Friday 29th August Temp 32c

A busy weekend is nearly over and its been a mix of party, chill, and sunshine.

Thursday night met at Brian and Linda’s (from Middlesbrough, Maths and English respectively) place for a few beers before we went off to he Royal Plaza Hotel to check out the bar there. Wasn’t a bad night, beer was more expensive than the Intercontinental but it was a nice place.
Thursday was chill out and shopping day. Went to the Lu Lu Hypermarket. They have just about everything you could want on 2 floors, with the top floor selling all the clothes, electrical items, kitchen/bedroom stuff etc and the ground floor the foodstuff. You can get a full pineapple freshly cut into rounds for about 800 biases (about £1) and it tastes absolutely gorgeous. Had to get myself some isotonic drink mix as you really sweat buckets here and I needed to replace my salts. In fact all the fruit (and there is everything you can think of) is cheap and so is the vegetables. Meat is reasonable although I haven’t bought any pork (which is very expensive due to a tax on it) and you are able to everything your used to and even camel!

Today, India wanted to stay in and chill and Cirst was out with friends so I had the car to myself. Phoned up Donald (Philippine, Geography teacher) as he had been talking about going to the beach at Ras Al Hamra. I picked him up and off we went. Didn’t get lost this time as I had a good idea where we where going but just before we got to the place we came across a lovely little beach (Marjan Beach), which the guide book said was a great place to snorkel, so we decided to give it a go. It was brilliant! You only had to go out about 10 feet and there was loads of brightly coloured fish, I must have seen at least 10 different species and even one fish that must have been about 2 foot long! Took some pictures of course, click the link to see them (not for the faint hearted cos I’m in them!)

http://picasaweb.google.com/Lezmcg54/BeachesAroundMuscat

Ras Al Hamra was a washout, you have to be a member of the club to use the beach etc, so it was a good job we had found Marjan Beach.