After getting here and getting checked in (and upgraded to our executive suite for free!) we decided to venture out to eat. We found a small Indian restaurant beside the hotel. The restaurant was split into two sections, one upstairs for people who wanted to eat meat and one downstairs for people who wanted veg. We told them we would eat meat and they then said "UPSTAIRS FULL! YOU GO OUTSIDE!" We followed the man out the door (while picturing eating our rice sitting on the dirty curb) and found a small room attached to the front of the restaurant. We couldn't help but feel intentionally segregated, but it turned out to be good, cheap food-so who can complain, really.
We decided to go out on the town, but soon discovered that there are no liquor stores, our own hotel does not serve alcohol and there are only three nightclubs in the whole dang country! We called and found out where the most "Western" club was, but were told it was Arabic night, so all the music would be in Arabic. We went downstairs to catch a taxi and found a taxi driver sitting outside the hotel on a little carpet he had laid out, playing his little traditional guitar and drinking tea. We almost felt bad disturbing this man from his little party. He took us to the club and we walked in to find...like 3 people! Apparently Oman is not known for it's nightlife :P It did pick up after about an hour but the oddest thing was that they allow people in their National dress in to drink and party with the expats. This is only odd because this is a Muslim country and Muslims are not really supposed to drink, as most people know. In the UAE many of the locals drink but they will wear western clothes while doing it. So yes, it is strange to see people dressed like this:
getting hammered and cutting a rug on the dancefloor! It is important to note that I didn't take these pictures of Omanis at the bar. These lovely folks above live inside the google images world and are neither drinking nor dancing (to my knowledge) but are merely being used as examples.
We decided to leave the rather lame party after a while and caught a taxi home. We did not know getting in that it would be one of the longest, slowest, but cutest taxi trips in the history of the world. Our driver was an older Omani man named Ali. Ali wore very VERY thick glasses, strike that, goggles and literally drove 15 km/hr the entire time. When people honked at him for his slow driving he exclaimed "DAMN FUCKING HELL!" and then claimed they were all drunk and were "killing the people!" This made sense, although he claimed that high taxi fares, high hotel prices and monetarily taking advantage of tourists was also "Killing the people!" He told us he knew Oman very well, but drove past the exit to our hotel three times, stopped at a grocery store to show us where to get food (because the hotel food prices are "killing the people" and "very very ungood!") and asked us if we wanted anything from the store before venturing in to find a pen to give us his number for later taxi use. He told us that we were free to ride around with him all night and he would show us Oman. Considering the fact that a five minute taxi ride took us 45 minutes, we graciously declined this offer. We did eventually find out hotel (with our direction) and we gave him 2 Omani Riyals for the ride, because he said we could "pay whatever we think" when we got in. When I handed him the money he said, "You sure you have money on you?" and tried to hand it back. We assured him we did and bid him goodnight.
No comments:
Post a Comment