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.