Holiday in Muscat 21/5~23/5

Salam to all,

We have planned to visit Muscat for the past year but had to defer our plan till last weekend. This time we decided to drive from Abu Dhabi to Muscat together with our neighbour Lina & Paul and their little bundle of joy, Amber. We roughly covered a total of 1,400km during the 3 days 2 nights visit and its worth every stretch of the tarmac we drove on.

So where is Oman in all scheme of things? The Sultanate of Oman is located in the Arabian Peninsular, north of Yemen and south of United Arab Emirates. The Musandam peninsula is located to the north with Khasab as it's town centre, famous for its scenic fjords and dolphin sightings. Muscat, Oman's capital, is located further towards the middle eastern region and share the same profile of seafront township with beautiful mountains as the backdrop. Muscat means 'anchorage', and it just explains why the sea continues to play an important part of the city's economic's and tourism activities.

Allow us to share a selection of our travel itinerary:

Day 1-

It was a very long journey indeed, we left home at 5.30am on Friday and took almost 6 hours to reach Muscat via Al Ain border at Hili Immigration. This is a very important fact as other checkpoint are sometimes limited to GCC residents only, so save the trouble of having to make a U-turn after waiting in line for so long. It costs 3 Omani riyal per person to obtain a short visit pass to enter Oman and will be charged to your credit card, cash is not an option. We then make our way passed Buraymi town on Oman border and had pizza for our brunch at Sohar, the land of Sinbad the Sailor. The Omani currency is Riyal and it is 10x the value of UAE Dirham, so everything seems cheap on the menu. The pizza for 4 of us only cost 5 riyal :)

pizza palace sohar

We arrived in Muscat around 1.30pm and headed straight to Mutrah Hotel. The hotels in Muscat are very very expensive but we managed to book this budget hotel for 24 riyal/ night inclusive breakfast. I think this is the cheapest hotel with a nice and clean room, although the amenities are quite limited.

In the evening, our first destination is Qurum beach near Crowne Plaza hotel. It is a nice location to stroll around with a number of cafes and picnic area for visitors.

Qurum beach
One of the roundabouts features in Oman.....some are very elaborate and fascinating
We continued our journey to the famous traditonal Omani's souq, the Muttrah Souq located on the corniche. A lot of things are sold here, incense burner, abaya, gold and silver. We bought only Omani's kofia with nice design for Abi, Luqman and ami najib. The price is 2.5 riyal/kofia, machine made. and for handmade kofia, the price can be up to 30 riyal= rm300...mahal tu..

On the way to muttrah souq

inside the muttrah souq

nice omani ketayap

After shopping, we took a walk at corniche while watching the sunset before heading to Masjid Sultan Qaboos for night photography.

muttrah fort located nearby the muttrah souq
sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque
corniche at night