Saturday, September 13th – Frustration, frustration, frustration

Our day was well planned: walk to the bank to cash Jacqui’s cheque from Kuwait, go to Tim Hortons just next door for breakfast, shop at Ikea a little bit and leave early afternoon to drive back to Muscat. Well, things don’t always go according to plan. One would think that if you have a cheque from an NBK bank, and you try to cash it or deposit it in your NBK account in an NBK branch, it would be no problem, right? Wrong. Big time wrong. We cannot do it. It supposedly is not the same “bank” since they are in the UAE and not in Kuwait. That was frustration # 1. Jacqui was really upset. We went for breakfast; Timmy’s was good, just like back home! Next came the drive to Ikea. It’s a 7 minutes drive from the hotel to Ikea, according to Google Maps. However, let’s not forget that our phones are not functional in the UAE and therefore we have to follow a printout of the map. Here is roughly how it goes. “Get on Rd 308, at the roundabout, take the 4th exit, stay left, stay right, stay left, take exit 59, …” Good luck with that. First, roads are not indicated by numbers. Then, they do not tell you if you have to go east or west, or whatever; you have a road name and that’s it. The name obviously doesn’t match the number given on our printouts. So we took about 35 – 40 minutes to get there. That was frustration #2. Even when we got there, we had to ask where the entrance was!! Nothing is easy on this day. After shopping came the time to go home. Well that was a challenge. Again, we are working with a printout of a route – which, in hindsight, was far from being the most efficient route to take. We drove, and drove, going east and west, north and south, and after an hour, we were still within about 20 km of Dubai. Yes, I was getting a little ticked off. We were looking for a bypass, as recommended by google maps, that wasn’t even close to where we needed to go (actually, we never should have taken it). The road that we should have taken was about three turns and 5 minutes away from the Ikea store, but we drove for a least an hour + before we got to it. Once on that road, the trip was fine. It was a lot more picturesque on the way back than on the way in; the mountains were beautiful. We got caught up in construction in a few places and in traffic as we got closer to Muscat, so didn’t get home until about 9 pm. About 8 hours to do a 5 hour drive. We had to laugh at this one! But we learned a few things. Just like crossing the street, you have to look both ways. Look at a map on how to get there, and then on how to come back! And buy a SIM card that will give you access to data in that country; it’s the only way to travel.

We can summarize this day in two words: it sucked!! But we’re glad to be home.

Seriously? Why would you do that in Dubai??

Sand dunes in the Dubai area

Mountains as we are approaching Oman