East Of Suez – Part 15 – Muscat, Oman, the Arabian Peninsula

17th to 18th February, 2024

We had a pretty uneventful journey from Koh Samui to Muscat via Bangkok, though for a small airport, Samui could still present some interesting challenges.

First up, we had to return our hire car, which had been, I would add, very reliable even though it did sound as though I had a cage of canaries in the engine whenever I turned on the ignition, though it never seemed to draw an iota of attention. We duly found the place we had driven it off from when we picked it up and, as ordered, parked it in roughly the same spot. I manoeuvred a trolley, loaded the 2 suitcases, 2 trundles, 2 backpacks and the folded wheelchair and pushed the ensemble carefully to what I thought was the terminal, about 50 yards away. This was not the terminal, this was the car rental building…

So it was back to the car, unload the trolley, reload the car, drive to the departure terminal and then unload again for check in. That all went well and they produced a nice wheelchair for Val and a sturdy chap to push it and then it was off to another building for the departure gates… Never a dull moment. Still, Bangkok Air were reliable enough and we landed in Bangkok in time to retrieve our luggage and then check in again with Oman Air for our flight to Muscat, Val being skillfully wheeled about the airport. Oman Air proved surprisingly comfortable with plenty of legroom, though we still looked longingly at the empty Business Class seats as we walked down to our seats in steerage. One day we WILL be upgraded!!

We landed, another wheelchair awaited us and after fetching our luggage it was off to the hotel in our pre-arranged car from the Ramada Encore. Not having gone much over 50 kmh for all of Thailand, whizzing along at about 120 kmh was terrifying, not helped when our driver was texting on his phone at the same time. The hotel is not all that inspiring, but it is suitably functional and comfortable. This is the picture from our room…

In fact we only stayed in this room for one night as an accessible room became available, so we moved the next day – the view is not quite as interesting, being the block of offices or apartments over an alley next to the hotel.

Muscat is very spread out and decidedly low-rise with about 10 storeys being the maximum you can build. As you can see, white is the colour, with the odd beige or sandstone variation. It is very attractive and you really do feel you are in Arabia with all the rather exotic connotations that come with it. From what I can gather from the internet the population of the Governate of Muscat (the stretched out coastal strip that includes modern and Old Muscat) is about 1.3 million (with a lot more men than women, largely due to the immigrant population, I suspect). Muscat is spread out over quite a large area with old and new separated by a range of hills. Here is about the best map I could find …

We had a slow start to Sunday, though I had a walk to the nearby Ikea to buy a non-slip shower mat. This seemed pretty straightforward as I could actually see it from the entrance to our hotel, so I thought a taxi was an unnecessary extravagance and set off in true mad dog and Englishman fashion in the midday sun. Unfortunately, trying to find the entrance involved me in an interesting hike up a hill and round the Muscat Avenues Mall. Still, I got the shower mat – in the only Ikea where there seemed to be more staff than customers.

At 2pm Ahmed, our taxi driver appeared. There was a little confusion as I had got his name from TripAdvisor and I was sure he was called Khalid there, a name I had been addressing him with on numerous WhatsApp messages and he hadn’t contradicted me. Indeed it was quite some time into our tour that he pointed out, probably after I had thanked ‘Khalid’ again, that his name was Ahmed. We laughed!

We headed East towards Old Muscat and our first stop, the National Museum of Oman. This is housed in a very attractive building opposite the Sultan’s Palace of Al Alam.

There was a lots of fascinating things to see in the Museum, as you might imagine. A select few…

We left the Museum and Ahmed drove us the very short distance to the Sultan’s Palace, Al Alam.

Muscat means ‘anchorage’ so the forts and the bay were obviously important and you only need to see Muscat’s location and the sea routes it can influence to see why it was fought over so often.

Ahmed was keen for us to see the al-Bustan Palace, a Ritz-Carlton hotel, a bit further down the coast. This bus map might help…..

Now you may be wondering why we didn’t stay in this rather splendid hotel. Well, put it like this, the Al-Bustan costs about £300 a night against our modest abode at £50 a night! Ahmed drove us right up to the front door, where numerous staff awaited our arrival (or anyone else’s for that matter) and Val and I emerged trying to look as though we were giving the place (and, indeed, the Palace) the once-over before making up our minds whether we would grace them with our presence.

It either worked or they were so welcoming, they were delighted apparently to see us and we were invited to look around at our leisure. I tried to take a photo to show you the lobby but even my wide-angle lens was struggling! The chandeliers are VERY impressive!

It was originally built as a royal palace in 1985 to host the Gulf Cooperation Council and to mark 15 years since the then Sultan had been in power.

As if this was not enough we then travelled even further down the coast to the Shangri-la Hotel, which proved even more of a challenge as I think they were waiting to host some sort of ‘do’ as we were greeted with cold towels and glasses of Champagne, both of which we declined and made our way out to the balcony to admire the view.

Our last stop was Mutrah (check the map!) and a visit to the Souq. This was quite good, though you could tell from the merchandise that Mutrah is the destination of frequent cruise ships.

We found a restaurant on the waterfront and had a rather indifferent shawarma or grilled chicken with Arabic bread.

Ahmed then kindly drove us back to our hotel after what had been a very good introduction to Muscat and Oman.

More to come tomorrow!