Travel to Muscat, Oman.

Country/Town Visited: Muscat, Oman
Date of stay: Jan 2012
Where you stayed: Family
Tour or pre planned: Pre Planned

I was in the Middle East for a few months, and their tourist visa's are for 30 days, but luckily for me, you are able to do border runs to Oman, which is only an hour or two drive from Dubai. Since I was going to need to do a border run, I thought I may as well go to Muscat, which is a further 4 hours from the border to the other side of the gulf. There are no hostel's around these places, but just as I have across the world so far, I had a family friend who lived there that I could stay with. I was heading there on a Thursday morning, as the weekend in Oman is Thursday/Friday. It's already confusing enough guessing what day it is not having to go to work, let alone planning it around a Thurs/Fri weekend in Oman, Fri/Sat weekend in the UAE and Sat/Sun everywhere else in the world. 

The return bus fare was 90dhms (around $30AUD) and took 6 hours to get there. After a bit of a mission to the bus stop with the taxi driver dropping me in the completely wrong place I finally got to the right bus stop just before the 7am departure. Luckily the tickets were bought from the driver on the bus, otherwise I may have missed it if I had to run around looking for a ticket office. 

Being the only westerner on the bus (something I was now used to), the driver was really lovely and spoke quite good English, so with the stops at the UAE and Oman border, he came up to the desks for me and did all of the talking. I just stood there smiling sweetly to the guy, hoping he wouldn't notice that I had just winged the address on the Oman arrival card. I could hear "New Zealand" being thrown around the guys behind the big glass windows, and then I had to move across to another immigration officer. No questions were asked and then the bus driver explained once I get my passport back that there was no fee on the visa for New Zealand citizens. From what my Aunty tells me - we are the only nation that this applies to. The border crossing in general didn't take that long, you had around 4 stops on the UAE, each time having to show your passports to soldiers (it says no photography at the border stops, I'd go along with that as well, as there are guys standing at each stop with big rifles), then you have to unload your baggage at the Oman border so they can search for alcohol. It is illegal to take alcohol in to Oman (but like the UAE you can buy it with a license).

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