The Family visits Oman

The arrival of my family was preluded with disaster.

A few days prior, after an encounter with shark, I found myself in the hospital ER, with an IV needle taped into my wrist, dripping saline into my bloodstream.

My proclivity for trying new food stuffs finally got the better of me and after eating an undercooked shark steak, I suffered from severe/intense/astronomic diarrhea for four days (almost every hour) before I finally decided it would be a good idea to see a doctor. It was a painful and disgusting experience that I won’t go into detail but I will say that I did suffer from a bout of paranoia where I was convinced I had contracted worms and read some horrific quips about worms crawling out of the body and then attempted a dietary therapy of raw carrots, sunflower seeds, garlic, tomatoes, and beet root which turned my output into what looked like a smooshed up legion of worms that had burst inside out into pieces. Plus there was this vaguely ethanolic smell that kept on sending me back to dissections in biology lab.

Thankfully there were no parasites, it was just a bacterial infection, treatable with antibiotics. However I did arrive severely dehydrated so lesson here, at some point drinking water no longer helps with dehydration and can sometimes exacerbate the situation. Drink Gatorade. Also, if you think you have worms, go see a doctor and don’t freak yourself out by reading the internet.

On my parents’ front, the night before they were supposed to leave, I received an email informing me that both my mom and my brother had realized their passports were expired. One of my mom’s friends had called to remind her to make copies of their passports and as they were making copies, my dad noticed my mom’s passport had expired several months ago and then they looked at my brother’s copy and it had also been expired for several months. So the morning of their flights, unable to make appointments, my brother took a bus from Madison, Wisconsin to Chicago, Illinois and my parents drove to downtown Los Angeles to attempt to renew their passports within hours of their planes taking off.

The lesson here: if you find out your passport is expired on the same day of your flight, it is possible to renew it in time, if you live in the right city.

While my brother arrived on schedule, my parents flight from Los Angeles to Chicago was delayed, causing them to miss their connecting flight to Turkey by minutes and they had to wait a day to take the next flight and then once they got to Turkey, they had to wait standby for a flight to Muscat and just happened to snag the last two standby seats to Muscat.

Lesson here: air travel can really suck sometimes.

My brother was eager to wear an “Omani costume” (his words), and we picked up our parents from the airport both in dishdashas and kumas.

Over their 11 day stay I drove them from Muscat to Buraimi to Abu Dhabi to Dubai, back to Muscat, to Sur/Ras al Jinz, back to Muscat, and finally to Nizwa and back again for a total of at least 1400 miles, which is kind of like driving from Los Angeles to the middle of America.

My family was actually interested in seeing Buraimi, the town that Lonely Planet concludes: “it’s fair to say there is not much reason to make a special visit”. I showed them the outside of my apartment and once I made a turn off the road into the dirt, they were already laughing and I wished I still had access to my apartment to show them how my bedroom was the size of another Fulbrighter’s bathroom in Muscat and the water pressure was so pitiful that at full blast I was less showering and more drizzling myself clean.

I had hoped to bring them to campus to meet the teachers and students at the college but it happened to be Oman’s Renaissance Day and everyone was off.

From Buraimi we crossed over to the UAE and because my brother and mother’s passports were blank, we were sent to an office where the director repeatedly asked if my brother and mother had ever been to the UAE? Were they sure? This was their first time? They had never ever entered? Never? Ever? Were they sure? Until my brother showed them his expired one and they let us continue.

Lesson: if you just renewed your passport, take along your old one just in case.

In Abu Dhabi I had planned to take them to Ferrari World but it turns out they all hated roller coasters so we just went to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and the Emirates Palace Hotel. My brother was initially turned away from the Emirates Palace because he was wearing shorts.

In Dubai, the main thing we did was eat a lunch buffet at the Burj al Arab, which is often called the 7 star hotel. It’s really a 5 star hotel and 7 star hotels don’t exist, the term was just used by a journalist and it caught on.

We ate at the Asian cuisine restaurant which, coincidentally was filled with mostly Asian guests, and it was delicious but probably not worth the $90 per person entry price. I finally had sushi after 6 months and there was Peking duck and dim sum so I was satisfied. The drinks really bumped up the price though and my brother’s two cans of coke cost $20. Plus water for $10?

The weather was terribly humid and since everyone in my family wears glasses we had to stop for a few moments each time we exited an air conditioned building so they could wipe off the condensation.

We also took the monorail around the Palm Jumeirah which is an artificial island shaped like a palm tree and along the fronds, the houses each have a backyard beach.

We also went to the Dubai Mall with a view of the Burj Khalifa and inside was the aquarium.

In Al Ain we drove up Jebel Hafeet to see the evening electric city view.

After a brief stop in Muscat, we continued south to Ras Al Jinz to see green sea turtles nesting. That was probably the highlight for my family and I’ll have a separate entry for that experience in the near future. On the way back we stopped by the Bimmah Sinkhole although they didn’t seem too excited about it.

Then I went scuba diving at the Daymaniyat Islands with Michael, one of the last remaining Fulbrighters, while my brother snorkeled above us. The islands are about a 40 minute boat ride from Sawadi beach, between Muscat and Sohar, and are Oman’s only marine national nature reserve and protected by UNESCO. The diving here is supposed to be some of the best in the country and at Ras al Jinz we met a woman who had just dove there and had rescued a green sea turtle from a net. Unfortunately that day the visibility was really bad and we didn’t see anything notable. But that’s the nature of Nature. My brother seemed to have a more fruitful experience snorkeling. During the surface interval between dives I snorkeled with him and we saw a trio of eagle rays and a large circular ray resting on the shallow bottom. He even sighted a manta ray leaping out of the water. I just caught the descending splash.

Our final destination was Nizwa where we attempted to find Wadi Ghul, the Grand Canyon of the Arabian Peninsula, but the steep roads were a challenge for my little Suzuki compact and when the road turned from asphalt to rocky dirt, I pushed on through until we caught a glimpse of the canyon but then had to turn back due to the descending darkness and my mom’s complaints.

 

We also went on a guided tour of the Al Hoota Cave with stalactites and pools of blind fish. There was a charismatic and jovial old man on the tour with his grandchildren and he had a walking stick and a white beard and was in full Omani garb and there was a naivety and earnestness in the way he kept on mumbling friendly Arabic to my parents despite them not understanding which was very endearing. And then when we reached the pool of blind fish, he took his stick and just started whacking at the water with it. When you’re old, you can get away with so much.

Finally back in Muscat, I took my parents to see the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque and at the end we were greeted by another friendly old man and taken to his office where he talked to us about Islam and then gave us a stack of free books.

My family became obsessed with Lulu Hypermarket. They pretty much wanted to eat all our meals there. It’s like if Omani tourists came to Los Angeles and just wanted to visit Costco.

One thing my family noticed was how frustrating traffic could get, both with cars and people. Getting in and out of Muttrah, with the narrow one way streets, was often a nightmare, and we would be waiting half an hour in stop and go traffic for what should have taken 5-10 minutes. And at Lulu’s, particularly during the first day of Ramadan, around noon, it was disheartening. Once we got passed the parking lot traffic jams, inside, the place was swarming with carts stacked completely full and lines stretching through the aisles. We were just trying to buy a hot lunch and we waited nearly an hour in the check out line. There was no other option, everything else was closed during Ramadan.

I don’t think my family was particularly taken with the country. I think I tried to fit in too much traveling and they were exhausted most of the time. Plus it was really hot and places were far apart, even within Muscat. They did comment that the older, more historic area where I lived, Muttrah, looked a lot like Taiwan with the narrow layout and building architecture and especially the souq compared to the Taiwanese night markets. Ultimately they did come to the Middle East, met Arabs, met Muslims, learned a bit about Islam, and it was uneventful and normal in the best possible sense. While I know they would never choose to live here, my hope is that they realized that they at least could live here; that while they saw many foreign aspects, they also encountered enough familiarity and commonality to feel safe and comfortable.

But now that my family has left, I realize I’m ready to go home as well.