The Long Way Home

Trip Start Feb 02, 2010

Trip End Dec 23, 2010

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Map Options

Show trip route

Hide lines

Where I stayed

Sareem International

(Muscat hotels)

Flag of Oman Muscat, Oman
Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Well I never expected to be writing a blog from Muscat but the last 24 hours have yielded some unfortunate events that have led to this. You see, back in the UK there has been a massive snow storm blowing for the last week and it turns out the guys at Heathrow are incapable of dealing with such things. This manifested itself in our flight from Bangkok being cancelled, and yes we were only told on the day. Fair enough, the guys at Oman Air said they would put us on the next flight which would be on the 23rd. However, after doing some digging it turned out this was only a waiting list for that flight so being impatient and having Nicci getting, shall we say, emotional I decided to take a flight to Munich instead.

So, we hung around all day in Bangkok at our usual haunts - the cinema and mall, before heading back to the airport. However, when we arrived we were informed we couldn't board the flight as the monkeys at STA travel wouldn't allow it for some bureaucratic reason. It was at this point I started getting a bit pissed off as we had already been kicked off one flight that day. After over an hour on the phone with STA and Oman Air, they still wouldn't let us on the flight to Munich but we somehow managed to force our way to Muscat where we were promised we would have a flight back to London waiting...

And so here we are. We didn't have a flight waiting and the idiots at Oman Air knew nothing about us. So after more kicking up a fuss and waiting around in airports, we eventually managed to get them to print us out boarding passes for an emergency flight to London the next day. They then sent us to a hotel in the city where we caught up on some much needed sleep after a startled look by the manager when I said we would like a double bed (evidently it's not so normal here for unmarried people to be bedding in together). We also took a little look around and it really wasn't what I expected, it was just like any normal city only with sand and white buildings. They even had a KFC! And I must say, the food in the hotel was amazing as well. So there we have it, a rather protracted but none the less interesting way home.