e 3 a s h i g R E F L E C T I O N S

Day 25 in Abu Dhabi

Holiday still continues. I had an amazing time in Jissah Resort in Muscat. The sight of mountains on either sides of the Grand Canyon of Arabia fading into deep blue sea was something of a dream. We did not have time to explore the famous Wahiba desert of Oman. Perhaps on my next visit.

Diving was good too. We did three adventure dives; night, deep and navigation which brought us closer to our next Advanced licence. For some bizarre reason, the sea in Muscat is not as salty as the Arabian gulf or the stretch of the Indian ocean opposite Khour Fakkan so it was easier to cope with when the inevitable happened and sea water made its way to our eyes and throats.

I never expected customer services in Muscat to be better than those at home but I was truly surprised. The hotel, the restaurants, the dive centre - I can remember only very few places in UAE where I had similar experience. In Muscat it was like: Here, take my money - You guys make me feel great!

In fact over the last few days, I had a friend visiting from Qatar and I took him around both Abu Dhabi and Dubai and although the speed of development and the new shiny buildings left their mark on him, he was less impressed by the quality of the services provided. There is for example an exhibition in the Emirates Palace Hotel whose subject is the Saadiyat island. Amazing stuff. The guide was a nice chap too but he was obviously regurgitating the written material on the wall opposite the models. When we had questions to ask he quickly shrugged his shoulders saying that he doesn’t know and went back to his speech, not offering to look up the material or apologising for being ignorant of some of the facts.