A Life on the Ocean Wave: Salalah

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The Achille Lauro

Hello. My name is Emma and I go on cruises. Mostly, so far on P&O ships out of Southampton, but other perfectly good cruise companies are available. ;-) When I can, I con my parents into paying for my ticket.


When I travel, I blog. If you would like to read it all, it can be found at my PS. The Post have asked me to proffer some edited highlights of my ramblings, which I shall now inflict on you forthwith. Enjoy.

Salalah

It may have been 26 degrees but it absolutely fell down with rain. Marvellous.

My friends who went on a morning tour and were going to accompany me into town in the afternoon (parents decided not to get off) were delayed and got back two hours late, which meant that by the time they had eaten something, there was no time left to go back into town. Of course, it would have been easier if we hadn't been moored over half an hour's drive from town. P&O's obsession with dumping us in container ports is starting to have negative effects on our overall experience. Delightfully timed, however, as the end of leg customer satisfaction questionnaire arrived today. smiley - evilgrin Mwahahahaha...

To be fair, though, Salalah is always a bit of a non-event. There's nothing there. It's just a container and commodities port. Last time we were here, I did manage to buy a t-shirt from a shop outside a resort hotel1 and the man who owned the t-shirt shop did offer my dad one hundred camels for me, but the town has no culture, no history and hardly any shops, either. I believe there is a souk, but, thanks to the rain and P&O, I can still neither confirm nor deny the quality or, indeed, very existence, of that experience.

Resort Hotel at Salalah

And so another sea day. We are out of pirate country, so the decks have reopened, so, provided I can summon the energy (earache is VERY draining!), I'll try and do the mile again today. Don't hold your breath though...

Thursday 21 Jan

Oh, I am a bad person. And yet, huzzah to me for memorising my credit card number. Have now succeeded in pushing my indecisive parents into booking the next cruise (although next cruise by one for them cos they're going to the Black Sea in September). Alaska, here we come! The shilly-shallying was really starting to get on my nerves, so I went with dad to the future cruise desk and tipped them over the edge into committing. They'd been back and forth and asked so many questions, and wasted so much time, that cabins were running out. But now we are finally booked, and I've paid the deposit on my credit card, so they can't get out of it now! Ha! So tata, people, I won't be around in April, May and June 2011. Try not to miss me too much. Should be back in time for Latitude, though, let's not be silly. No point in cutting off the nose to spite the face or whatever. This is getting a little incoherent. Blame low blood sugar, stop typing and go to dinner, girl. It's the Chaine de Rotisseurs2 dinner tonight. Too much, too rich, too good. *sigh* it's a hard life, you know. Oy, Denise! Keep the 12th and 13th of June 2011 free!

A Life on the Ocean Wave Archive

em-ma6

22.03.10 Front Page

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1For the uninitiated, a resort hotel is a hotel that provides everything you need: restaurants, spa and treatments, beach, pool. They're designed so that you never leave. So people can go to, oh, I don't know, Salalah, stay inside the hotel complex for a fortnight and go home saying they've been to Oman and how lovely and unspoilt and quiet it all is. Useful occasionally for a risk-free drink or meal, although they normally have a small charge for day visitors to use the facilities. Pleasant enough, but hardly an "authentic" experience, if you'll excuse the buzzword.2A posh society of chefs into which the P&O chefs were admitted a couple of years ago. An excuse for an extra lavish meal, basically.

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