Oman

<-- This is just one of many beautifully decorated mosque towers or minarets in Oman. This one, like the home above is in Ah Seeb near Muscat, the capitol of Oman.

There are more camels in Oman than you can shake a stick at. The darned things are everywhere and more valuable than any car - since if you hit one it always turns out to have been a racing camel (and thus worth more than normal ones) plus female (worth more than males) and pregnant (so you get to pay for the injured (Or dead more likely) foetus as well as its mum) and also to stand the repairs to your own car or have to buy a new one - yourself.

So here’s one of the famous Oman camels enjoying its normal food, yeah!

(Er, that’s cardboard!)

There was an Omani restaurant with normal looking but actually somewhat flimsy walls since they were packed with cardboard for a filling - and one day the diners were surprised to find a camel’s head poking through the walls as it ate its way into the building! Yum yum, cardboard!

This is quite the most elaborate private dwelling we saw in Oman - the Sultan's palace being behind massive walls. Most houses are built along similar lines unless they are made of reeds (or grass, hard to tell) just not so fancy as this one.

Here’s the original of the Bus Shelter on the front page (3DCreations) as you can see it’s pretty mucky looking, I prefer my version, but it’s certainly an interestingly designed shape.

And this is a coffee shop - I like the roof design, and there’s a gazebo sort of thing next to the coffee shop for people to drink their coffee outside. But I noticed that there’s an air-conditioner unit on the coffee shop’s wall - and frankly it’s way way too hot in Oman to stay outside if you don’t have to, so I’d be drinking mine INSIDE.

And here’s another Omani Bus Shelter. They are different shapes in different parts of the country. This one has some rather nice fretwork which appears to be on alternate arched openings.

Some firms (Marks & Sparks) pop up everywhere and I think that’s “Toys R Us” next door - wacky!

Gateway to Oman?

Ian and his pals out in Oman unkindly (but fairly accurately) called it:

“The Tomb of the Unknown Worker”, but I think it’s actually “Soldier”.

There’s a massive “Welcome to Muscat” sign near by.

So I thought of it as The Gateway to Oman, cos it LOOKS like a massive gate.

The Sultanate of Oman