Tag Archives: good breakfast

Day 240 – Exploring Sohar

look at all this food - wohoo!

look at all this food – wohoo!

It was late yesterday…for Lina and Michael who waited for us to arrive and for us who needed to ride to Sohar and clear a border in between. Thus, we were all rightly tired and took it slow. The best start into the day is a rich and long breakfast so Lina did her best to impersonate her parents who have perfected that art. What I am trying to say: Breakfast was amazing. From a breakfast egg to fresh bread to the veggie platter. As always, I ate too much and as Michael put it, breakfast took three hours. 🙂

By the time we were ready to explore Sohar, it was 1pm. Sohar is not really a tourist destination as we found out when we looked for things to do on the Lonely Planet website. To be honest, it asked us if we’d “gone off the beaten track?”. However, there are still things to look at so we started with a trip to the ocean. When we had looked at the temperature in Oman last week, it was around 25 degrees but today, the car showed a lovely 34 degrees outside. Lina and Michael assured us that it changed only a day ago but such is our luck…it is hot here as well.

These things looks the same all around the world ...

These things looks the same all around the world …

After a stroll along the beach, we drove to a Portuguese fort. There are renovations going on at the moment so it was closed to the public but we still managed to take some lovely shots of it.

The next attraction on the list was Sohar’s only mall. Recently, a “Chocolate Room” has opened there (Lina told me this a couple of weeks ago) so it was definitely a destination. Also, I really needed to keep my eyes open for a headscarf as the improvised black cotton would not do in this weather. So we entered a lovely little shop full of pretty scarfs and traditional male headwear…which were too pricey for us…but Lina said I can have one as a combined birthday gift. 😀 I now got an amazingly pretty, coloured, Kashmir-silk headscarf. So happy!

After this surprising gift, we went to the Chocolate Room and had hot chocolates. Can the day get any better?

Tired, we got home again. Too tired to cook, food (too much of it) was ordered. Well, since a picnic was planned for tomorrow, we were now all set of this as well. 🙂

Day 188 – Capital times

The harsh cuts are sometimes rather weird. outside a developing country, inside cosmo posh.

The harsh cuts are sometimes rather weird. outside a developing country, inside cosmo posh.

Phnom Penh caters well for European tourists…they have bakeries so you are able to get a “continental breakfast”. We went to the “Blue Pumpkin” which is also an ice cream parlor and a training cafe. The upstairs seating area with a view over the riverfront was lovely and we got a mix of “continental breakfast” with a pain au chocolate and a “healthy breakfast” with muesli and fruit to share. Full and happy, we were ready to start the day.

First on our list of sight-seeing objects for this morning was the National Museum of Cambodia. I, particularly, was hyped for this one. But we were a bit disappointed: After having been to Angkor Wat already and also spending time in the Angkor National Museum, this one didn’t offer much that was new. In my opinion, the history of Cambodia needs to be researched more and treated scientifically. At the moment, the great focus is on religion as the temples give a good foundation to base work on. However, with no history texts surviving in Cambodia itself and the frequent mentioning that all information about the early periods comes from Chinese accounts, one would think that a translation of those accounts is available. But no. At least not for the visitors of the museum. All you get are the names for the eras in Chinese which is probably a butchered version of some old Khmer name.

Guardian, concrete, 21st century.

Guardian, concrete, 21st century.

In the end, we didn’t stay too long. Walking to the royal palace, we already knew that it is closed to the public at the moment/that time of the day. We still took some pictures from the outside before heading to an early lunch. So much food today!

The afternoon was spent in our room, blogging, checking out a route for the next couple of days and booking accommodation in advance. I am very keen to visit an elephant sanctuary here as we have skipped elephants on Sumatra, Malaysia and Thailand so far. However, since it’s the high season, we only got a free date on the 17th of February. That’s a bit later than we wanted to but not too bad. We just have to plan what to do in the meantime.

In the late afternoon, we managed to have a long Skype call with friends of ours in Germany. It was well overdue. Having friends with kids means that you are acutely aware of how much time must have passed between calls as half a year makes such a big difference.

Not wanting to spend much money on food again, we had a look at the street food outside of our guest house. One the square next to the market was a night food market including music and a big stage. Obviously this was part of the Chinese New Year’s celebration. Anyhow, it was amazing as a food source. 🙂 We ordered our food from the stalls around and sat down with the locals on the big patch of mats on the ground. Not any less comfy than ale-benches and much cleaner!