Dateline Muscat (II)

When I later looked back on the plentiful fare on offer for our breakfast the next morning, the phrase "the condemned man ate a hearty breakfast" was to spring unbidden to my mind, but at the time I entertained no such murky thoughts. We took a taxi down to the port of Muttrah and headed for the colourful fish market. Not for the queasy but an extraordinary sight and site just the same. Then we walked up the gentle curve of the corniche leading to Old Muscat where His Majesty the Sultan has one of his pads or rather palces. The round trip was about 6 km and we felt we had earned a nice meal overlooking the port when we got back. Once again we were bemused by the ridiculous prices and in a rush of generosity I suggested that Anne take the lobster thermidor, something we're not usually in the habit of indulging in. We had a very interesting conversation with the Srilankan waiter who said he preferred Dubai but couldn't afford to live there.
When the time came to pay I noticed that we were - how to put this? - short of cash, and it quickly transpired that we had woefully overpaid the taxi-driver, having mistaken a 1 rial note for a 50 rial note, thereby setting him up for the best part of a month and giving new meaning to the expression "to be taken for a ride". Decency forbids me from naming guilty parties but suffice it to say it wasn't me.

Now being strapped for cash and finding it difficult to get much money from the ATMs, I was reduced to asking for a loan from the aforesaid Ibis Hotel of international repute. I asked for an advance of about 400 rials and was crestfallen when the receptionist laughed in the region of my face. "You do realise", she said, "that you are asking for an advance in the vicinity of £1000!". I couldn't believe my ears. I had thought that 2 rials equalled 1 euro only to discover that 1 rial actually equalled TWO EUROS. This caused me to revise my appreciation of the cost, and indeed the point of living in Oman, and cast the legendary hospitality of the taxi drivers in a somewhat different light.
The best the receptionist was prepared to do was to loan me 20 rials which was better than nothing, I suppose. Feeling rather like Claude Rains left to face the music at the end of Notorious, I took the lift up to the fifth floor and entered our room. "I've got some good news and some bad news to tell you", I began brightly, and made the foolish error of beginning with the good news.

So a trip which had begun in the most auspicious light ended with repeat visits to McDonalds and Subway and a seven-hour coach trip back to Dubai enlivened by several inspections from the Omani military and police, obviously unnerved by the wave of unrest sweeping the country and with which I wholeheartedly sympathised. Oman: what a dump. I couldn't wait to get out of the place.