Happy Memorial Day to all those in the US. You all are at the end of a long weekend and I’m almost half way through my work week! I would normally spend Memorial Day weekend in Ocean City, MD but have to say, Oman kicked it’s a** even though I only had two days!
I’m down to the 4 week mark and feeling like it’s going to fly by. In some ways I’m really excited, in others I’m sad that this journey is coming to an end. I just returned from my last weekend trip and it was probably the perfect end. I have now done five countries in five months and feeling like while there was much more I would have liked to have seen, I’m happy with what I’ve gotten to do given the political unrest in this part of the world and the fact that I can’t take time off.
The past week was my first week off from boot camp in 2 months and it was a nice break. I got to leave work around 6 everyday instead of waiting around to go to boot camp at 7. Got a few good workouts in at my hotel gym and let my body rest some. A recap:
Monday I was conned (no, not really) into attending Monday Club. Monday Club is something I may have mentioned months ago but that I never actually attended. Liana told me about it right after we met, Katie used to go, Alice as well, but for whatever reason I just never made it to one. It hasn’t really been anything since January but one of the guys who usually organized was back in town from Singapore for one night so we all agreed to dinner/drinks at Sax (I used to spend many Wednesday nights here..hadn’t been since my birthday!). I was able to sneak in an hour nap after work so figured I could handle one night out during the week and Alice and I both agreed we were not staying out late so it wasn’t so bad. We did dinner at Cho Gao which is right down the street from my old hotel. Had some delicious vegetable tempura and pad thai. Last time they refused to switch the peanuts for cashews even though everything else on the menu had cashews in it but I got someone sane this time who said it was not a problem! Dinner provided for some interesting conversation in which this one guy that was with us apparently full on made out with another guy the weekend before when they were trying to convince two girls to kiss. These guys are straight which is why it was disturbing. First off, girls don’t want to see that. Secondly, don’t be so proudly touting that especially here! Anyways..we went to Sax after and I had always been told that Sax on a Monday was really good although I had only ever been on Wednesdays and thought they were pretty fab. The music at the beginning wasn’t great but def started to pick up right around the time Alice and I decided to leave. I’m glad we did, as I heard the night went downhill fast and the ones that stayed woke up feeling pretty poorly. I was home and asleep around the time I would have if I had stayed in anyway.
I woke up not feeling the best on Tuesday…..had way too much wine the night before but got through work and then went home and hit the gym. It’s def. hard to motivate myself to go (why I like boot camp so much, I just do it!) but I went and had a fab workout. I was gonna do a spin class but the girl that was gonna maybe join me decided not to and I am not a huge fan of spinning so just did a bike on my own and then ran 4 miles. I know last week I was excited that 3 was easy, but 4 seemed even easier and it felt great. My goal is to do a 10K (or 6.4) before I leave. I think the max I’ve ever run is an 8K (5ish miles). Went home and watched My Best Friends Girl and had a nice healthy chicken caesar from room service.
Wednesday there was a circuit class at the gym which I thought might be good…I hit the gym first to warm up on the elliptical and then joined the class. It was….interesting. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be coming from boot camp but I think that’s because at BC, we prob do a max 40 minutes of exercise, just at a very high intensity, whereas circuit was a full hour of nonstop. I was the only new person and the instructor knew I wasn’t a newbie to the gym (he guessed body pumper…I said used to do that..now a boot camper) and then he pushed me pretty hard. When we went outside to run sprints on the roof, all the other chicks had these well..chick weights that slide nicely on their hands and weighed nothing. When I went to grab them he was like, I don’t think so boot camp. So then he made me sprint with 2.5KG (5.5lbs) plates in each hand. Good times. The only part of the class I wasn’t a big fan of was the umm….how to describe…goofiness he threw in between circuit sets…so we’d do 2 or 3 stations and then the whole class would meet in the middle and do some form of jumping around like fools. It reminded me of the class Liana and I did a few months back where I was doubled over in the back laughing because I couldn’t take it seriously. Thankfully Liana wasn’t with me and I just tried to pretend like we didn’t all look like complete fools. Also, my hand eye coordination sucks. So most of the time I was just staring at him trying to figure out what he was doing. Anyways..I was sore the next day so it was good. After gym I did some laundry, had dinner (does popcorn and cheese count as dinner?), and then packed for Oman. Oh..and watched The Bachelor, the movie. There are an infinite amount of dumb movies on here and I end up watching a lot of them as I have nothing else to do.
Thursday seemed to take FOREVER to arrive. It was just one of those really slow weeks. Alice and I were supposed to be going to this shoe/bag trunk show at the Fairmont prior to heading to the airport as she got the invite from someone she worked with but I didn’t get out of work in time so she went and I went home to finish packing. It worked out because she said the sale was “rubbish” so I just picked her up in a cab and we went to the airport. Her friend Niamh was flying in from London and then turning around and going straight to Oman with us (she is a trooper!) so we met up with her at the airport. Funny when we got to Terminal 1 (the crappy terminal), the line to go through initial security (before you even check in) was huge in the economy line and no one was in the business side so we just pulled the, roll up like we own the place, method and it worked beautifully. I mean really..you haven’t checked in yet, how can you even prove that we aren’t flying business or first? We looked the part so that saved us a ton of time. Alice has some special card that gets her lounge access anywhere (oh…side note…I checked my HSBC card and it gets me lounge access at about 10 random airports around the world….Abu Dhabi is not one….Bahrain and Doha however are….too bad my trips to those places ended months ago!). Anyways….she was able to get us all in so we had free dinner and wine and just chilled before our flight. Flight was quick and easy. People kept asking why we didn’t drive. Well let’s weigh the options. Drive 4-5 hours to a place none of us are familiar with, deal with border crossing, one of us would have to drive and therefore not enjoy, it would take forever, oh and we’d have to drive back which you know no one wants to do after a weekend. Or we could fly….get to the airport an hour early, sit in a lounge and eat and drink for free, fly 40 minutes, breeze through immigration and take a 15 minute taxi to hotel. Yeah, stop asking why we didn’t drive! Oh so on the plane they were serving these sandwich things and I was tired and wanted to take a nap but stayed awake to find out what it was. Well, we have chicken and mushrooms or mushrooms, yeah no thanks. Why not? I don’t like mushrooms. Well we have chicken…and mushrooms….yeah, still has mushrooms in it. Then I had to attempt sleep with my head on the tray because the guy behind me was playing bowling or something else obnoxious on the tv that was in the back of my headrest. Why the h*ll do they have games on these screens that are certain to piss off the passenger in that seat?!?! Anyways..got to Muscat, got our bags, breezed through immigration (well that’s a lie..it took a while…the immigration guy was trying to get my phone number, ha!), and then got a cab. The cabs in Oman are much nicer than Abu Dhabi and we were to the hotel in 15 minutes.
It was fairly late when we got in..probably 11:30pm but they gave us some cool cloths and some drink concoction and had us sit while they did what they needed to check us in. We had two rooms as they wouldn’t allow 3 of us in one room and it would be hard to hide at a place like this! Alice and Niamh had one and I had the other. So we noticed two things when we got there. It was insanely quiet….like we felt bad talking quiet. And hot. Disgustingly hot. Away from the water it was much hotter than Abu Dhabi, but by the water with a breeze it was a bit cooler I think. Anyway…we start following the guy to our rooms which were two doors down from each other and see plenty of people sitting around outside but it was just still so quiet. We figured people hated us for talking. They upgraded us for free because Alice is a smooth talker so that was nice. The hotel was very subdued, the rooms were quite bland, but very nice and the beds were super comfy. They went straight to bed, I went out and had a glass of water on one of the many patio type places at the resort (everything looks the same…I got lost a lot!) and it was so peaceful. Me, my wine and the stars, was super nice. Breakfast was included in our rooms and only served til 10:30am so we decided to go at 10ish…I set my alarm to get up and go to the gym but when it went off, I figured I came here to relax, that would be going against my plans and skipped it the whole weekend (although I did at least set the alarm for both mornings and then made the decision to can it!!).
We went down to the pool to secure chairs in a good spot and then hit breakfast. The buffet was great and you could order other stuff off the menu. I did something super crazy and had an egg white omelette…ha..jk…this is so typical me. Breakfast was also when we started to realize we were probably the only single folks at this place. Anyway…we hit the pool about 11am and the pool boys were great to get our stuff all set up and bring us waters (it was much needed……even by the water was still really hot). I bought a new John Grisham book at the airport and that kept me occupied most of the weekend (I finished it about 5pm on Saturday!) It was funny with the three of us as I’m by far the brownest and spent the entire weekend in the sun, Alice can handle some sun but tried to keep her face in the shade, and poor Niamh is anti sun. She was barely in it at all and ended up with very burned feet and various other random places. Splotchy is a good description and a word we used a lot over the weekend. So after laying there for about an hour Niamh (who remember has come all the way from London for a weekend away) thinks she recognizes someone she works with. We are at this small boutique hotel in Oman and sure enough, it’s her. Then we go sit at the food area by the pool and within 10 minutes sees someone else she used to work with. It was crazy. She said if she saw one more person she was going home but thankfully that didn’t happen! We were slightly annoyed on Friday as due to religious reasons you couldn’t drink until after 2pm. I don’t get rules like that…is there really a difference between noon and 2? Or anytime and 2? If you allow drinking, just allow it. Thankfully this was just a Friday rule and it was 1:30 when we figured it out! We had a nice light lunch, got some drinks and then returned to doing nothing for another couple hours. We all had booked spa packages, Niamh was first at 3:30 and then Alice and I followed at 5pm. 5pm was perfect as I was done with the sun, got a shower in and hit the spa. Alice and I were in the same room as they could only accommodate us both at that time if we did it together and we didn’t care. We did 2 separate packages so were joking that there was no way I was going to have my Ocean type massage music since hers was something different…it all worked out just fine though. Mine was the longest package possible..3 hours and it was amazing. The Ocean bath was a bit boring and super hot, especially since I had just left the pool about an hour before. Next up was a full body scrub (not so nice on my burned back and chest, but otherwise great!). I was quite surprised when she asked if she could do my chest and I assumed she meant my chest where I was burned but nope, she meant everything. Ha. No one in this part of the world has come close to even exposing my chest during massages so I was pretty surprised, but hey, I’m up for whatever. And I told the girls after..the three hours with my therapist was the most action I’ve gotten in three months!!! Yes yes, TMI, but it was funny. After the scrub was a seaweed wrap….I wasn’t actually wrapped in seaweed, it was more of a seaweed scrub and then I was wrapped up in all these towels and blankets to keep the heat in. I laid like that for 30 minutes and my body was on fire. She had me shower after that and the reflection in the mirror almost made me bust out laughing. Alice was face up but with her eyes covered, or else she prob would have laughed as well. After I was as soft as could possibly be, I had a very nice long massage and was quite sad when the whole thing was over!!!
After spa I hit their room for some champagne and snacks (my stomach was growling during most of the spa time!) and we chatted a bunch while taking our sweet time getting ready. Although getting ready essentially involved drinking champagne and throwing on my dress and tying my hair up so it was mostly drinking! Oh forgot….on the plane ride over they were kind enough to introduce me to Curly Wurly’s which were a childhood candy for them. It was delicious but I ended up with flakes all over me…clearly I don’t know the correct way to eat it! They also had me try Pimm’s which Naimh had picked up at duty free on the way over. We were late to dinner but was no biggie since our table wasn’t ready anyways since we requested one by the window…thankfully we only had to wait like 5 minutes as we were all pretty hungry. Had some champagne cocktails and a delicious meal (lobster risotto, salad, coconut sorbet, YUM!). We could all barely move when we were finished but it was well worth it. I had another glass of wine under the stars and was in bed by midnight. Oh also funny…the first night, when I checked in they had the decorative pillows on the bed…but one sort of looked like a regular pillow just definitely not in a pillow case so I slept with that the first night. After the spa I happened to walk in while they were doing turn down service and were putting 4 nice normal pillows on my bed….oops! They had been in the closet area the night before but I didn’t even realize…Alice proceeded to make fun of me greatly. The other thing about the turn down service…pretty sure they stole my favorite earrings that I wear everyday. This is now the second pair of Tiffany earrings I have “lost”. The first time was last summer when I went to Maine, I managed to lose one. I got a new pair for X-mas and now have lost the full set so I still have one out of four. Both pairs were gifts from my ex…maybe a sign? I wonder if I buy them myself if I’ll lose those too. Very frustrating but nothing I can do about it. I hope the wife or girlfriend enjoys them (both turndown folks were men).
Saturday morning I got up to my alarm again and immediately re-set it with just enough time for breakfast and then we did a repeat of day 1. Breakfast, beach/pool, lunch, more beach pool. Just no spa this day! I finished my book at about 5pm and then went back to our suite to get ready to go. Oh yeah…so we asked for late checkout til 6 since our flight wasn’t until 8:15…there were people checking into our rooms but they gave us a suite for the day instead and moved all our stuff for us. Fabulous place!! We took off for the airport right around 6 and had tons of time to kill when we got there. The Muscat airport was much larger than I thought and not sure why as no one was there! We went through about 8 security checks and then I saw something amazing…..a Dairy Queen sign!!!! Two things I really miss from the US are Chipotle and DQ Blizzards so you can imagine how elated I was to realize I could have a blizzard for dinner. I introduced Alice and Niamh to a bit of my child (I mean adult) hood and Niamh and I had blizzards for dinner. Alice had real food but did try some of ours as they screwed up our order and gave Niamh 2 (one with Oreo and one with Butterfinger) instead of 1 with both. I was a bit bummed they didn’t have Reece’s since that is my favorite but settled for snickers and Butterfinger. Then we went to Duty free and shopped for perfume. I’ve been wanting to get new perfume for ages but anytime I go to look/smell, I get a headache after about 2 minutes and give up. I persevered and found one I loved and also got my nephew something cuz I’m such a fab Auntie! Flight was easy, I tried to sleep but couldn’t but we were back at home by 10pm which was great so I could get in bed at a normal hour.
It was sad to go back to work yesterday but I also felt like we had a really long weekend. Funny when we landed Saturday night I couldn’t really remember getting on the plane Thursday night which was 48 hours earlier! I love when weekends feel like that. Was the first night back at bootcamp so stayed a bit late at work, went over there and got ready for the fitness assessment. The class was HUGE. 46 ppl. It’s the most they’ve ever had and it’s June….makes absolutely no sense! I figured it would be those of us who are addicted already but not soooo many newbies. Anyways…I was hoping to hit the 7 minute mile mark and came close…7:12. 17 seconds better than last month so I was happy with that. It was hot so I’m sure that doesn’t help. We did everything else and I beat all my prior month scores (some considerably) except for the plank. I did 3 min first month, 3:29 last month and 3:02 yesterday. I pushed it much more on the squats/push ups so my body was pretty dead by the time I got to the plank. So of course we finished about 30 minutes late and I had somewhere to be. I was meeting Alice and the girls to see The Hangover 2 at a sweet movie theatre in the Marina Mall. I had to go home from BC (which was close to the mall already!), run in, quick shower, change, throw hair up and head back down to get cab. Thankfully I made it back and only missed the previews and…in the Gold Class theatre which we bought tickets for, you can order food and they bring it to you..plus you get these big comfy leather recliners. Not sure how I’ll ever watch a movie normally again! The movie was good….the other 3 liked it better than 1…I think I liked 1 better only because 2 was fairly predictable after seeing 1 yet still very funny and it didn’t seem like too much was edited for showing here. How’s this for bizarre? Its PG-15 here in the UAE….and R in the states. Pretty sure it should be R.
I got home about 12:15 and figured I’d pass out since I had been running around all night. No such luck. The last time I looked at my phone it was 3:30. I was sooooo frustrated by that point knowing I was going to get 3.5 hours sleep max. My mind just wouldn’t stop last night as much as I tried. I’m exhausted today and pretty glad Oliver cancelled our steak date. He’s headed to the US on Thursday to find out if he made partner or not (pretty sure he did) so we were gonna do an early celebration dinner before he left (and I haven’t had steak in about a month) but now I’m gonna go home, order room service, call Maria who I have flaked on two weeks in a row and go to bed early. Ideally asleep by 9:30. We shall see!
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