Salalah, Oman: the sultans of swing

 After four consecutive at-sea days, we were ready to see something interesting. So when we pulled into port in Salalah, Oman we had high hopes for a nice day of sightseeing. Neither Rob nor I knew anything about Oman before our arrival here, so we were eager sponges, ready to soak up whatever information we might obtain from our stay.

The first thing we learned is that Oman is super-wary of covid.

Let me say right off the bat that I’m not opposed to measures designed to reduce the risk of covid spread. Not in the least. I’m 100% OK with requiring that everyone on our ship be vaccinated - in fact, that’s the only way I’d have been on this ship. There’s a comfort level with knowing that everyone on this floating Petri dish is vaccinated.

But having said that, Oman’s insistence that we all be masked, not only while on shore, but also on the ship while in dock, seems a bit excessive. I mean, we’ve all been on this ship, unmasked, for a couple of weeks already - at this point, putting the masks on seems pointless.

Whatever. We did as the locals required and got off the ship and onto our buses with our masks on. Funny, though, that the guides weren’t wearing masks themselves. Nor was the driver.

That’s our tour guide, Mohammed, and (in the mirror) our driver, [no idea what his name was, and I couldn’t spell it, anyway] neither of whom wore a mask for the duration of the tour.

We also had to carry with us our proof of vaccination and this “landing card”:

Oman is a Sultanate - meaning they are ruled by a Sultan. There was a picture of the sultan(s) in one of the places we stopped.

The guy on the left is the current sultan, Sultan Haitham bin Tarik - he’s been in power since 2020. The guy on the right is the previous sultan, Sultan Qaboos bin Said who died with no children at the age of 79. The new guy is the old guy’s cousin. That family has ruled Oman since the 18th century.

“No children”. That makes a guy wonder a bit. And this is as good a time as any to point out that Oman is not only homophobic, it is literally illegal for me to exist here. Homophobia is true of much of the Arab world, actually, but Oman takes it further than, say, Egypt - where it’s technically legal to be gay, but they can arrest you for being “morally unclean” and imprison you for up to 17 years. In Oman, just being gay is a crime.

A few years ago, the Gulf Cooperation Council, a conglomerate of Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia considered having a “gay test” that visa applicants would have to pass - the purpose of which was to prevent gays from ever visiting their countries. This idea was eventually scrapped…. not because it’s vile and disgusting, but because Qatar was bidding to be the host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup and they were afraid it would kill their chances. Money talks.

[Edit] I just did a bit of digging on that previous sultan who died without children. He married his cousin back in the 70s. The marriage lasted three years, ended in divorce. From that point on, not only didn’t he re-marry, but it was widely assumed that he was gay. Qaboos' obituary in The Times described rumours throughout his life of "liaisons with elegant young European men". Even so, he had the opportunity to make homosexuality legal and he didn’t. All the while being gay himself. Why didn’t anyone call him out on it? Because it’s also a crime to say anything bad about the sultan.

But I digress. The bus tour drove us past a bunch of stuff that looked like really bad Arab-themed buildings, with the pointed arches and all, except maybe those bad Arab themes we’ve seen in other places around the world were kinda on-point. I mean, buildings actually use those features here.

The street lights were certainly decorative

Our first stop was the Sultan Qaboos Mosque (he was the sultan who died childless). As mosques go, it was pretty.

Then it was off to the Frankincense Museum to learn about this ancient product.

Frankincense is just tree sap - and it comes from this very pretty tree:

Seriously, that tree is beautiful. It has to take a back seat, though, to a tree that’s only found on Socotra, an island we passed awhile back. Socotra has been described as “the most alien-looking place on earth” as more then 2/3 of its plant species are found nowhere else on earth but there. One of those species is this absolutely gorgeous Socotra Dragon tree:

But I digress. And digress I must, because there wasn’t much awesomeness to see in Salalah, honestly. It’s home to a bunch of strip malls, mostly.

Our tour stopped at this particular strip mall and the most interesting thing I can say about it is, more than half of the stores were closed, but it didn’t matter because they all had the same merch.

OK, that’s not really fair. There were three kinds of stores. One that sold spices, perfumes, and frankincense (pictured above), those that sold textiles (scarves, throws, etc), and those that sold both.

Our final stop was the sultan’s palace. It had a nice clock tower.

After we arrived back on the ship, we had a shower and (for me) the best dinner of the cruise so far: Kabuli rice with BBQ lamb. I had the Kabuli rice at lunch at Petra, so I knew it would be good. The lamb was perfect and not ‘gamey’ at all. I ended up ordering a second one, it was so good!

After dinner, we sat for awhile and listened to the ship’s pianist, Sergei, play the $90,000 Steinway grand piano in the ship’s atrium. He’s very good.

And that’s about it for Salalah, except to mention that next to the frankincense museum is a UNESCO world heritage archeological site, Al-Baleed, which is technically open, but hasn’t been developed yet. There are pathways, but no signage or anything to tell you what you’re looking at (yet). As such, the tour didn’t take us in there but I had a few extra minutes and poked around a bit. The only thing of note that I saw was the ruins of some mosque, but without signage or a tour guide, I have no idea what the significance is.

On to the Capital City!

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