinner (OR7/US$18). Club sandwich and cheese sambosa which were oddly called "samboussic" on the menu. I wasn't sure what they were until I read their translated Arabic names to the right. Strange. Samboussic??? Is that the French spelling??? Then went out to Starbucks which was just a 300 meter/300 yard walk away. Sat outside and had a tall cappuccino (OR1.200/US$3.15). Read the newspaper and watched life go by. Lots of young Omani guys in their 20s/30s mulling about having coffee and shooting the sh*t with one another. Saw some women coming and going, faces uncloaked UNLIKE Saudi Arabia. Two Omani guys - who if asked would most likely describe themselves as "ultra cool" - ended up sitting at the neighboring table to mine and were switching back and forth between English and Arabic. I figured it would just be a matter of time before they struck up a conversation with me - as I am clearly a white English speaking soul (hence the English newspaper in my hands and my skin color) - and as if on cue, Haleem leaned over and asked if I had seen the article in today's paper about the Chef who hates most contemporary cookbooks. I was like, "???" Alas, I'm no stranger to using the weirdest of topics to strike up a conversation with a random foreign language speaker, so I could relate. But I must admit that Haleem's conversation starter was definitely stretching things. It turned out that Haleem had lived in the United States for some 13 years, in Pittsburgh and Chicago, went to SF once but didn't like it much. His friend Ahmed had visited several times and enjoys the States. I wanted to ask about their post-9/11 experiences (knowing that most other Arabs I talk to are *HAPPY* about it), but didn't wanna oppen up that conversational can o' worms just then. Turns out they run the Hyatt ($$$!) club and bar and they told me to swing by in two days once Ramadan ends Thursday (tomorrow!) and "Eed" begins (The post-Ramadan feast period). Apparently once the "holy" month of Ramadan is over, drinking and public gyrating come back into vogue and the hotel-bar/club scene gets hopping again. Figure I might as well pay 'em, although I didn't exactly bring all my club clothes with me. I suppose if I wear the same outfit every evening but to different clubs, then no-one will notice, although after a couple evenings of that I'll probably end up smelling like an ash tray as per all the smoking around here. As the night progressed at Starbucks and Haleem and Ahmed bolted, I just sat and people watched for a while. Saw an Indian bus filled with Omani youths drive by burning rubber with them screaming out the windows as they squealed through the parking lot (typical Arab youth behavior). I assumed they'd all just crash and die - thereby making the surroundings less noisy once again - but they didn't and continued to be "cool" for all our entertainment. Other cars drove around the parking lot in incessant circles blasting various American R&B/rap music out their cars, and a few others drove by pumping Arabic pop. I must admit that this region's love of American music is quite fascinating. How interesting then that the Arabs should hate America so much . Walked back to the hotel eventually. Showed my car rental agreement to the customer relations people and asked them if they thought my post 200km per diem rate thereafter looked like OR.35 or OR.035 (US$1 vs. US$.10). Omanis break their Rial monetary unit into 1000 units (cents?) and so when they quote something as 35 ballissa (bassila? bassessa???) it might possibly mean .35 or .035, and no one ever seems to know for sure. The hotel staff weren't sure so I'll need to call the car rental place in the morning and get it clarified since I'd like to take a 500km trip down south in a day or two, and it could be the difference between $500 or $50 in kilometer fees. As a matter of fact, my trip down south depends on it completely! After trying to figure that all out, I came back to my room, and voila, here I am. Time for nighty night!

So this day was going to be all about meandering around the little port town of Mutrah. (Pronounce the final 'h'!) I had read in my Lonely Planet: Middle East book that the Mutrah Sooq (market) was "without a doubt the most interesting in the Arab Gulf States" and with an enticement like that, how could I resist? Neighboring the market area was the harbor corniche (walkway on the waterfront) and the Al-Riyam Park, so I figured I'd have enough to keep myself busy for several hours.

All around Muscat, Mutrah, and Ruwi you can see stone fortresses popping up out of the rocky inclines like mushrooms. Since Oman was once the center of an expansive African-Arabian-South Asian empire, the need to protect this center of power was great and the remnants of that era can still be seen in nearly all directions. Above: a fortress overlooking eastern Mutrah. Below: wooden dhow boats anchored in harbor.

Above and below: despite the rather modern nature of most of the city of Muscat, some of the older districts seem to be a bit tattered around the edges and without paved streets or proper garbage removal. Despite this, I loved the close proximity of the buildings to one another as well the feeling of intamacy or community you can get from living in such close quarters to your neighbors. Just add a couple paved surfaces and a new coat of pain, and the place would be really charming.

Above and below: trash eating goats. If you look closely, you'll notice one of the goats inside the dumpster and I was cracking up just standing there and watching these little horned beasts hopping in and out of the trash eating their afternoon treats.

Above: this was one of the areas where varying market alleys all snaked together at one point. It was prayer time when I took this picture so many of the shops were closed; in addition it was the Ramadan holiday which means that most commercial businesses will be closed during the day time and not open until after sundown prayer at which time people break their fast for the day, feast, then go out and do their shopping. From a photographic point of view, I find that snapping pictures is safer during prayer time since there are fewer people out and about to be offended by the appearance of my camera. As mentioned earlier though, I got the feeling that Omanis were not camera-phobes like the Saudis, so I didn't really experience any true negativity by people because of my picture taking. But still, I didn't exactly want to push it. . .

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