There's something About Oman

Yesterday, I woke up at approximately 3:30 am to get the fly to Cairo, or rather I didn't get to sleep-in anticipation of missing my flight. The flight out of Oman was actually at 8:00 am-but with all the problems with the hotel-It semeed like catching a cab might be another-and the airport is approximately 20 or so miles out of town. So I made sure the cab came at 4:00 am. And actually it proved quite incident free. The cab driver was a friend of the hotel manager. So he came right on time. The only issue was my issue-I didn't have the exact change of 10 Omanian Rial's-and had to go to other cab drivers when we arrived at the airport to get the change.

While, I liked Oman-Muscat was absolutely beautiful, situated right on the mountains, the airport isn't quite up to snuff. It looks more like a bus station. There isn't much seating outside security, and there are no jetways that lead from the terminal to the plane, you have to walk outside.

I flew on Gulf Air-which is the official airline of the Kingdom of Bahrain-as the airline continuously stated. The A320 was comfortable, and had a selection of movies. This flight was only 1 1/2 hours-before i had to change planes in the Kingdom of Bahrain to continue on to Cairo.

I was able to watch the first part of "There's Something About Mary on" on the plane. You might think that film is a little risque for the official airline of an Islamic state-but rest assured there we're notices on the screen not to look when Cameron Diaz (and Aunt Magda) we're topless (or almost topless)

After an hour and a half, the plane arrived at the Official Kingdom of Bahrain, and while there was construction on a new terminal-this looked to be even more like a bus station. Some of the folks sitting there we're asked for passports and boarding passes by a security guard, and looked like they we're escaping something with little.

Roughly 3 hours later, the plane arrived in Cairo. I had exchanged the remainder of Ohmanien Rials for Egyption currency before leaving the Muscat airport-but to pay for the Egyptian Visa-it would have been MUCH easier with US dollars (which I didn't have). For whatever reason, the Egyptians are hesitant to accept their own currency for their own Visa-I did find one bank at the airport which issued one-but they had watch me use their ATM to ensure they saw the money come out.

A driver picked me up and brought me to the hostel.

Egypt doesn't sound like a nice place-(it just don't role off the tip of the tongue like Hawaii or Bali)-and this is proving to be true so far. Cairo is a big, ugly city so far, with lots of people, old ugly buildings, and cars honking horns. After checking into the hostel, I took a walk around and even went on the Metro. The Metro is pretty old and fillthy itself. What I was, and am still looking for, is a guidebook on Cairo-but that is hard to find. What is easy to find is people willing to sell me Egyptian tours, which include Luxor, Memphis-although I don't know what is there. Around every corner are people looking to sell me tours.

They did give me an upgrade to a private room at the hostel, thought, at least for the night.

/