Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

We had very little on the agenda for today, which is how some people like to spend every day of their holiday, but for us, it’s something of an exception.

We get up earlier and do many more things when on holiday than when we’re at home; and the same was true when we both had jobs, before you ask.

We awoke to a better view today. The sand has died down, but it’s still a little hazy. At least we were able to see Palm Jumeirah through the floor-to-ceiling windows this morning, or one or two of its fronds, in any case.

After a refreshing shower under the four jets of our lovely shower cubicle, breakfast was taken in the Al Iwan restaurant. It was a fantastic buffet spread, but didn’t quite manage to justify the exorbitant price.

Really, the only way to deal with a place like this is to enjoy yourself and look at your credit card statements when they arrive. If you studiously analyse every bill you sign for, you’re going to put yourself on edge pretty quickly and taint the experience for yourself. It’s better to indulge in the moment, try not to think too much about the cost, and then just look back on the place with fond memories after the fact.

After breakfast, we collected complimentary vouchers for the Wild Wadi water park and had one of the buggies ferry us down to the park.

I’ve never been to a water park before, but I suspect that this is a good one. I enjoyed it immensely, at least.

When we arrived, it was a shockingly low 20°C. I couldn’t believe it. Just before we left the hotel, it had even rained for a few minutes. We were actually worried that we might be cold at the park.

It’s best to come early, especially at the weekend, as it can get busy very quickly. Luckily for us as guests at the hotel, we were able to enter at 10:00, one hour before the park officially opens. This helps one beat the crowds.

Eloïse wasn’t too sure about the family ride, which involved sitting in a large paddling pool and being blasted around a water chute by fast-moving water. It wasn’t anything wild, but Eloïse didn’t much care for the experience, possibly because the splashes of water were cold, moreso when the breeze then blew across you.

As the morning wore on, the sun started to put in an appearance and both the air and water temperature started to rise.

The Jumeirah Sceirah (read: scarer) is the ultimate ride in the park, a huge slide that plunges you 33 metres at 80 kmh over three or four seconds. The ride has no deep water, so it’s perfect for me, as I still can’t swim. All you need is a head for heights and a stomach for the speed and steepness of the descent.

I climbed the tower of the ride, which offered excellent views of the Burj Al Arab. Warning signs on the way cautioned the prospective rider to “know his own limits” and be aware that “swimsuits may be pulled off by water force”.

Atop the tower, I climbed into position and prepared for the descent. Sarah waited for me at the base, along with Eloïse. I was told to cross my arms and feet, in a kind of pharaoh position. Presumably, this prevents something getting wrenched painfully on the way down.

Anyway, I did as I was told and nudged myself into motion. The first second or so was easy, but before you can even think about what might be coming next, you are plunged over steep humps in the ride, your stomach lurching and your body becoming weightless as you feel yourself lifting slightly out of the chute. At this point, you can’t even see anything, because the water is blasting into your face so quickly. The view is rather like that from behind the windscreen of a car going through a car-wash.

An involuntary yell found its way out of my mouth and I found myself submitting to whichever fate awaited me. Amazingly, my body weight suddenly returned, my speed slowed, the view cleared and it was all over.

If I make it sound improbably exciting, believe me, that’s how I personally experienced it.

Sarah didn’t fancy the look of the Jumeirah Sceirah and Eloïse didn’t want to be parted from Mama, but I persuaded Sarah to have a go on one of the uphill roller-coaster rides. Sarah jumped in an inflatable ring and was launched up a chute and off to god knows where. It was a good ten minutes before she returned, having enjoyed the experience immensely.

It was coming up on the small one’s nap time, so we went back to the hotel and changed for lunch. We headed down to Souk Madinat Jumeirah and ate outside at a waterside table. The setting was gorgeous and the sun was now blazing. It was a comfortable 23°C or so.

We went looking for presents in the souq and then, when Eloïse finally woke up, we took her to the Jumeirah Hotel’s children’s park. I didn’t stay long, however, and returned to the hotel to relax. I also wanted to check out some of the hotel’s boutiques, just for fun. I was shown a €283,000 (±$340,000) watch. Cool; I’ll take four of them. Put them on my tab.

At this point, I’m now recognised by some of the security staff at the euphemistically named Welcome Centre (Fuck Off Centre might be a better sobriquet, as it exists primarily to keep people out) and they wave me and my buggy driver through.

It’s amazing to be staying at a hotel that has become a tourist attraction in its own right. Busloads of tourists are constantly pulling up just short of the security checkpoint, so that the occupants can pile out, take a few photos, and then reboard and move to the next stop on the sightseeing tour.

Ordinary folk need to call 24 hours in advance if they want to visit this hotel. If allowed to visit, they’ll be met and given a short tour before having to leave again.

Guests of other Jumeirah properties, on the other hand, can come here at set times during the day for a nose around and a few photos. Outside of those hours, however, the Burj is a sanctuary for its residents.

It’s strange to be on the inside looking out. When all’s said and done, it’s still only a hotel, but the experience is definitely unlike any other and I’m very grateful for the privilege of being able to undergo it.

If you can afford to spend a couple of days here, you’ll definitely go home with lasting memories. It would make a wonderful honeymoon destination, for example, perhaps for a couple of days en route to somewhere further afield.

My only complaints about the place are very minor. I can’t print from the in-room laptop, for example. I’ll live. Neither of our ordered newspapers turned up today, either; it turns out they’re unavailable, so the huge complimentary newspaper list suddenly becomes a lot less impressive.

One of the boutiques on the ground floor sells Burj-branded products of every description, including a couple of interesting-looking CDs. However, no way is offered to actually hear these CDs before buying and, unsurprisingly, they’re unavailable elsewhere and more expensive than normal CDs. There’s a DVD about the hotel on sale, too. Its asking price of about €20 doesn’t seem unreasonable until you check the playing length and see that the DVD lasts a whole ten minutes. Sorry, we might be a little indulgent from time to time, but we’re not that giddy.

Dinner was a buffet at the hotel’s Al Iwan once again. The food was great, but not stellar. The bill, of course, was astronomical. If it sounds like I’m complaining, I’m really not. The ambience was lovely and the service friendly and extremely attentive. They won’t even let you pour your own coffee from the pot around here. Even the sugar lumps are plonked into your coffee by Christofle tongs operated by someone else’s hand.

Seriously, you’re almost afraid to scratch your arse around here, in case someone dives in from the sidelines to do it for you.

So, this is how the other half live, eh? I told Sarah yesterday that I could quickly get used to this. Today, I feel like I am used to it.

But not altogether; it’s still an entertaining novelty, a fun thing to do, a privilege and not something to overindulge in. I would say it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I can imagine returning at some point in the future, albeit briefly again.

For bedtime, we’ve taken the plunge and ordered the premium down quilt for ourselves and the child’s down pillow for Eloïse. These are complimentary, before you accuse us of taking leave of our senses.

Tomorrow is our final full day at the Burj and we have nothing at all planned, which is the ideal schedule for our last day.

Well, what can you say about the Burj Al Arab that hasn’t been said already?

Let’s start at the beginning.

Breakfast wasn’t included with our hotel room, so we had breakfast at Café Undici, a nice place popular with locals.

The drive from Sharjah along route 11 was a bit strange, as a sandstorm had blown up and was bringing visibility back to a few hundred metres. It was rather like yellow fog, you could say. It wasn’t blasting across the road or anything, but it was enough to send little spirals and twirls of sand dancing in interesting patterns across the road.

Dubai was just a stone’s throw away and it was Friday, weekend, so there wasn’t as much traffic as usual on the roads.

We first drove to Palm Jumeirah, to try to look at the artificial island that has added over 100 km of beach to Dubai’s coastline. Unfortunately, the sandstorm made it impossible to see anything and most of the area is still under major construction, so there are checkpoints stopping you from going most places.

We turned around and headed for the Burj Al Arab, normally an unmistakeable behemoth on the Dubai skyline, but today a barely visible ghost-like image and, even then, not until we had left route 11.

One more left turn and we were there, pulling up to the security checkpoint.

Yes, indeed, it appears that one cannot simply walk into this hotel. Our name was checked against a list of guests, the barrier lifted and we were waved through. A second checkpoint dropped its roadblocks under the ground and we drove on to the front entrance, where a team of valets and doormen pounced at our arrival.

We didn’t even have to unload our luggage. We simply indicated which bags should be brought inside and then we were ushered inside, where we were given rosewater to refresh our hands.

It was explained to us by the lady who greeted us that our suite wasn’t ready yet, so we were escorted upstairs to a café, where we drank juices and relaxed.

Gigantic aquaria line the escalators up to and down from the first floor.

Clever, choreographed waterjets make for mesmerising fountains on both the ground and first floors.

Eloïse caused her first mayhem by yanking the tower of nuts and olives from our table and scattering its contents across the floor. An Arabian band struck up in one corner of the café and we began to people-watch.

It was busy at the hotel, as it was around lunchtime, so lots of foot-traffic was on account of restaurant reservations. Cameras were being pointed in every direction, as people seized the opportunity for a few snaps of the ostentatious and resplendent interior. Others posed for photos to prove they had been here.

You could grow poor here very quickly. Boutiques selling everything from gigantic, pure silk Persian carpets to skeletonised Vacheron Constantin watches to 24 carat gold, diamond encrusted jewellery are worked away into the walls.

After 13:00, the curious tourists and restaurant-goers ebbed away and it became relatively quiet again. Eloïse was getting past her nap time and was also hungry, so I asked one of the staff if she could have some banana.

Sure enough, a plate soon turned up with banana slices on it. There was even sugar on top of the slices.

14:00 arrived and we were collected and accompanied up the escalator. We were taken to the ninth floor and brought to our suite. Our lady left us and told us that our butler would soon be with us.

And he was. He came in with three glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice and started to show us how to use the remote control. This controls not just the plasma screen in the living room, but also operates the main door. If someone rings the doorbell, you can see their image on the TV and let them in with the remote control.

The remote control also operates the curtains, so you really can do almost everything from the comfort of your fat arse. Similarly, a press of a button on the phone connects you with your butler.

Next, we were shown the newspaper menu. It’s impressive: you can choose to have any of 300 newspapers from all over the world delivered to your suite each morning. All major Dutch newspapers were available. I chose De Volkskrant and Sarah opted for the Boston Globe.

The suite itself is as big as our house in Mountain View was. I estimate it’s a good 175 m².

Fresh fruit and dates were in the room, along with crackers, biscuits and whatnot. There’s the standard complimentary bowl of fruit, plus a free bottle of wine. Fresh flowers adorn the room in multiple places.

There’s a laptop on the office desk. The system administration around these parts must be efficient, as it’s already running Vista (the first time I’ve even seen it). The laptop has wireless Internet. In fact, each of the 202 rooms here has its own network.

The ESSID is your suite number and is cloaked, presumably to stop you from stumbling onto your next door neighbour’s network. Still, if you’re out to get on his network, it’s trivial to type in the suite number yourself. There’s no WEP, let alone WPA.

There’s a fax machine in the office area, too. We had a fax waiting for us, welcoming us to the hotel and informing us of our own private fax number. It will be abandoned when we leave and not reused, to avoid privacy issues. I’m not sure whether the same thing applies to the suite’s telephone number.

We needed to get out and about at this point, so that Eloïse could have her nap. We went downstairs and out to the foyer to request one of the golf-like buggies that the hotel offers on a complimentary basis to guests.

Because the sand was still blowing about, they told us that a buggy wouldn’t be quite suitable now, and would we mind going in a white Rolls Royce instead?

Well, OK then, you’ve twisted our arm.

And so we turned up at Souk Madinat Jumeirah in a white Roller. Well, why not? When in Rome, etc…

The souq was very good. The Arabian architecture is straight out of 1001 Nights and the boutiques inside sell everything from baby wipes to very expensive pure silk Persian carpets. We had to prise ourselves away from them.

Happily, we finally left the souq empty-handed (apart from the aforementioned baby wipes, that is) and took a complimentary shuttlebus back to the hotel.

Back in the room, a mysterious visitor had been and left a cuddly Burj Al Arab teddy bear for Eloïse. Aww.

What about the bedroom? Well, the bedroom has a Dux bed, but I haven’t tried it yet. Sarah says it’s great, though. After turn-down service, the bed had been bedecked with chocolate-covered dates and his-and-hers eye creams. The bedroom ceiling has a mirror on it, but as I tend to sleep with my eyes shut, I can’t think of anything more useless.

Just before dinner, the doorbell rang. I answered it and a waiter was there, bearing gifts of tiramisu and the most fabulous coffee I have tasted on this entire trip. This waiter received an extremely warm welcome, as you might imagine.

Dinner was at the The Wharf, a delicious seafood restaurant just a complimentary buggy ride away.

After dinner, I collected the car from the valet and Sarah removed Eloïse’s car seat from the back to chants of “our car, our car” from Eloïse. She’s grown very fond of our dusty Mitsubishi Pajero and probably has a stronger impression of it now than our own car back home.

Sarah took Eloïse inside to put her for bed, while I headed off to fill up the car with petrol. I had had the hotel call Thrifty earlier in the day to find out if we could return the car at a closer location than where we had hired it, as the airport would be a long drive from the Burj Al Arab and an equally long taxi ride back.

Happily, they told me I could return the car to their office at the Mall of the Emirates, which is a short distance from here.

The mall was absolutely buzzing. What seemed like a kilometre long line of taxis was queueing along the slip road to get down in front of the adjoining Kempinski Hotel.

I parked the car in an arbitrary spot (which was hard to find, even though 6000 cars can park here), went inside and located the Thrifty desk. After a few formalities, we were carless once again.

The final odometer count was 3854 km and the car was definitely showing signs of its ordeal. It had been across the desert, up and down mountains, over wadis, through cities, across four borders and along more unsurfaced roads and dirt tracks than you can shake a stick at. I was sad to say goodbye to it, even though it’s underpowered and has that annoying >120 km chime.

Afterwards, I went to the Virgin Megastore to purchase a pile more CDs. The mall is open to midnight at the weekend, which is very convenient for people like me, as I can shop at the end of the day without taking anything away from the family’s daylight hours. I couldn’t believe how many people were there. The scenes inside and outside were more reminiscent of an airport than a shopping mall.

Virgin has this cool listening post system, whereby you slap on the headphones, run the CD’s bar code under the scanner and then — more often than not — it pulls ripped samples of each track from Virgin’s database. How convenient is that? It’s DIY try-before-you-buy.

Close to midnight, I headed out to the front of the mall and grabbed a taxi back to the hotel. I paused to take a few nighttime pictures outside. The Burj Al Arab is even more extraterrestrial-looking at night, with purple, green and orange spotlights shining onto it’s sail-like white front.

What else can I tell you about the place? The bathroom is very large and features a jacuzzi and large shower cabinet. There’s a complete range of [Hermès](http://usa.hermes.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay ?storeId=10202) toiletries in there, for both men and women, which we were encouraged to take home with us. I don’t know about such things, but I’m told these are expensive products. It includes aftershave, deodorant, soap, etc.

Other items are a decent shaving kit (proper Gillette razor and having foam) plus all the stuff you’re not supposed to take, like dressing gowns, etc. There’s a beach bag, too, and we were encouraged to keep that when we leave, also.

Oh yes, and there was even a bag of toiletries for Eloïse, consisting of sun cream, ointment and a couple of other bottles.

There’s a pillow menu with about 15 different pillows, including one that has been infused with vitamin E and aloe.

And a separate menu in the bathroom informs you of all of the baths that they will prepare for you in your suite. Top of the price list is Beyond Decadence, which includes caviar, chilled champagne and a bowl of strawberries. This will set you back a mere AED 3000 (±€625).

Outside, a row of expensive Ferraris and Lamborghinis is available for hire. A very nice Ferrari 430 with glass-topped engine compartment will set you back a mere AED 9000 (±€1878) for 24 hours. The mind boggles. I guess some people really must pay it.

Our butler offered to show us the presidential suite tomorrow, which costs a mere $13000 per night. He told us that people have been known to rent it for two months at a time! Can you imagine checking out and receiving your bill for three quarters of a million dollars? Again, the mind boggles.

This is our chance to see how the other half live and, for a few days, to live that life ourselves. Rubbing shoulders with the other guests, it’s obvious that we come from different worlds. The men are snappily dressed and the women in their designer gear and high heels look like they’re fresh from the Oscars.

We’re definitely on the shabby side, but hey, our loot is as good as anyone else’s, right?

What an experience, anyway. We’re unlikely to forget this place in a hurry. It’s the tallest hotel in the world; taller, in fact, than the Eiffel Tower.

One of the tours on offer here is a helicopter tour of the city, which leaves from and returns to the helipad on the top of the hotel. Wow.

The lift here travels at an ear-popping six metres per second.

Every detail in this hotel’s presentation, service and engineering has been designed to astound and impress; and impress it does, too.

The only thing wrong with it — apart from the price — is that it’s all going to look dated very quickly. In fact, the remote control unit and the plasma screen would have been absolute state-of-the-art back in 1999 when the hotel first opened, but they are showing their age now. Not that there’s anything wrong with the technology; just that it doesn’t look new any more.

Anyway, it’ll be a busy day tomorrow, so it’s time to retire for the night.

We hit the road at about 10:00 today, stopped for a few photos on the way out of Musandam, and eventually reached the border by 11:00. It was a simpler affair on the way out: no fees to pay and no forms to fill in.

We continued along route 11, the road that had brought us to Musandam, but this time took route 311 outside of Ras Al Khaimah City. This road isn’t on our map, which is a shame, as we would have got from Dubai to Ras Al Khaimah City a lot more quickly on the way in.

Oh well, at least we could now take it on the way out. Thanks to route 311, the trip back in the direction of Dubai was now a piece of cake. Just short of Dubai, we took the route 88 exit and drove into Sharjah, our stop for today.

It was only 13:00 and we had travelled just under 170 km, so we had made very good time, all things considered.

Sharjah is the third largest emirate of the UAE and definitely the strictest. Alcohol is prohibited here and even shisha is banned. This makes it an unattractive stop-off for many westerners, but for us, it’s a plus, as it means that even more places sell even more really great fruit drinks, as otherwise there’d be nothing on the menu but water and soft drinks.

Our hotel room overlooks the Khalid Lagoon, which provided a nice view when we arrived, but offers an even better one now. The skyscrapers on the east side of town are lit up and dots of light cross them at their base, as cars race along the corniche. The mosque is illuminated and the trees in the palm plantation in front of it have beaded lights twirled around their trunk.

After heading into Sharjah, we first got some lunch and then walked around the heritage precinct and looked at the reconstructed buildings. The Souq Al Arsa was open, so we strolled around it, but saw nothing that really took our fancy.

Next, we drove along the corniche to admire the view of the skyline and then doubled back to stop off at the park, so that Eloïse could play. She was in a decidedly whingy mood and only a good forty-five minutes on the steep and fast slides there was likely to provide relief.

After a walk along the lagoon, cut short because of Eloïse’s bad mood, we drove down to the Central Souq, which didn’t disappoint. We spent some time in a nice Persian carpet shop, but had to leave, because Eloïse became inconsolable.

And so we had to cut short our visit to the souq, which is a great shame, because we saw several other very interesting carpet shops that we would have loved to spend some time in, which a very real danger of coming away with yet another piece, although it would have been a much smaller one this time.

We can’t go back tomorrow, either, because it will be Friday, and so the souq won’t open until 16:00, by which time we’ll be in Dubai. Dubai’s only about another 25 km from here, but it would be too inconvenient to come back and would, in any case, take away from our time there.

Tomorrow, we head back to the emirate and city where we started, Dubai, for three final nights. This time, we’ll be staying at the famous Burj Al Arab hotel, a self-professed seven star hotel and the subject of countless television documentaries and travel programmes. If you recall seeing on TV an absurd, sail-shaped building rising an improbably into the sky close to the Palm Jumeirah island project, which built on reclaimed land, this is that same hotel.

It’s supposedly the best hotel in the world with service quite literally second to none, so we’re intrigued to see what kind of reception awaits us. We have little on the agenda for these three days in Dubai, as we want to relax and make the most of our luxurious surroundings in order to justify the extravagance.

What a day. We’re knackered, and I do speak for all of us.

Our speedboat was a partially covered affair with two outboard motors. We set off from Khasab harbour pretty punctually, after the food and drink had been loaded on board.

The first leg of the journey went very quickly, with the boat bouncing up and over the waves as we headed out towards the Strait of Hormuz. Our guide explained to us in good English that he had learned the language simply from talking to tourists. He had received no formal English tuition. In fact, he then informed us that he had not attended school of any kind, making his linguistic ability all the more impressive.

The scenery was pleasant, the wind created by our speed refreshing, and Eloïse looked very sweet in her little lifejacket. She was not happy to be on the boat, though, and had protested loudly about not being taken to the park instead.

As we headed out into open water, one yellow fibreglass speedboat after the other rocketed past us in the opposite direction, its crew almost catapulted from the vessel with each wave they rode. Our Kumzari guide explained to us that the occupants were the notorious Iranian smugglers, heading towards Khasab to pick up their bounty of household appliances, electronics, cigarettes and other contraband — all of which arrives at the harbour tax-free from the UAE — to bring it back to Iran, which I’m told is some 50 km from here. There, it will be sold on the black market.

After about half an hour, one of our outboard motors gave up the ghost, slowing our pace dramatically. When the motor died, the skipper stopped the boat and, at first, it wasn’t apparent that the other motor was still working, so it was quite a relief when that one was started up again and we stopped drifting.

The only stop on the way was to drop off a passenger, a friend of the skipper, at a fishing boat moored along one of the cliffs. High above, on top of the cliff, a look-out post was manned by someone searching for fish down below in the clear water.

Just before noon, we got our first view of Kumzar as it came into sight. We docked, but there was no sight of the promised smaller boat that would bring us to shore.

No matter, we would just walk, and it turned out to be an interesting walk, bringing us past fields of glittering sardines, lying baking in the sun, waiting to be picked up after three days spent drying. Our guide told us that up to 1000 kg of sardines are landed here some days.

Our walk towards the village took us past a desalination plant (for producing drinking water), a power station, a small hospital and a school.

Schoolchildren were walking towards us on their way to attend the afternoon session. Both the boys and the girls were wearing immaculately clean uniforms, although they were nothing like the school uniforms we have in the West.

The girls in particular were very interested in Eloïse. Not many white babies make it out here and even fewer of them are redheads. In fact, according to our guide, only three or so trips come here each week, which means just a handful of visitors (unless yesterday’s cruise liner has docked, in which case an excursion might contain as many as 25 people travelling here by dhow).

The girls posed for some pictures, but were very shy. Then, the boys got in on the action and were considerably less shy, jostling for position and striking macho poses.

Finally, we arrived in the village and were met by smiling, happy faces everywhere.

We walked through the rocky streets of the village. The road is unsurfaced, which makes sense, as there are no cars here. The married women wear facial masks similar to the Bedouin ones we have seen elsewhere. It was immediately clear to us that traditions and the old way of life have been better preserved here than anywhere else we’ve visited in Oman.

Goats huddled up in the shade of doorways, women wove fabrics and the men relaxed in shaded enclosures on the beach. Children were playing everywhere. Most families have five or six, we were told.

We walked out of the village on the far side and were taken to the large well, which was the only source of water before the desalination plant was built.

Electricity comes from the power station. Telephone lines also come all the way out here.

I checked my mobile and saw that I had a decent signal. It’s funny to think that there were moments back in Palo Alto, California that I didn’t have a good signal on my mobile, yet here I am now in the remote, northernmost community of the Arabian peninsula, where there are no roads and the only way in or out is a two-hour trip by boat, and I have a respectable signal.

We took a different route back through the village, this time weaving in and out of the mesh or narrow alleyways that separate the houses, some of which are two to four hundred years old, we were told.

Occasionally, we would turn a corner and encounter an entire family sitting on their doorstep. As is the case wherever we go, we would point at each other’s babies and encourage hand waves and greetings. Babies are the international language of womankind, and if you take one with you, you’ll receive a warm welcome from other mothers everywhere, it seems.

The call to prayer went out from the mosque and reverberated around the mountains. Back on the beach, boys were playing. It seemed as if every one of them was wearing a football shirt. I spotted a couple of Beckham shirts.

It was now time to leave, so we headed back to the boat and got underway again. It was now lunchtime, so the food was brought out and we all tucked in.

There was chicken, vegetable stew, rice, salad and bread; all in all, a very good spread.

The trip back took just under three hours with our single motor. Just before we docked, we were shown where the Iranian smugglers dock. There were dozens of boats and their owners were busying loading and tying their cargo of electronics and cigarettes. In the mornings, they apparently arrive in Khasab carrying goats for deposit here.

We had a quick look around the new souq area of Khasab, which took mere minutes, and then took Eloïse to the park, where she got a good hour’s playing time.

Afterwards, we headed back into Khasab for dinner at a local restaurant, picked more or less at random. The fruit juices were very welcome and prepared us for the food, which consisted of a large local fish called Sharji.

While we were eating, a large bus of Philippino people, mostly women, turned up and emptied into our restaurant. Almost every seat in the house was now taken. As you might expect, the table of women nearest us started cooing over Eloïse. We got talking to them.

It turns out that they all live in Dubai and are all on visitor visas while they attempt to find work. Their visas have all run out, so they have come to Oman’s Musandam peninsula purely so that they can reenter the UAE and start the clock ticking on a new visa.

They told us that 3000 Philippino people arrive in the Dubai every day, looking for work. Can that possibly be true? These women’s English was excellent and many of them were beautiful; it’s sad to think that they have such a hard time finding their feet and making ends meet. One of them confessed that things really aren’t any better in Dubai for her than back home.

Eloïse was now dead beat, so we had to get her back to the hotel. We paid our bill and reluctantly left, as it would have been nice to spend more time talking to the Philippino ladies.

Tomorrow, we leave Musandam and therefore Oman, too, behind us. We’ll head south through the UAE, back along the road that brought us here, towards the emirate of Sharjah, where we’ll spend the night.

Breakfast at the Khasab Hotel is definitely the worst of our trip (so far, I should say, but we’re in the home straight now). It consisted today of white bread, some of which was toasted, and some individually wrapped portions of jam, butter, cheese and honey.

Only after eating most of it did we discover that an ommelette could also be ordered, albeit it at extra cost. We were in for a long day, so we ordered a couple anyway, but this made us a little late for our 09:00 pick-up for our dhow cruise.

Down at the harbour, we boarded our dhow and were delighted to discover that we had the entire boat to ourselves. In fact, we are virtually the only people staying at our hotel, too. There’s only one other guest, as far as I know.

Part of the reason for that is that Oman Air has flights to Khasab only on Thursday and Friday, so anyone who wants to fly here from greater Oman either has to stay one night or six. Dubai, on the other hand, has daily flights (although I’m unsure which airline operates them; probably Kish), so Musandam is a popular weekend destination for expats.

Anyway, aboard the dhow, cushions flanked either side of the boat and carpets were draped over the remaining areas in the middle, so the boat looked comfy and inviting. We took up position along the left side.

Our crew consisted of two men, an older Omani gent and a younger one, probably in his twenties. Neither spoke a word of English and we speak no Arabic, so sign language would have to do.

We headed out into the Khor Ash Sham, a long and sheltered fjord (then again, which fjord isn’t?).

Before long, we saw the village of Nadifi in the distance on the south side of the fjord. We passed by at quite a distance, however. The boat doesn’t land at any of the villages on this trip, in order to respect the privacy of the locals. These are very remote communities, accessible only by boat.

Nadifi has about a hundred inhabitants, mainly fishermen. Because there’s no access by road, the children travel by boat to school in Khasab and stay over from Saturday to Wednesday.

Next up was Qanaha, which we passed by more closely. Stone houses could be made out in the distance.

At this point, Telegraph Island (a.k.a. Jazirat Al Maqlab) loomed up ahead, the former site of a British telegraphic relay station in the 19th century.

The sheer isolation of the island, behind a bend of this remote khor, apparently drove many of the workers stationed there to madness. The saying “to go around the bend” still persists to this day. So now you know.

Ahead lay the village of Maqlab on the right-hand side. This is a mountain village, where the people earn their living from goatherding and fishing. Maqlab comprises about ten or so houses and can also be reached by climbing over Jebel Maqlab.

At this point, the men on the boat brought us into the shallows and made it clear we could jump off the side and go swimming here in the beautiful green water, but we indicated that we didn’t want to swim and were offered a slightly longer journey along the fjord instead.

We gratefully accepted and fared on towards the end of the fjord. Seebi Island could be seen in the distance.

To our great astonishment, some kind of flying fish would periodically leap out of the water and literally run across the water for a good 10 – 20 m using its tail fin as a leg. It was one of the strangest sights I have ever witnessed first hand and it was totally unexpected.

We now turned, looped around Telegraph Island and passed by Sham, which we passed by more closely than any of the other villages on our cruise. Again, this village is home to about a hundred residents, but not a soul was stirring, as had been the case in each of the other villages. They could have been deserted, for all we knew.

Along the route, we were kept watered with tea, Arabic coffee, water and soft drinks; and nourished with fruit.

On the return voyage, we stopped at a cove to observe dolphins swimming in formation at the left side of our boat, then in front of it, then off to the right and finally behind. I think this was the high point of Sarah’s day, as she had been very excited at the prospect of seeing dolphins and was even more jubilent now at having got to see them so close.

Eloïse seemed to enjoy the trip, too, and was very well behaved. By the time we made it back to Khasab’s harbour, she had fallen asleep. Sarah expertly managed to get her into her car seat without waking her.

With only one more full day in Musandam, it was important to make good use of the afternoon, too, so we decided to head up into the mountains. It was now 13:30 and the guide books made it sound like a tricky 4×4 drive, with narrow roads hugging the mountains, precipitous drops, and vertiginous views.

We decided to see for ourselves; we could always turn back if it got too hairy.

As we began the drive, signs at the side of the road warned of the steepness of the gradients and cautioned owners of non-4×4 vehicles not to attempt the ascent.

The road probably was the most difficult we have tackled on this trip so far, but at slow speeds it was still comfortable (mentally, that is; physically, it was somewhat less comfortable). A handful of incredibly steep switchbacks put the car under considerable strain, but we eventually made it to the top of Jebel Harim, the tallest mountain in the area. We parked near the radar station to rest.

On the way to the summit, we had passed the wonderfully verdant Sayh plateau, where goats wandered without a care in the world and some obvious agriculture was being cultivated. If you looked at that plateau out of context, you would have no idea it was high in the mountains; it looked like a meadow at sea level.

At the stop of the mountain pass, we took some time to take photos and change Wiesje’s nappy, after which we began the descent. On the way dowm, we passed a convoy of Hummers, doubtless ferrying cruise line passengers on a mountain excursion. We had seen a liner docked in the harbour that morning and surmised that that could be the only source of enough tourists to fill six or seven Hummers.

The descent, which I imagined might be hairier than the ascent, was made quite quickly, as we were now familiar with the terrain. We found ourselves back down at the base of Jebel Harim by 16:30.

That left enough time for the 10 km drive to Khor Najd, the only khor accessible by car, which rewarded us with a glorious view of the surrounding mountains and fjord.

We made it back to Khasab with enough time to stop off at a beachside park, where Eloïse could tire herself out, prior to going to dinner for the second night in a row at the Golden Tulip Hotel, just outside of Khasab.

The advantage of eating there was that there’s an office of Khasab Travel & Tours located in the hotel. After dinner, we arranged to charter a large speedboat tomorrow, which will take us to the remote settlement of Kumzar.

This is the northernmost settlement in Oman and reputedly the remotest on the whole of the Arabian peninsula. There are no roads and a two hour speedboat journey (or four hour voyage by dhow) is the only way to get there. The villagers of Kumzar speak a language known as Kumzari, which is a mixture of Farsi, Arabic, English and Portuguese and Hindi. I think it’s going to be a fascinating visit to an area of the world that has almost certainly retained its own character and remained largely impervious to the onslaught of the western world.

The voyage will take us out into the Arabian Gulf and then into the Strait of Hormuz. Somewhere in the distance to the north will be Iran, but that’s as close as we’ll get on this trip.

Today was possibly the highlight of our trip so far, but tomorrow has a sporting chance of surpassing it. Either way, it’ll be a terrific day, I’m sure.