I’m back in Britain after a relaxing break in the Middle East and it’s hard to miss that Christmas is nearly here. The main streets of my home city, Bristol, have an array of colourful lights and other decorations. Shopping centres are playing Christmas CDs on continuous loop. […]
Arriving in Dubai the first thing that you notice are the towering skyscrapers built in the construction boom of the last few decades. The roads look like they have just been finished; cafés, hotels and restaurants appear as if they have just opened. Dubai is almost a dictionary […]
“Bursting of the bubble leaves life in broken city state feeling like the last days of Rome.” This was the doom-ridden headline about Dubai that jumped out of the newspaper I was reading on a recent flight out to the Middle East. There was in fact very little […]
There’s mile upon mile of beautiful sandy beach in Oman. Yet the coast seems to be deserted for the most part of the day, save for the lone swimmer, a few joggers and couples staying in the international hotels taking a walk. So if you want to get […]
Last night I took a ride out to what is regularly voted the best hotel in the Middle East. Walking through the main front doors of the Al Bustan Palace hotel, on the edge of Muscat, you can quickly see why it wins people over. The lobby, standing […]
The Omanis welcome overseas tourists with open arms. They are a very accommodating people and nothing seems like too much hassle. Taxis, for example, arrive on time and drivers don’t try to rip visitors off. In the souks stallholders launch in to sales pitches, but you don’t feel […]
I’m sitting in Costa Coffee, the sky is blue and from my seat I have a ringside view of a beautiful, long stretch of sandy beach. No, I’m not on a day out in Weston-Super-Mare with a pair of rose tinted specs, but in Muscat, the capital of […]
Past In The Present 