Fish Tales

It’s been an action packed weekend of clubbing (both in the party sense and hitting fish over the head!), swimming, fishing, eating, sinkhole diving, dead skin eating and beach chilling. I feel like I've done so much this weekend that I could think of a few blog entries I could write, but I’m just going to lump them all into one big entry because everything seems to have one common link......fish!

I accepted an invite from a friend (Ali) to go fishing very early Thursday morning, so early in fact that I managed to convince him to put me up for the night so I could get an extra half an hour in bed. This became even more vital when an unplanned night out clubbing on Wednesday followed by a 3am swim in the sea meant I only got 2 hours sleep before I was shaken awake at 6am and told to ‘Get the f*ck up!’. Just a side note about the late night swimming; the sea here is packed with phosphorescent plankton, which light up when you disturb them, so after a few drinks it can be kind of mesmerising. All you want to do is move as much as possible to watch the small twinkling green lights all around you, it’s great fun and is totally free of course!

Ali with the Mahi-mahi

Despite me being a bit tired, the fishing was a brilliant experience and I soon woke up when being sprayed in the face with sea water. We drove down to meet the boat at the Shangri-la hotel where there is a small marina. It was a very simple 29 foot boat with bench seating for at least 10 people, but there were just 5 of us on board and two of those were local fishermen. The first fish we caught was a Mahi-mahi, a white meat fish which I thought was a decent size, but the fishermen laughed at it and said it was tiny. After a quick Google search today for Mahi-mahi I can confirm that it definitely was tiny.

Me with the big Tuna

The second fish was our first Tuna, but a small one at about 10 inches long that we just threw back to mother nature. The third fish was another Tuna and this time we thought it was worth keeping. Still only small for a Tuna, but big enough for a decent meal. The fourth and final fish was just what we were searching for! An 8kg beast, which was now destined for our barbecue that evening. I was shocked with the shear amount of blood from the fish, it was everywhere! One of the fishermen had spiked the big Tuna to haul it onto the boat and in doing so had created a massive hole straight through it, which was gushing blood everywhere. We did our best to catch some more, but despite all the other boats around us catching loads of huge Tuna our luck wasn’t in and we only managed the one. Still, it was plenty to feed 10 people at the barbecue that evening.

The fisherman with his bucket + smart phone!

One thing that really made me laugh while we were fishing was how we found the Tuna. We’d been searching for a while with no luck, so the fisherman went to this white plastic bucket, took the lid off, pulled out a zip lock bag, opened it up and got his Samsung Galaxy smart phone out!! He then called a fellow fisherman to find out where the Tuna were today! Modern technology…..…even a simple fisherman can’t live without it these days.

The next exciting thing to happen this weekend was the arrival of 4 friends from Dubai. The weekend in Dubai is Friday and Saturday so they arrived late Thursday night. They drove here straight after finishing work, which took them roughly 5 hours. So Thursday night we all went round to my friends place (the one who took me fishing) and we cooked all the fish from our morning of hard work at sea. It was absolutely delicious……….….some said ‘life changing!’

The next day me and my visitors decided to go to something called the Bimmah Sinkhole. It’s in a place called Hawiyat Najm Park, which is roughly a 1.5 hour drive from Muscat. The park has a very odd feel to it when you arrive. There are no signs telling you what the place is (apart from the sign from the road side) and no obvious ‘sinkhole’ in site. There are plenty of trees around and patches of grass with picnic benches. If it wouldn’t of been touching 42 degrees it would have been a lovely spot to have a barbecue picnic with the sea on one side and the mountains on the other. A short walk into the park and you start to notice a large circular brick wall, no bigger than 1.5 meters high. As you get closer to it you realise it’s the wall that surrounds the sinkhole, which protects it from people falling in! Over the wall you are confronted by a crystal clear pool of blue water surrounded by 20-30 meter tall rock cliffs. Luckily the people who built the park around it also built a set of concrete steps winding down to the bottom.

Bimmah Sinkhole

'Just get in the hole!'

Some mad people do jump in from the top, but on this occasion no one in my group was brave enough to take on the challenge! Maybe next time. One guy who looked like a local did though, here’s the pic…….

The water comes from the sea through a series of underground caves so it’s nicely chilled. Just what we needed in the 42 degree sun. I could have floated in there all day. There was one more group of people there when we arrived, but when they left it was so peaceful and quiet. Every little sound echoed off the rocks.

There was one more surprise in the sinkhole, which we had no idea about. Doctor fish! Science geek name: Garra rufa. These are the little fish that have become very popular in spa’s in recent years which nibble all the dead skin from your body. Most of this is on your feet, so naturally they flock around your feet, nibbling away. It takes some getting use to, especially if you are ticklish, but I find it very therapeutic. I have (or had) a rather large cut/scab on my shin from climbing which they seemed to like way too much! It hurt a little at first when the fish discovered it, but today the scab has all gone and it appears to have done the cut some good. Maybe someone will research this one day and discover they can heal wounds? Who knows!

The rest of the day was spent chilling out at the Oman Dive Centre. This is a small bay nestled among large cliffs with a restaurant, bar and dive centre. The beer here is surprisingly cheap and you’re allowed to drink it on the beach, so it would be a great place to spend the whole day if you aren’t the designated driver! The restaurant even does camel burgers!! Something I’ve never tried before. You could say it’s similar to lamb in taste, so it was very nice. I’d definitely have one again.

 



Chilling at the Oman Dive Centre



Restaurant in the Oman Dive Centre

The final night of the weekend was spent in an amazing Turkish fish restaurant called Turkish House. This is the place I first wrote about in my blog entry called ‘Second Impressions’. My visitors were blown away by the food. Freshly caught fish, which you pick from a counter in the entrance, char-grilled and served with some amazing Turkish bread and salad. Simple, but great food. We had two large fish (one was a type of snapper and the other I kept asking the name of, but still can’t remember it!), 15 tiger prawns, lemon & mint drinks and a ridiculous amount of bread and salad between us. All that came to 36 Rials (about £11.50 per person), which is a total bargain for such good food.

The weekend is sadly over now and my friends have gone back to the bright lights of the ‘big city’, but I’ve gained some great memories and I’m already looking forward to the next weekend when I can see what else Oman has to offer.

Keeping It Simple

In Muscat, they like to keep things simple. No messing around with complicated brand names, which make you wonder exactly what the place sells or offers.

Tips 'n' Toes

Starbucks

Toni & Guy

Curry's

Victoria Secret

H&M

Greggs / Fish 'n' Tackle

Tesco

Sudds

Iceland / KFC

Oink, oink!

Here's a bit of back ground information first on pork in a Muslim country (for those who do not know). Pork isn't usually easy to come by in a Muslim country. They just don't agree with it! Something to do with pigs eating their own sh*t I think. In some countries in the Middle East it's actually illegal to import or sell it. So, if you are lucky enough to live in a country that is allowed to sell it you usually have to head to a limited number of supermarkets that supply it. Once inside you go into a special room next to the 'normal' meat counter that has a warning above the door stating 'Not For Muslims'. It really can make you laugh when you first see it. That's enough background for now.

I had finished work for the weekend on a Wednesday and decided to go shopping in the supermarket underneath my office. This supermarket is luckily the only brand that sells pork in Oman (it's called Al Fair) so it's nice and handy for me. A bacon butty would be a nice way to kick off the weekend tomorrow morning I thought. My jaw literally hit the floor when I saw how much a pack of bacon was! £15 (9.5 Rials)......YES, read it again, £15!!!! For a pack of bacon??? I thought pork was expensive in the UAE, but it's nothing compared to Oman. I am told this is because of a 100% import tax the government imply on it, but still, £15?!! That's just a joke. It even makes the £15 full English breakfast in McGettigans pub in Dubai seem cheap.

So what is the solution to this pork dilemma? Boot leg it from Dubai of course! The week prior to me travelling to Dubai for the weekend I was flooded with pork requests from fellow colleagues. I discovered pork (in all it's varieties!) really does take up a lot of space in a regular shoulder bag when you have roughly 5 kg's of it!! I don't charge a fee for this service as yet, but a simple dinner invite from the receivers is as good of a payment as any.

Around half of the pig order

Taxi's in Muscat

I flew back to Dubai last weekend (to attend a chairty ball I bought a ticket for before I moved to Muscat) and planned to drive my 'Dubai' car back to Muscat, so I left my hire car at work. This meant that on Saturday morning I had to have my first Muscat taxi experience to get back to work to pick up the hire car.

Taxi's in Muscat aren't that convenient and can be a little hard to figure out at first. Here's some basic information on the taxis here:

• They are white and orange in colour.
• They are driven by Omani's who own the taxi themselves as a small business.
• There's no central number to call if you want one so you have to flag one down or know the phone number of an actual driver.
• They don't have a meter, so you have to agree a price before you set off.

I soon discovered that flagging a taxi down on a morning is hard work, I just couldn't get any of them to stop. If it was the middle of summer I'd of been sweating my ass off in no time because I ended up having to walk for roughly 15 minutes to a taxi rank I drive past every day on the way to work. Just as I was approaching the taxi rank a taxi pulled up next to me, he already had a passenger inside, but I told him where I wanted to go and he signaled for me to get in. I had been told to always agree a price before you get in because they try to charge you 5 Rial (about £8) no matter how short the journey is. Seeing as my office is only a ten minute journey I offered him 3 Rial, but we eventually agreed on 4 Rial. Maybe I should have offered 2 to begin with!

The taxi driver was very old and small, with a grey beard. A lot like the fisherman I encountered at the fish market actually! He spoke very little English, but he tried to ask me how I was.........at least I think that's what he was asking.



If you squint you can just about see his beard!



I'd been in the taxi a couple of minutes when we dropped the other guy off (who had been relegated to sitting on the roof because as you can see, it only had 2 seats!). The driver then started going in the opposite direction to where my office is. Brilliant! It appears he mis-understood my description of 'the Al Fair supermarket on 18th of November Street' (Yes, I know, bit of a stupid name for a road isn't it?). Instead, he was taking me to a place called Al Faheer, or that's what he kept repeating anyway. He eventually understood where I wanted to go when I told him my offce is in an area called Azaiba.

Upon arrival I gave him the 4 Rial and he offered his hand to shake mine. I said 'Shukran', which is 'Thank you' in Arabic. He said 'Shukran' back and gave me a huge smile, one that was definitely big enough to suggested I had over-paid! Or he was possibly just another very friendly Omani. Still, taxi's here aren't expensive compared to most parts of the world, but they could do with some imporovement on how to come across them and how much to charge.