My Solo Trip to Oman

Hello from Oman. I've made it to Oman, which is the third and final country on my great Middle Eastern adventure. This is kind of a different stop for me for a couple of reasons. One, if you had asked me a year ago to point to Oman on a map, I wouldn't have been able to do it. I hadn't heard anything about this country, but I've had my trip to Dubai and Jordan that I just recently visited planned for probably six or eight months now. And as I told people about it, more than once somebody said, oh, if you're over in that area, you should go to Oman as well, because it's actually very close to Dubai. So to be honest, I'm kind of just winging it. I do have one thing that I've booked and planned while I'm here. And I do have ideas of other things to do. Like I did some research, but I don't have just like a really solid itinerary. I'm just here and I'm enjoying it. Also, I have the prettiest view right now. I'm going to show you guys what's behind me. It's absolutely stunning here. Like I never envisioned that the Middle East, like beaches in the Middle East looked like this. I'm staying at the Chetty Muscat Hotel and it's right on the beach. And it's really, really, really pretty here. The first thing I did in Muscat was head to the marina to join a boat tour because the Gulf of Oman is full of dolphins. And if you head out early enough in the morning, you have a good chance of finding some. So I found a tour and trip advisor, hopped on a boat and set off from the coast. The coastline of Muscat is stunning and getting out on the water is definitely the best way to see it. It is such a beautiful sunset tonight. I can already tell it's starting up there. Just this like golden-y glow. I knew I wanted to get out of Muscat and see what lies outside of the city. So I hired a local female guide for the day to drive me about two hours out to Wadi Shab to go hiking and swimming. Wadi Shab is this beautiful oasis and the whole day was such a great experience because it allowed me to learn more from a local about what living in Oman is like. And she knew all the cool spots to check out and she was able to advise me on attire for the day. I had been a little unsure of what to wear because the dress in Oman is quite conservative, but she told me that regular active wear and a swimsuit was totally fine for the trip and everyone we saw out there was also dressed that way. The water of Wadi Shab is the most vibrant water I've ever seen in my life. The saturation isn't bumped on this video. It is bright sparkling emerald green and in the middle of the desert it's absolutely spectacular. So we hiked about a mile or so through the canyon before we got to the pools that you can swim through and it's a series of pools where you'll like swim for a little bit and then it gets shallow and you can walk for a little bit and then you swim some more and then when you get to the end there's this tiny little crevice in the rock. You would miss it if you didn't know it was there and you can squeeze through to get back to this hidden waterfall and it is so cool. So Wadi Shab was amazing. If you come to Oman you definitely have to make a trip out there because it's beautiful and it was so much fun. This evening I'm catching a taxi to the Matra Souq and a souq is an Arabic marketplace and the Matra Souq is supposed to be one of the oldest souqs in Oman and it's apparently enormous. I also read that it's one of only a few souqs where you can actually buy gold and it's open until 10 p.m. I found that things here stay open really late so I'm going to go spend my evening exploring the souq. The Matra Souq is definitely the place to go if you're looking for some souvenirs in Oman. There are tons of cellars and you could spend hours in there and while I definitely stood out while walking through it I didn't feel uncomfortable at all. I continually found throughout my trip that the people of Oman are very polite, very friendly, and I felt very welcome. So I bought some things at the Matra Souq. I don't usually buy souvenirs when I travel just because I find that anything that's trinkety as soon as I get home it just gets like sat somewhere and collects dust. But I wanted to take some pictures in some of the stores in the souq and I didn't want to go in and just like take a bunch of pictures and not buy anything so I decided to collect a few things. For starters I am now the proud owner of the flashiest deck of cards you will ever see. These are supposedly lab tested 99.9 percent 24 karat gold. I'm a little confused because these weren't super expensive and I would think that 24 karat gold plated cards would be more than I paid for these. I think I paid like eight dollars but yeah I thought that these would be super fun to like pull out with some friends and be like hey who wants to play gold plated cards? I also purchased some soap for gifts. There's an oud soap and a frankincense soap which I didn't realize that frankincense trees are in Oman. It's like a very big thing here like a national product. I also bought this and I actually don't really know what it is it just smells really good. The guy was trying to explain to me I think he was saying something like you put it in your drawers and it makes your clothes smell good which I'm not really sure about because it kind of looks like it crumbles and goes everywhere but you can smell it even through the bag and I thought if anything I'm just going to throw it in my suitcase so that my clothes smell good. And then the last thing that I bought is a magnet to put on my fridge that has a camel and the Oman flag. This morning I'm dressed a little bit differently. I'm covered to the wrists to my ankles and I have a scarf on and that is because I'm heading to the grand mosque here in Oman which is supposed to be absolutely stunning. One of the biggest questions I had when planning this trip and I think most women have when they think of visiting the Middle East is what do I wear? The only place that I've visited in the last few weeks where I have been required to cover up in some way has been when entering a mosque and when you enter a mosque you have to cover to the wrists the ankles and have a scarf to pull over your hair. Other than that I found the dress standards to be pretty like normal and moderate for visitors here. They say the general rule of thumb is to just make sure your shoulders are covered and your knees are covered so something like a t-shirt and pants is totally fine and even saying that it kind of depends on where you are and what you're doing. I've even seen some women working in hotels wearing really nice like sleeveless dresses. The only thing that I heard before coming over here that I do find to be very true is you really don't see any cleavage. You don't see any really low cut tops anywhere. I have seen some restaurants that have a sign that says please cover your shoulders and your knees when entering. So the dress situation wasn't really as difficult as I thought it would be because I mostly just wear like a t-shirt and pants at home anyway and obviously this will vary depending on where in the Middle East you visit. I visited the UAE, Jordan and Oman. I know that there are countries that are much more conservative than this but everywhere that I visited has been pretty normal and easy except for today where I have to wear something a little bit different for an hour when I enter a mosque. This mosque is so beautiful and it's a very different experience from the one that I had in Abu Dhabi. There's no one here. Like there's literally no one here. The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque is constructed out of 300,000 tons of Indian sandstone and the grounds can hold up to 20,000 worshippers. You guys, this place was sparkling clean. I mean you could eat off of the ground here. It was immaculate. I arrived right when it opened and I had the place to myself for about 20 minutes before other people and groups started trickling in. My time in Oman has come to an end. I'm heading to the airport this afternoon in a very wrinkled sweater because when you've been living out of a suitcase for three weeks everything's wrinkled and I'm just I'm tired of fighting it. I had the best time here. I really didn't know what to expect in this country and it was amazing. Everybody is so friendly. It's so beautiful and clean. Like the roads are nice and like I don't think I saw trash anywhere and I felt very safe the entire time that I was here. I feel like people here are very honest. I don't know like I know that that sounds weird to say. Something that I was told before coming here was that it's the type of place where you could leave your phone in your purse on a table and go walk around the block or go to the bathroom and nobody would touch your stuff and I do definitely get those vibes here. Obviously you always need to have your wits about you when you're traveling but like there were several times that I took a taxi and I paid the taxi fare for a round trip up front and the driver said that he would wait for me for like an hour wherever we were going and maybe this sounds ridiculous but they were always there waiting even though they had already been paid. I just feel like there are places in the world where if you paid a cab driver like a full fare up front they might not still be waiting there an hour later to take you back. Just very very friendly nice people here. I highly suspect that over the next few years you're going to be seeing a lot of Oman in the travel sphere. So I'm going to wrap this video up here. I hope you enjoyed coming along on this adventure with me. If you do come to Oman I would recommend staying even longer than I did. I was here for four nights and I feel like I didn't even see enough. So I'm going to go. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Bye!