We arrived in Muscat, Oman, for a holiday after an 11-hour trip from Riyadh, which I find pretty amazing since both countries are on the Arabian Peninsula and not very far away from each other.

This is Ahmet, the desk clerk at our hotel, wearing a “mousa,” so very different from the shemagh men wear in Saudi Arabia. The people I’ve met here seem incredibly friendly, from the currency exchange clerk to the immigration officer to the people at the hotel, who really outdid themselves, offering us dates and fruit juice when we arrived at 1 a.m. and waiting patiently while I tried to take some pictures of the lobby.