The shopping day! Today was officially dubbed the shopping day by mother, before the day had even began. After the events of yesterday the elder Ade’s had mutinied and decided that they were not getting in the car today and that they wanted to spend the day walking around Muscat. Little did we realise that Muscat is rather spread out and that you can’t really walk around it in the sense that you would walk around a city like Prague. The first task of the day was to find somewhere to clean the car. This actually turned into quite an eventful [View Full Entry]

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Well the day began as many a Christmas day has begun in the Ade family with a walk along the beach. Except this time the beach was in Sohar, Oman. A little different to little old Eastern Beach or Ohope Beach. Following the beach walk we settled down to the serious business at hand. That of opening up the enormous stack of presents that had accumulated. I must admit that I felt more than a little bashful when I surveyed the stack of presents as most of them were for me. Only 5 of them were for mum and dad (I [View Full Entry]

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Well today saw the Ade family circus leave Khasab to venture back into the wilds of the UAE. We counted our blessing as we left Khasab that we had done the dhow cruise the day before as a rather stiff wind had blown up overnight and one thinks that the people on today’s dhow cruises would not have had as enjoyable time as we did the day before. Quite frankly the wind was more than a little stiff and cold. So tucked up in our nice, warm little jeep we started our journey back towards RAK. The trip down to RAK [View Full Entry]

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Well today saw us getting up and making our way off to our Dhow adventure. I had booked a dhow cruise for us all in the fjords of the musandam. When we arrived at the wharf there were about 7 dhows all lined up and the nice man who greeted us told us that we were on Dhow #4 today. So we climbed over the first three dhows and settled ourselves in on Dhow # 4. Out dhow soon filled up with Indian families and we got a rather large surprise when the owner, and our host on board the dhow [View Full Entry]

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Dubai, United Arab Emirates Salaam Alaykum! (Hello in Arabic) From Nepal we went to the Arabian Peninsula. First stop: Dubai, the most populated of the 7 Emirates in UAE. We were in culture shock after stepping off the plane. Dubai is a metropolis of elegant hotels, expensive shopping, and traffic jams. Where no one walks outside, even if it's just to cross the street. Luckily for us, Emanuele moved to Dubai 2 months before our arrival so that we had a free place to stay. We had access to a pool and squash courts; next door was the Raffles Hotel, a [View Full Entry]

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When you cross the border into Oman from Dubai the scenery changes from smooth orangey dunes to dusty rocky moonscapes where the odd hint of wildlife is a goat up a tree or a wandering camel - amazing that these animals seem to roam for miles with no 'shepherd' when they're worth tens of thousands of pounds to the owners... We had a few days in a resort hotel that was strangely empty but it meant we had the spa to ourself so umpteen massages and yoga sessions! The highlight though was a walk in the Oman countryside with a local [View Full Entry]

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Lítið í fréttum en henti inn nokkrum náttúrumyndum frá Oman....... Jú annars, stórar og miklar fréttir, ÞAÐ ERU KOMNAR INN MYNDIR Á ALLAR FÆRSLURNAR. Fyrir ykkur sem viljið bar skoða myndir en ekki lesa þvaðrið í mér þá er komanr myndir frá: Laos , Cambodiu og Nepal. Ég var einnig að fjárfesta í gæðamyndavél þar mín góða sony ákvað að svíkja mig enn einu sinni, svo [View Full Entry]

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At long last, my first road trip in the Middle East. This place was very different from Dubai. Oman has been closed off for a longer time then the United Arab Emirates. The Sultans for the most part wanted to keep separated from the West as much as possible, leading to Oman keeping itself quite traditional. The recent Sultans though since the 1970's have decided to Oman up much more. Here on this tip we got a chance to see a world much less Westernized, or at least to a degree. Once of the neat things you'll see throughout Oman are [View Full Entry]

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Now as neither me or Kat are big fans of the package holiday it was still hard to pass up a bargain trip staying at the Shangri La Al Jissah al Waha resort just outside Muscat in Oman. why not, everyone deserves a bit of luxury now and again! The Sultanate of Oman is quite frankly stunning consisting of mainly desert, mountains and secluded perfect beaches combined with lush Wadi's dotted about the countryside. It is one of the only countries I have been to that overwhelmed me with the passion people have for where they live. As a visitor to [View Full Entry]

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Chelle finally made it diving in the UAE. Yesterday morning at the ungodly hour of 4:30am she got up and headed off to the Jumeirah Beach Hotel to join a group of divers heading up to the Musandam peninsular in Oman. The trip was rather long. 2 hours in a bus and then another 2 hours on a Dhow. However the Dhow was lovely and Chelle spent her time on a sun lounger on the deck reading a book (one of the 22 that she brought from a charity book sale the day before :) The diving itself wasn't all that [View Full Entry]

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