Hester's Head

Do you have your coffee? Is it still hot? Let's get started. Sorry for the really-lame-joke-subject-title.
We are back at sea and our second patrol is underway after a port visit to Muscat, Oman. First though, I have to say how weird it is to see Christmas stuff. We are finally in the footprint of whatever satellite it is that sends us CFRT - Canadian Forces Radio and TV. I won't take the time to complain how crappy CFRT is and how seldom we are able to receive it. I saw some of 'This Hour Has 22 Minutes' with a Christmas tree in the background and at first I thought it had to be a rerun. Then it dawned on me - "Oh yeah, it's Christmas time." The Christmas commercials are discombobulating too. Then I got up for my watch and saw our mess was decorated. I find it all very strange; it does not feel like Christmas at all. Maybe I should consider Christmas shopping. Except it's too late - we are at sea until after Christmas.

Muscat is a very cool place - it has great scenery and cool architecture. It is on the north side of Oman, on the Gulf of Oman. It has some small, but very rugged, mountains that come right up to the water.

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Here's a picture of the Sultan's palace, right on the waterfront.

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It was a nice little place, none too shabby at all. There were also a couple forts built up on the mountainsides and plenty of little guard towers.

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These ranged all alongside the coastline and around the city.
I spent two nights in the Ramada while we were there. The first night I went for a walk with Martin, who was also staying in the hotel, to find something to eat. We checked out the McDonald's, something I don't do very often, and I had the McArabia grilled kofta. It was like a donair with two small patties that sort of tasted like donair meat. It turns out that kofta is ground meat and spices, just like a donair, usually made of lamb. Oman has the same warm, soggy, translucent lettuce that we have at McDonald's in Canada. I like Arabian coffee, but Omani coffee has some cardamom in it. It's not bad, but just enough to throw you off. One of the best things about hotels in the region is their breakfast buffet. They have plenty of Arabic items and most of the usual stuff. I encountered 'foul madams' for the first time. It wasn't consistent though, the first morning the foul madams seemed to be a chickpea, stewed tomato and spices stew. The second day it was chickpeas and some other kind of bean, was more homogenous and seemed to be a dip. Another strange thing about the hotel was the internet access. Maybe "annoying" is a better word. I checked in too late to get the 24-hour password as the hotel's internet guru was gone for the day. So the front desk gave me a handful of 30-minute passwords instead. It's rather annoying to surf the internet and be booted off every 30 minutes and then have to log on with a new login and password. Be careful where you surf though. You might get to see this:

"Notice...
The blocking of this site was not a unilateral decision taken by OMANTEL. An overwhelming number of requests from the subscribers made us rethink our strategy and conform to the popular demand to block pornographic and certain hacking sites that encourage hacking such as this one.
OMANTEL is not unique in this industry to take such an action. Many ISPs in several different countries are taking steps to block such sites.
For those small number of subscribers who may differ in their opinions with OMANTEL, we hope that they will find Internet interesting in many other areas."

I only stumbled across that once.

Otherwise it was fine for a three star hotel. It even had a bidet. There was a blue circle in a corner on the ceiling that I meant to take a picture of, but I forgot. It had an arrow pointing the direction to kiblah. I had to Google to find out that the kiblah is the black stone in the shrine at Mecca that you are to kneel towards when you say your prayers. This is what you need to do to figure out the exact direction to Mecca you need to face:

Determine your latitude and longitude. Use: http://www.astro.com/atlas/atlquest-eng.html

The Astrodienst page will give your latitude in degrees and minutes.

Go to: http://williams.best.vwh.net/gccalc.htm

Enter your latitude and longitude in the boxes for Lat1 and Lon1. If your coordinates are in degrees and minutes, separate the degrees and minutes with a colon; if they are in decimal degrees, use a decimal point.

For Lat2 and Lon2, enter 57:16 and 4:27:45, respectively - this is the lat and long for the kiblah. Press the "compute" button. The number that appears in the "Course 1-2" window is the azimuth from your location to Boleskine (in decimal degrees clockwise from true north).

All you need now is a compass - then on your knees.

Musa, a taxi driver, took me for a tour of the city the next day. He showed me the Sultan's palace, some hotels (such as the Al Bustan Palace hotel - the Sultan's old palace) and some of the scenery. I asked him how they get to the guard towers - he didn't know. I asked him what they did for water - he said that they had to bring it with them. I asked him what they did if they saw the enemy coming - he didn't know. These towers were usually in very rugged locations. Not miles from anywhere, but just very difficult climbs to get to them. In this picture you can see a water fountain on the far right, the giant incense burner, two of the guard towers, and a fort on the far left.

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Here's a better picture of the incense burner.

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Musa drove me around for a few hours showing me the sights. We went through some neigbourhoods and would stop damn near anywhere I wanted to take a picture. I kept telling him not to worry about stopping, he kept doing it. I can't remember what I was taking a picture of, but after a hundred pictures (or so) I had to tell Musa, "I'm not crazy!" His response was "No, no, no, no!" He was thinking it, I know he was. The first is the view from a hilltop. I also had a picture of a golf course from here, with greens that were oiled sand. A few of the guys played them and had good things to say. I think the expectation is that a sand green would be perfectly flat. But nope. They did have rolls and curves. I don't golf willingly so I'm not sure those are proper terms or even an adequate description.

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I had told Musa that I would like a picture of this sword monument. He didn't hesitate to pull over on the highway, though again I told him he didn't need to.

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I asked him to recommend a restaurant that served Omani food. So he took me to Bin Aleeq Traditional Omani restaurant. You get your own private room with the extra-firm cushions on the floor. I didn't have any lunch so I was very hungry by 6pm, which is very early for dinner in Oman. That meant I had a room with 20 cushions all to myself - like a big rumpus room. Which reminds me. Musa's taxi had Persian carpets for floor mats. And my hotel room had a Persian carpet for a bath mat. There were more Persian carpets throughout this dining room. So I sat on the floor, looked around the room, tried to figure out the TV in the corner, and waited for my waiter to come back. The TV was monumentally unsuccessful. I had to hold the power button otherwise it would slide back out and turn itself off. Not that it mattered much. I only had channel 80 and 81, which were both solid blue and exclusively blue. I went back to wandering around the room and waiting. I had some prawn biryani and some... something else. It was Omani bread with milk and some sugar. It was a lot like a bowl of Special K, except it was very hot. I asked for a bottle of Pepsi and got a bottle of water. After dinner I had a carafe of Omani coffee and a big bowl of dates. Musa waited outside while I ate and then took me back to my hotel.
I went to the mall to see what they had. I had a coffee and watched some bowling. The guy making the coffee was one of those frantic little guys who ran around with his hands held out, palms forward, in front of him. You know the type. He held his hands like he was ready to swat down anything that might pop up out of the floor and attempt to slap him in the face or perhaps to shove anything that dared get in his way. Know what I'm talking about? Yes, you do. I know you do. The bowling was typical bowling. I would've fit in nicely with that crowd. There were all sorts of dress. Some in their national dress with bowling shoes. ONLY bowling was offered there. There was a place to rent shoes. Nothing else. You couldn't buy drinks, beer, food, anything. A window to get your shoes at, a few tables, and the lanes. I even think all the bowling balls were on the lanes. The TV monitors keeping the score were cooler than any I've seen. After each person bowled a frame there was a little video for him or her. A prize I suppose. They varied depending on what you had just bowled and were all sports related, such as tennis, soccer, swimming, pole vaulting, boxing, weight lifting, basketball. The best was if you had knocked just one pin down. The video for you my friend was a boxer taking a hard right to the chin. I saw a few of those. A strike was usually a slam-dunk while a spare was an Aussie swimmer. The reward for a split was a weightlifter. An Asian weightlifter of undetermined gender. It would zoom in but the word "SPLIT" would cover their face. But if it was a woman, shame on her for wearing such a thin t-shirt when the gym is that cold. Tsk tsk.
On the way out I took a picture of a kiosk selling a treat known as "Cup Corn."

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I figured I didn't need to try that. I did try some Malai Kulfi ice cream even though I had no idea what that was. As I was eating I was trying to determine what flavour it was. The ice cream wasn't bad but it wasn't great either and it did have nuts in it. I finally had to stop walking to figure it out. After pondering for a moment, the only thing I could think of was that I was eating flowers. So I had to check the list of ingredients. Sorry. It did have pista and cashew nut and some 'nature identical condensed milk.' But it also had some kewra and rose flavours. I've smelled roses before, I've even cooked with rose water (only once though, I still have some at home) and I should've recognized it when I was eating it. That's exactly what it tasted like - it tasted like I was eating a rose.
The next day I made my way back to Muttrah, the port where the ship was, as Mike had arranged a snorkeling expedition. The trip to my hotel had cost me 1 Omani Rial and took me 45 minutes. Musa, my cab driver again, got me back in about 15 minutes. His cab must be the only one in the city with a meter. The trip back cost me 6.5 rial, but he only wanted 6 (about C$18.) I was back very early so I had a coffee and a couple cold, but very spicy, fried potato ball things for 0.3 rial - less than a dollar. They looked like pakoras but weren't. They were good though, don't get me wrong. It was just hard to eat something so spicy when the only thing to drink was a coffee that was nuclear reactor hot. I couldn't remember if Mike had said "Meet at the Marina Hotel" or "Meet at the Mina Hotel." I thought it was Marina, but I was able to sit in the shade at the Mina and look toward the Marina, which was about 100m away, rather than sit in the beating sun at the Marina and squint into it toward the Mina. Know what I'm saying? Mike finally came along, but there were only three of us to go snorkeling. Mike, Steph, and me. The Omani Dive Centre sent a van and brought us to their place. We had a good time checking in, but I think Mike and I wore out our welcome with Alice from England who grew up in Belgium and worked in Oman and spoke perfect Arabic. We had some time to sit on the beach and wait for the boat to take us out. I start to think in blogs and of incidents as "bloggable." I had a perfect example while we were waiting. There was a huge 'Red Bull' sun shelter and some matching tables on the beach. I wandered over to get something to drink and asked two guys, one of who was leaning on a pile of Red Bull cases, if I could have a Red Bull. They said no.
"Ha-ha, can I have a Red Bull please?"
"No."
I asked why not. They said that they didn't work there. So I asked where do I get one. The pointed back to where we got our snorkeling gear. Ok. I went back there to ask where I could get something to drink and was sent inside. I came back with a Coke and told Mike and Steph about my bloggable incident and how I think if things would make good blog material. The stories would get better as the day wore on. Oh yes.
The snorkeling was good, even though I was blinded by my fogged up mask for the first few minutes, drank enough salt water to lower the sea level so that you could almost walk safely on the bottom, and wondered if I appeared to be drowning. The salt in my mouth was unbelievable; it was like I had been eating salt and vinegar chips all day. I finally got the hang of it though and the snorkeling got better. I liked it a lot, though it wasn't super spectacular. Mike was disappointed because he had put considerable effort into arranging it and had expected far more. It was good for me, I haven't snorkeled very much. There were plenty of fish, some angelfish, parrotfish, other fish, and some other fish again. Maybe some others too. Mike knew the names of most of them and even brought a sea cucumber to the surface. There was no opportunity to rest, so I wondered if I could dog paddle for an hour. The first few minutes were a good laugh, especially for Steph and I. Mike was the experienced snorkeler and just got down to business. It took me some time to get my mask on my face, to get it clear of fog, get the water out of my snorkel, and then keep the water out of my snorkel. And do all that without drowning. My flipper motion felt like I was riding a unicycle. I've always wanted to try that. I make a point of getting very little sun. I don't tan, so I wore a shirt in the water. I will confess to you that the salt water and shirt wore out my nipples. It was agony and even hurt the next day, especially in the shower. One of the ship's divers told me the secret was tape. Next time I will use tape. Unsparingly. Steph and I were the first back in the boat. I was the first, but I knew Steph was behind me. I had circled the boat a few times, I didn't want to be the first in and then sit there by myself for too long. We must've timed it right, or everyone was waiting for someone else to be the first, because everyone quickly piled in the boat right behind us. The trip back was uneventful, except we were now cold and, ooo-chee-momma! Did it hurt when I took my shirt off! They ran the boat aground to make it easier for us to get ashore. 'Cept for Mike. He had planned to only get his toes wet, but he caught a foot and landed in six inches of water on his side. Not that he was dry or anything anyway. I didn't blame him for not wanting to get wetter, I didn't either, so I jumped off the front and landed in the sand.

Steph and Mike had wandered around the souk area of Muttrah the day before and were familiar enough with it to lead me around. They apparently knew it very well after only one day because they went down some very bleak and narrow alleys with enough twists and turns that I had no clue where we were. We did stop to listen to the Muezzin blasting out of the minarets. We only stopped to record it though, no one else seemed interested or inclined to stop what they were doing. It was loud and carried on for quite some time. We carried on and did some shopping in the souks. I bought another coffee and then we asked a taxi driver to take us somewhere for dinner. Guess what? We ended up at another Bin Aleeq Traditional Omani restaurant. The room for the three of us was far more reasonable than the 20-person room I had by myself the day before. Here's a couple pictures taken with Stephanie's camera. More about my camera later. The first is Mike working up an appetite. The second is what's leftover of our dinner.

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That entire meal for three came to 5.6 rials - less than my meal at McDonald's.
Steph had gotten out her camera so I went to get mine out. I searched hard and found nothing. I had lost my camera. I figured it had to be in the taxi so I went to the front till and asked for help. They just shrugged and smiled. Unless I knew the number of the taxi they would not be able to help me. How very frustrating and it put a damper on our dinner. We cut our dinner short - no coffee and dates today - we hopped in another taxi and went back to the souk where we had caught the first. First I asked at the coffee shop. That was challenging, first they thought I wanted to buy a camera, and then they thought I wanted to leave my camera there. Finally they understood and said that they didn't have the camera. That left the taxi as the only option. I had used a bank machine, but there was nowhere to put the camera down, I even had to balance my little coffee cup in the hole where you toss your receipt. It was a taxi stand where we had caught the taxi so we went back there. I've thanked Mike, but let me thank him here publicly, for having such a good memory of what the taxi driver looked like and what he was wearing. He described him to the other drivers and they knew whom he was talking about. Then they all jumped into action. They were on their cell phones making calls. They told me not to worry. They said he might be done for the night and asked for my number so they could get a hold of me tomorrow. But then they got a hold of him and said he would be there in 10, 20 minutes. They said the only thing to worry about was that if someone had gotten in the taxi after. The cab driver came by and a half dozen of the drivers ran out in the street to wave him down. When he came around one of the drivers went to check the car and came walking back... is that my camera? How incredible is that? I couldn't believe it. Almost two hours later in a city of over 600,000. My camera had fallen in a pocket in the door. The help from all the taxi drivers was impressive beyond belief. They all shook my hand, it was a great scene. I can't convey how happy they were and how happy I was. I'm surprised hugs weren't being handed out. Anyone want a hug? We went walking again, but not too far this time before we decided to go get another coffee, a Starbucks this time. So back to the taxi stand again, to more smiles, laughs and handshakes and we were off to Starbucks and then back to the ship.
Even without the help of the taxi drivers, I thought that Muscat was a fantastic place. The mountains, forts, guard houses and architecture were all incredible and I liked the people and the food. It was a good time; too bad we had to leave so soon.