People here either love the United Arab Emirates or absolutely loathe it. As the northwestern border of Oman snuggles right up to the UAE, it is an easy trip from here--a mere two hours to the crossing and then just a hop, skip and jump to Dubai, which either makes people froth at the mouth in desire, or in detestation. Intrigued by a country which elicits such a variety of emotions, we decided to take a few days and check it out for ourselves.
We found quite quickly that the UAE offers years and years worth of entertainment and excitement, but we managed to come up with a handful of tops for a moderately entertaining blog.
Number 10: Celebrate Australia Day
Sohar practically falls into the UAE from Oman and so, for the purposes of this blog, it becomes part of the top ten. We stopped in Sohar on the way to the UAE in order to visit Kez, G, and Baby Hux and found ourselves wrapped in the hoopla that surrounds Australia Day, which is a holiday that no one could really explain but everyone was very excited over.
On the afternoon of Australia Day, armed with a package of buns, a styrofoam tray bursting with beef sausages, and a bowl of potato salad, we tripped excitedly toward their compound's common green. Cool stucco homes are built in a neat square around the green and we wound our way through the grassy neighborhood, following the sounds of people laughing and cheering. Australia Day sounded like great fun and the closer we came to the wall, the more gooberish Tony and I became in anticipation of what sounded like a great party.
"Yes," G said slowly, pushing Hux along in his stroller. "It sounds like great fun in there, but they don't sound too Australian. They shouldn't be up and making that much noise already...they should be more..." She pushed open the gate and found a large group of whities sitting in a circle, singing of billybongs, kookaburras, and kangaroos, and enjoying beers, while a second unrelated group, mostly Indians, cheered while playing cricket further off on the green. "Yes," she confirmed, gesturing toward the circled group. "Here are our Australian friends. Now this looks like an Australian holiday."
A celebrant.
G put her bowl of potato salad next to the 12 other bowls of potato salad, plopped her sausages next to 12 other packages of sausages, and grabbed a drink. "Happy Australia Day."
Number 9: Learn to Play a Gentlemen's Game An hour passed during which time we were educated on the finer points of Australian geography, zoology, and climatology. The men, having drunk enough beer to intoxicate Sydney, deemed the time appropriate for cricket, produced wickets, bails, bats, and balls, and paced off a distance on the pitch. They threw we Americans into the field and began to banter about terms such as "dibbly dobbly", "googly", "box" (not the kind you stand in but the kind you shove down your drawers--as it is a gentlemen's game we cannot call it anything more graphic than "box"), and the like. At the end of the afternoon they had all been kind enough to allow we Yanks to bat, bowl, and run numerous times between wickets, all the while confusing us by demanding that we "raise the bat", "run!" and "stop!" without really telling us why.
Fortunately, no one cared that we had absolutely no clue what we were doing; and, we felt like proper gentlemen at the end of it.
Number 8: Lose the Camera
Australia Day was brought to a screeching halt by the sprinkler system, which kicks on every night at 10 PM. The Australians responded to the deluge by sweeping all the leftover potato salad bowls, beer cans, and random personal belongings into a bag and hauling it to the closest house to be sorted in the morning. Upon packing to depart in the morning we realised our camera had gone missing and was quite likely in one of the bags. A quick search yielded no camera and so we were forced to press on without the camera. Bummer.
Number 7: Buy a New Camera
Number 6: Find the Old Camera
Now we have two cameras.
Number 5: Ride a Camel
We found quite quickly that the UAE offers years and years worth of entertainment and excitement, but we managed to come up with a handful of tops for a moderately entertaining blog.
Number 10: Celebrate Australia Day
Sohar practically falls into the UAE from Oman and so, for the purposes of this blog, it becomes part of the top ten. We stopped in Sohar on the way to the UAE in order to visit Kez, G, and Baby Hux and found ourselves wrapped in the hoopla that surrounds Australia Day, which is a holiday that no one could really explain but everyone was very excited over.
On the afternoon of Australia Day, armed with a package of buns, a styrofoam tray bursting with beef sausages, and a bowl of potato salad, we tripped excitedly toward their compound's common green. Cool stucco homes are built in a neat square around the green and we wound our way through the grassy neighborhood, following the sounds of people laughing and cheering. Australia Day sounded like great fun and the closer we came to the wall, the more gooberish Tony and I became in anticipation of what sounded like a great party.
"Yes," G said slowly, pushing Hux along in his stroller. "It sounds like great fun in there, but they don't sound too Australian. They shouldn't be up and making that much noise already...they should be more..." She pushed open the gate and found a large group of whities sitting in a circle, singing of billybongs, kookaburras, and kangaroos, and enjoying beers, while a second unrelated group, mostly Indians, cheered while playing cricket further off on the green. "Yes," she confirmed, gesturing toward the circled group. "Here are our Australian friends. Now this looks like an Australian holiday."
A celebrant.
G put her bowl of potato salad next to the 12 other bowls of potato salad, plopped her sausages next to 12 other packages of sausages, and grabbed a drink. "Happy Australia Day."
Number 9: Learn to Play a Gentlemen's Game An hour passed during which time we were educated on the finer points of Australian geography, zoology, and climatology. The men, having drunk enough beer to intoxicate Sydney, deemed the time appropriate for cricket, produced wickets, bails, bats, and balls, and paced off a distance on the pitch. They threw we Americans into the field and began to banter about terms such as "dibbly dobbly", "googly", "box" (not the kind you stand in but the kind you shove down your drawers--as it is a gentlemen's game we cannot call it anything more graphic than "box"), and the like. At the end of the afternoon they had all been kind enough to allow we Yanks to bat, bowl, and run numerous times between wickets, all the while confusing us by demanding that we "raise the bat", "run!" and "stop!" without really telling us why.
Fortunately, no one cared that we had absolutely no clue what we were doing; and, we felt like proper gentlemen at the end of it.
Number 8: Lose the Camera
Australia Day was brought to a screeching halt by the sprinkler system, which kicks on every night at 10 PM. The Australians responded to the deluge by sweeping all the leftover potato salad bowls, beer cans, and random personal belongings into a bag and hauling it to the closest house to be sorted in the morning. Upon packing to depart in the morning we realised our camera had gone missing and was quite likely in one of the bags. A quick search yielded no camera and so we were forced to press on without the camera. Bummer.
Number 7: Buy a New Camera
Number 6: Find the Old Camera
Now we have two cameras.
Number 5: Ride a Camel
The Offending Creature.
Our friend Liz knows, like, everyone in Al Ain (which is officially in the UAE). She even knows a guy named Bill who, during his twenty plus years in the UAE, has managed to accumulate a batallion of previously abused camels. Now that he has rehabbed the camels he has decided that he will try to begin a camel tour business, but first he needed some people to practice touring on his rehabbed camels. We were those people.
As we drove toward the camel farm, the sky in front of us went from brilliant blue to grey, and then to yellow, and finally to brown. "Sand storm! It's a sand storm!" we all chirped, excited by the novelty of the apricot sand blowing shaping itself into miniature dunes along the highway, moving exactly like a blizzard of wind-whipped snow. At the farm, we wrapped our heads in shirts and jackets to keep the sand off of our faces, but it crept in anyhow, silty and fine, sifting into our ears and eyes.
We were introduced to the camels--Solomon the Wise, Halwah the Sweet and Sharda the Complainer. Bill gave the kids banana peels and soggy cauliflower to feed to the camels, and all three animals delicately pried the snacks away with their long floppy lips and chewed lazily with green-tinged teeth. The blowing sand did nothing to stop their snacking or their foraging for more delicacies. Finally, Bill declared that the storm had abated enough that we would be able to ride the camels a bit. Each animal was saddled with a rope and a quilt, we were instructed on the proper boarding technique, and we were off.
Number 4: Fall O
ff the Camel I had been so worried that I would anger the camel by boarding improperly. With their backward knees, impossibly long necks, and reported penchant for spitting, I was a bit leary of getting near the camels anyhow but as soon as Sharda the Complainer smiled at me I was foolishly drawn in. Although poor Sharda had had a rough beginning, he had turned over as much of a new leaf as rehabbed camels can. At first no one had even been allowed to get near him but he had come a long way in the past two years, reported Bill.
So as I jumped onto Sharda, settling in behind his hump, and then nestled Silas in in front of me, perched just on the backwards slope of the hump, I was confident that this camel would do me no wrong. Sharda stood up camel style, thrusting his butt into the air first, and then rising the front half of his body up next. I twisted my fingers into Sharda's rough wirey-soft fur and fell into an easy rhythm as he clomped over the rippled sand dunes.
Silas and I chatted about the Silk Road and the frankincense trade. And then, without warning, Sharda turned on us. He bucked and bucked and bucked again. I closed my eyes, grabbed Silas, and went down, right behind the camel's tail, hoping simultaneously that the camel would not crap on me, that Silas would land on me, and that I would curve my spine sufficiently to NOT land on my head.
It worked--there was no poo, Silas landed on me, elbowing me in the head on the way down, and I landed solidly on my right side. I highly recommend NOT riding rehabbed camels in the future. They can, apparently, be oddly unpredictable.
Number 3: Take Prescription Pain Killers (Without Worrying About the Prescription Part)
"You fell off a camel!" This astute observation came from Bill's Emirati friend, who had accompanied us to the camel farm. "Do you need to go to the hospital?"
"No, no," I protested. "I just need to lay here a minute." I was camped out very comfortably on a bed of apricot sand, lights flashing behind my eyes, feeling nauseated at the thought of standing up. In a panic I remembered that Tony had never filed for official leave from the university. We had, in effect, snuck out of Oman for this trist. Then I had a flash of myself in an Emirati hospital, filling out scads of paperwork, listening to the snickers that would surely come were I to admit that I had been dumb enough to get onto a camel during a sandstorm, and then had fallen off. No, no...no hospitals.
"Okay, then. You know, falling off a camel is very Bedou (Bedouin) and I have Bedou medicine for you. Here, I have dates." A silver tin appeared in a flash, filled with organic, home grown dates. Then cups of hot coffee infused with cardmom appeared from nowhere. "You are very strong. Like a Bedou. Have another date." I could hardly hear him over the buzz in my ears and Silas's frightened crying. Silas was moaning, "I want to go home! I want to go back to the United States. I want to go home." I checked for ruby slippers.
When we returned to Liz's house, she broke out the Western version of dates--drugs. All of the pills she offered ended in "-dine" and "-dol" and I dutifully ate what she popped out of the foil wrappers. "All it takes to get this stuff here is to sound like you know exactly what you need," she added. "Who needs a prescription?!?!" Indeed.
Number 2: Play in the Snow
Dates and drugs being highly effective treatments for camel-induced injuries, I found that I had recovered sufficiently within 24 hours brave the local mall. Tehva is now a five year-old Churtle and so we did something extra special this year for her birthday--we went ice skating at the local mall. It is not enough to be able to shop at the malls in the UAE. One must also have the opportunity to do the unbelievable, like ski or ice skate or remove one's kidney. (Just testing to see if you are still with me.)
Number 1: Eat pork.
As if the snow, the camel ride and the cricket weren't enough, we found the number one activity to do on a trip to the UAE--eat of the forbidden animal. Pork is a dirty animal and yet we crave it. However, unless we want to fork out the equivalent of a month's car payment, we cannot eat of the pig. Thus we have not eaten pig in almost five months, even though Silas often wistfully whispers, "I sure miss ham" and Tian chimes in, "Me, too. I love pork."
So when the nice lady in the Korean restaurant sidled up to Tony and uttered those fateful words, "Pssssst....you like samkyupsaal (pork belly) in kimchee chigae (fermented cabbage stew)?" he sat like a stunned idiot and finally replied, "Ummm, yes?" (as if this were a question at all, because what is kimchee chigae without a hefty serving of sliced belly fat in the bottom of the bowl?). Inexplicably, Koreans can access affordable pork in the UAE and serve it up buried in the bottom of our kimchee chigae. That it is offered like an illegal substance (which I suppose it is) makes it all the more delicious.
Now that you have seen all that the UAE has to offer I am sure you are clamoring for plane tickets to Dubai. I hope that you will consider jumping the border and coming to visit us in sedate Oman. We are just a short hop skip and jump from the excitement that the UAE offers, and a kind respite from the artery-clogging pork, raucous camels, and vicious sand storms that plague our neighbor. We have your room waiting!
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