Dateline Muscat, Oman

I haven't forgotten my plege to share my insight into the true nature of Dubai with you, but first I would like to tell you something about our trip to the Sultanate of Oman and the many strange and wondrous things that befell us there! The flight from Dubai to Muscat took less than one hour courtesy of FlyDubai, the low-cost branch of Emirates. We flew over the arid mountains separating the UAE from the Sultanate and soon were skimming over the pristine waters of the Gulf of Oman and preparing to land at the aptly named Muscat International Airport.

Oman: what can I say? I was immediately invaded with a feeling of being among my own, a sense of “coming home”. Here were no high-rise buildings à la Dubai, instead a gently undulating landscape of promontories and bays set against a back cloth of stark hills. I was seduced, too, by the ridiculously low cost of living and by the happy, smiling faces of the taxi drivers who greeted us with many a “welcome” and seemed genuinely delighted with the tip I pressed into their unprotesting hands.
We checked in at the internationally acclaimed Ibis Hotel where a lift was on hand to whisk us silently up to our room on the fifth floor. As we drifted off to sleep in our authentically air-conditioned quarters, Anne and I looked forward to the holiday of a lifetime, and indeed the next day started off well enough...