Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

We started the day with some beachcombing. Sarah likes to collect rocks and shells whenever she visits a beach.

I spotted a couple of rather large-rumped fish, swimming about in the shallows of the retreating tide. I wish I could have got a closer look at them, but I was lucky even to spot them in the first place.

We then drove into Sur for a look around.

First of all, we passed down the very attractive corniche, then on to the jetty to see the dhows left high and dry on the mudbanks, the village of Ayajh behind them on the other side of the water.

An old man was willing to take us out in his small boat for a couple of rials, so we went with him and viewed the bay from the water. Ayajh's three watchtowers and lighthouse are very impressive and were doubtless invaluable back in their day.

After some lunch at the oddly and unappealingly named Turkish Sheep Restaurant (which isn't Turkish and serves no mutton; in fact, it has no menu, but they'll prepare decent Indian food for you), we had to speed out of town towards Al Qabil, which was where we were due to be picked up for our Desert Discovery trip.

Once there, we were met by a thickly-accented South African chap, who led the way in his car towards Wahiba Sands. We turned right into the desert, at which point he bolted away from us over the sand, setting a pace I couldn't hope to match with my lack of sand-driving skills.

We soon reached the site of the camp, but first a steep dune had to be negotiated before we would be at the tents. My first attempt failed and we had to roll back down the dune, back to a good distance from which to retry the approach. On my second attempt, we charged with much greater speed and power and this time managed to reach the top.

We signed in at the main tent and were assigned a chalet: a king-size bed and a flushing toilet, here in the middle of the desert! We're impressed.

At 16:30, we went out for some dune driving. I didn't want the hassle of letting a load of air out of our tyres (necessary to avoid getting stuck in the fine sand) or putting our hire car at risk (I'm pretty sure we're not insured for dune-bashing), so we tagged along with the Desert Discovery lead vehicle rather than take our own. The driver, Abdullah, is a true Bedouin and knows the terrain here like the back of his hand.

At first, I regretted my decision not to personally drive, as careering over the dunes was obviously a lot of fun, but after a few frankly astounding manoeuvres on the part of our driver, Abdullah, I realised that we were getting the most spectacular ride of anyone in the group.

We hammered up and down dunes, sideways across them, down into ditches and up again to the crests of these golden, sandy waves.

Many times, I thought there was nowhere left for us to go, the only path in front of us a suicidally steep descent or an impossibly uneven patch of ground. In all such cases, Abdullah revved up the car and blasted us up or over whichever obstacle happened to be in our way. Several times I thought we might tip over, but we never did. What a driver!

Even if I had been driving and had managed to mimick Abdullah's every move, Sarah would have been terrified. As it was, she implicitly trusted this perfect stranger, as he had grown up amongst these dunes.

The modern Bedouin may still trade camels, but he drives a 4x4 to get from A to B. None of their cars are insured, either, as the only time they are taken onto a public road is when their owners sneak into town to fill them up with petrol.

We stopped several times during the dune drive, the final time to watch the sun set over the mountains. As soon as the sun was gone, a dust storm kicked up, triggered by the change in the temperature of the air.

The sand in the desert is amazing. It's so fine that it's almost like liquid, as fine as dust, and nothing like the sand you find on even the most finely grained beach. In fact, the grains are so miniscule that each footstep leaves behind a perfect print, from which even the text of the logo from the sole of the shoe can be read. Yes, you can actually tell which make of shoe people are wearing from the footprints made in these sands.

We headed back to camp and chatted to a few of our fellow visitors. Most of them were either expats or the visiting friends or family of expats. It seems to be a very popular place for such foreign workers to bring visiting family. Most people we talked to had been here multiple times before. In fact, we didn't meet a single non-resident tourist here.

Dinner was served at 19:00 and was delicious. Afterwards, a live band of Bedu musicians regaled us with their highly percussive music. Eloïse danced along to the music and enjoyed herself immensely.

The atmosphere was wonderful. Everyone was having a great time and the mood was electric. Many different nationalities and cultures were represented here, from Swedish to Omani, New Zealander to Indian.

All too soon, however, the party was over and we were all back in our chalets and tents, waiting for the generator to be switched off for the night.

As we undressed Eloïse, we noticed that her nappy was full of sand. Ouch! She'd been playing happily in the stuff, but we hadn't realised that the sand might find its way that far inside. Fortunately, she hadn't been rubbed raw by it.

We awoke at 07:20 after a glorious night's sleep in the completely silent and starlit desert. As we emerged from the chalet, we found beetle tracks and some larger prints that we were later assured by the camp manager were those of a mouse, cat or fox.

Breakfast consisted of baked beans and boiled eggs today. Eloïse tucked into the beans with gusto.

After breakfast, we staggered down the dune on which the camp is situated to a sheltered area, where Bedu women had assembled with their assorted handwoven goods. I purchased two wristbands for a couple of rials each.

We then walked over to where some Bedu boys had trussed a herd (is it a herd?) of camels. For a couple of rials each (and just one for Eloïse), we went camel riding.

Mounting a camel is easy, because it's sitting on the ground when you do so. You just clamber onto his back. When he gets to his feet, however, he does so by getting to his hind legs first, which has the effect of creating a disturbingly steep slope between his back and his neck, down which you believe you are inadvertently going to slide at high speed.

Thankfully, however, the camel then quickly gets to his front legs, too, so that the feeling of imminently arse-skiing at lightning speed off the head-end of this living, makeshift ski slope gives way to a sense of relief that, for now, one has made it into the riding position.

And then off he walks, led by his Bedu master. A strap at either side of the saddle provides something to hold onto, although I couldn't help but feel that my long torso made for a less than optimal centre of gravity. The feeling that I might inadvertently shift too much of my weight to either side and make an ungraceful and impromptu dismount at any moment scarcely left me during the entire ride, which was, at least, mercifully short.

The only thing trickier than mounting the camel is dismounting. Well, getting off it is actually almost too easy, because if you're not careful, you're going to end up with your face in the sand.

As the camel starts to kneel on his front legs, you have to lean backwards as far as possible, so that you are virtually horizontal along his back. This, I did, but it still wasn't enough to prepare myself for the moment when the camel goes into a full front kneel, at which point I was catapulted forward with considerable force. My Bedu helper put a hand up to my chest to stop my tense and inexpert pose from allowing me to be launched like a human projectile from my desert steed.

Eloïse had not been happy when first placed on top of Sarah's camel, but now started to complain bitterly as she was taken off. She wanted to get right back on. You have to admire the spirit of the girl, as she's up for almost anything.

After the camel ride, we walked back past the Bedu ladies, who were now busy weaving and braiding, using their toes to hold one end of the wool in place. We bought a camel hair keyring for our back door keys and then went on our way.

It's amazing to come into contact in this way with real Bedu, dressed in their traditional clothing, replete with striking angled face mask. What an opportunity and what a contrast with our daily lives back home.

We clambered back up the dune, paid our bill and thanked the camp staff for such a wonderful experience. What a terrific place the desert can be; I can't recommend Desert Discovery highly enough for setting up this camp and helping the local Bedu benefit from their activities, here in Wahiba Sands.

We headed off in the car, making our way back over the sand towards the main road, where we turned left and began the long drive to Nizwa, some 220 km away (yes, not actually a very long way, but on straight roads with no cruise control and a chiming nanny built into the car when you edge over 120 kmh, it does feel long).

There wasn't much to see along the way, just the now familar sights of dozens of roaming goats, a few feral donkeys and the occasional grazing camel.

Eloïse soon dozed off after departure and didn't wake up again until we reached our hotel a couple of hours later. Her timing couldn't have been better.

It's Friday, which is weekend here, so most things are closed. In any case, many things shut down between 13:00 and 16:00, and only slowly come back to life thereafter, so we first had a buffet lunch at the hotel and then went back to our room to make some calls in an effort to firm up our itinerary for the next few days.

At 16:00, we drove into the centre of Nizwa, parked the car and began ambling around the souq. There were some nice woven goods, pottery, the omnipresent khanjars, lots of fruit and veg, fish and even a separate souq just for trading dates. The dates available here are supposedly excellent, so we bought a big box for just one rial. The value for money just can't be beaten.

Unfortunately, the souq's goat market operates only on Thursday mornings, so we weren't able to view that particular spectacle. Instead, we left and walked further into town, where Nizwa proved to be a bustling town with an appealing character all its own.

Nizwa is a quite a long way inland and this gives it a totally different flavour from the coastal towns. The population is 70% Omani, or so I'm told, which is a vastly higher percentage than in, say, Muscat, where most of the residents are immigrants.

The mosque here is beautiful (it graces the cover of the 2006 Bradt guidebook to Oman), but non-Muslims are not allowed inside, so we settled for admiring the building from the outside.

Of course, there are plenty of immigrants here, too -- mostly Indians, as elsewhere in Oman -- and so it was that we managed to find a travel agent who was open on Friday. We took advantage of the moment to purchase a trio of return plane tickets to Salalah for this coming Sunday.

With that taken care of, we walked back through the town, now bustling more than ever, as the sun had set and the evening prayer had just finished. People were spilling into the street from the mosque and the weekend atmosphere was vibrant.

We headed back to the car and had dinner at a local restaurant. The entire meal, which consisted of two main meals, salads, hummus, two large glasses of fruit juice, a Pepsi Light (or Diet Pepsi, as it's known here) and a 1.5 l bottle of water came to just four rials, or €8. What incredible value. The soft drink was complimentary; no reason; they just do things like that here.

As always, the staff were friendly and the other diners gestured to Eloïse, encouraging her to play with their children.

In the course of any given day, Eloïse gets picked up and manhandled by at least half a dozen strangers. She doesn't particularly care for the tactile approach, but the practice is so common that we encourage her to be friendly, placid and take it in her stride. Sometimes she'll say "Hi" and then "Bye", but those are reserved for the fortunate few.

We're in Nizwa tonight and tomorrow.

We made an early start today, having an early breakfast and getting on the road by about 09:30. We had a lot to pack in and only one more day in the area.

We drove about 50 km to the village of Al Hamra, which features two and three storey mud-brick houses in the Yemeni style. This old village had real character and conveyed a sense of life from a bygone era. We saw women doing their washing in the falaj at the side of the road.

From Al Hamra, we returned to the main road and began our ascent of Jebel Shams, the highest mountain in Oman.

The Lonely Planet guide warned of "vertiginous views over the edge [of the road] a little too close to the hubcaps for comfort", a phrase that had made me nervous about making the ascent with our precious cargo on board. Happily, however, there was no real danger and the ascent was an easy one, although a 4x4 vehicle was definitely necessary on the steep, unsurfaced road.

At the top, it was a relatively cool and refreshingly pleasant 21°C. Peering over the rim of what is known locally as the Grand Canyon of Arabia revealed the depth of what was, indeed, a gigantic chasm, with Wadi Ghul down below. It's about a 1.5 km vertical drop down to the wadi: you definitely wouldn't want to fall off this precipice.

Further along the canyon rim, we came across a small village, situated right at the canyon's edge. Quite why this remote site was chosen for a village is a mystery to me, but there it was, complete with shacks, washing lines, goats, dogs, children and elders.

A woman tried very persistently to sell us some woven goods, but we were equally persistent in our refusal. She eventually disappeared, only to be replaced by an old man, who was eager for us to take his photo, as long as we crossed his palm with a rial in return. His face was contoured and weathered in a way that made him appear like he had stepped out of an item on the evening news, or perhaps out of the pages of an issue of National Geographic. We declined his offer and he, too, eventually disappeared.

Soon afterwards, as we were gazing out into the canyon, another man joined us, shook our hand and offered us coffee. It's very rude to refuse such an invitation in the Gulf states, so we accepted and walked with him to his home in the tiny village.

His domicile was a one-room brick affair, with mats laid out across the floor. We doffed our shoes and entered, sitting against the far wall. He followed us inside and opened a big tub of dates, pulled out a handful and offered them to us. We gratefully accepted his offer and found the dates to be delicious.

He then poured coffee for us, but it was unlike any coffee (or other drink, for that matter) that I have tasted before. I have no idea what it was made from, but it was dark in appearance. He poured it into small, handleless cups and handed them to us. Sarah and I both partook.

The women of the family soon joined us, complete with small baby, and we began to exchange small talk, such as the age of our respective babies, where we were from, etc.

I looked about the room. In spite of the lack of furniture and the obvious simplicity of the structure, the home was relatively well-equipped. An electricity meter graced one wall, whilst a small television set sat perched in one corner of the room. Under it, a satellite tuner box blinked the wrong time.

I glanced over to the door, half ajar and brightly lit by the midday sunlight. A sticker on the outside read 'Do you Yahoo?' It seemed as if matter from a separate universe had somehow slipped through into this one.

On the wall behind us, a photo of the photogenic old man shared space with a rifle and a khanjar.

Before long, and rather expectedly, the woven goods were produced by the women and laid in front of us for our inspection. Having been taken into this man's home, drunk his brew and eaten his dates, we could now hardly refuse to purchase something, but the trade was more than worth it.

We purchased a couple of goat-hair keyrings and I paid the old man that rial for his photo. I also took a photo of the man who had invited us in, but we weren't allowed to photograph the women of the house (one of whom had already whipped out a boob in front of us to feed the baby -- I hadn't expected a Muslim woman to do that in front of strangers).

I'm sure we weren't the first and won't be the last tourists to be invited into his home, and that he was probably more motivated by salesmanship than friendship, but the experience was no less real for that small detail. It reminded me of our contact with the Thai hill tribes back in 2002 and reinforced my belief that there is nothing in this world that can compare with travel and the contact it brings with people from other cultures.

After our encounter, we slowly headed back down Jebel Shams and had lunch at a small camp site/café on the mountain.

Once we had made it back down to ground level, we drove through the wadi to the base of the desserted village of Ghul. We clambered up the rocks to the village and nosed around in the ruins of the old mud-brick homes, long since abandoned to the elements.

This left just enough time to point the car back in the direction of Nizwa and make for the Al Hoota caves, a recently opened cave system that boasts one of the largest caverns anywhere in the world. A small train carries you from the reception area to the cave entrance: very slick.

The caves themselves were fun, but not as awe-inspiring as those we visited last year in Slovakia and Hungary. Our guide didn't speak much English, either, but the visit was still fun.

A simple dinner of shwarma and hummus back in Nizwa rounded off the day.

We awoke to find our hotel without electricity. No matter; we didn't need it.

After breakfast, we had just a short time to visit the Nizwa Fort, depositing our postcards in a postbox on the way.

The fort was quite good (I don't always appreciate historical military sites), with authentically furnished rooms, complete with carpets, cushions and pottery. Its ramparts made for good views of the city, but it was difficult to get a good angle on the mosque for a photograph.

It was 11:30 by now and we had to be on our way, so we returned to the car, tanked up with petrol (cheaper per litre than water, as ever) and sped off in the direction of Muscat, some 180 km removed.

Some time after 13:00, we arrived at Seeb International Airport, where I dropped the girls and our bags before parking the car and meeting them inside the terminal. There, we checked in for our 15:00 flight to Salalah.

The airport has this fantastic shrink-wrapping machine, which is manned by someone who actually knows what he's doing. You give him your fragile item, in our case Eloïse's car seat and he professionally shrink-wraps it for you, ready for your flight. Sarah was particularly impressed at the effeciveness of this gadget. The service isn't free, but it's very useful and a bargain at the price, which was 700 baizas in our case.

On the other side of the security screening, there was a pretty good duty-free area, sporting the usual booze, fags, perfume, electronics, CDs (including Arabic music, of course), DVDs, etc. Costa Coffee was also here, along with a Turtles bookshop.

There was just enough time for some food before we had to head to our gate to board our Oman Air flight. A shuttle bus ferried us the 100 m or so across the tarmac to the waiting plane. Why we couldn't have walked such a small distance is beyond me.

The flight with Oman Air was a professional one, I must say. Even though it was only an 80 minute flight, it included a full meal, and a good one at that. If we'd known about that, we wouldn't have eaten at the airport.

I'd like to say the terrain we flew over from Muscat to Salalah was interesting, but it was a 1000 km expanse of nothingness. That's one of the main reasons why we decided not to tackle the trip by road; that and the time it would take us to do so.

The south of the country is radically different to northern Oman. That was evident even from the moment we disembarked, when we were hit by the humidity of the air. It's tropical here and feels much like Hawaii.

The similarity to Hawaii doesn't end with the humidity, either. Once we'd picked up a new hire car, this time a Toyota Landcruiser 4x4, we drove towards our hotel past juice and coconut stands, lush gardens and palm tree-lined avenues.

Once we'd checked in, we had a brief walk along the beach as the sun set. Large breakers were crashing along the shore and the red flags were out to signal dangerous swimming conditions.

Sarah wanted to get the lay of the land so that we could plan how much time we'd need in town tomorrow, so we piled back into the car and drove into town for a look around. There wasn't time to get out and explore, so we just drove around and got a feel for the place.

On the way back, we stopped at a coconut stand and ordered a nut. The man behind the counter whacked off the top of a coconut, stuck a straw inside, and handed us the nut to drink from. He then welcomed us to Salalah and informed us that there was no charge for the coconut. That's what I mean about people being friendly in this country.

Another example: During the flight, I had chatted with the man next to me. Whilst waiting for our luggage to appear on the conveyor belt inside the terminal, the same man gave me his name and telephone number and told me to call him if we needed any assistance with anything during our stay in Salalah. That kind of offer would get you a bemused, suspicious look in the West, but here it's just another indication of the incredible warmth with which the Omanis receive visitors to their country.

There's a very pleasant buzz to this town, as there was in Nizwa. Together, they are definitely my two favourite Omani towns so far.

We had dinner at the hotel, down by the beach. The sound of invisible waves breaking in the darkness is always a great aural background for dining.

Tomorrow, we'll be up bright and early to explore the souqs of Salalah and the surrounding countryside.

After breakfast, we drove into Salalah to check out the Frankincense Souq. Some of the stalls and shops weren't open yet, but there's a lot of duplication in the products offered, so we were still able to browse properly and sample many types of incense.

I noticed that the souq was mainly run by women here. In other cities, it's been the men that ran the show. It's important to note, however, that those souqs were primarily run by Indians, whereas the Frankincense Souq in Salalah seems to be mostly run by Omanis; and many of those Omani women are Dhofaris, i.e. from the region of Dhofar, of which Salalah is the capital.

Many of the people look quite different here, more African than Arabian. Given the geographical positioning, that's not surprising.

Getting pictures of people in Oman can be quite tricky. One must always ask before taking a snap and the answer is frequently a firm 'no', especially in the case of women.

For that reason, I've yet to capture the image of a Dhofari woman, with characteristic nose-ring. One woman allowed me to photograph her henna-tattooed hand today, but that's about as far as I've got.

Speaking of souqs, one of Eloïse's latest words is, in fact, souq. It took her papa several decades to chance upon that word, but it's already made it into her vocabulary and she's not even two yet. What a learner!

Leaving the Frankincense Souq behind us, we headed west along the motorway in the direction of Mughsail. As we reached the far end of the beach there, a lush oasis between the road and the sea came into view and we witnessed the glorious sight of tens of camels drinking and bathing in the water.

Further up, we stopped to enjoy a blowhole, which was noisily spouting water into the air to our amusement and that of some tour bus passengers who had joined us.

From there, we continued along the road, which now zig-zagged its way up the cliff, down into a wadi full of frankincense trees, and onwards, getting ever close to the border with Yemen. The views back towards Mughsail as we climbed the limestone cliff were excellent.

About 100 km from the Yemeni border, we had to cross a military checkpoint. The soldier wanted to see our passports, but we had left them at the hotel, not expecting to need them as we weren't planning on crossing any national boundaries.

In the end, my driving licence and a photocopy of the car registration paperwork were enough to placate him and he let us pass, warning us not to go down certain side roads further along, as these would also have military checkpoints and we would have to explain how we had managed to get so far without passports.

We drove for about another forty or fifty kilometres, during much of which the scenery was beautiful. Innumerable camels dotted the landscape. We've seen more camels today than in the rest of our lives put together.

Eventually, though, the road turned away from the coast and became less appealing. We, ourselves, became less certain that we were actually on the stretch of road that we should be and neither of us wanted to deal with irritated soldiers demanding paperwork we didn't have, in the event we were inadvertently heading towards one of the other checkpoints we had been warned about.

We therefore turned around and headed back to Salalah, as we still wanted to visit the tomb of the biblical figure of Job this afternoon.

On the way back, I spotted what looked like a giant turtle in the distance on the beach. We stopped the car and I slid down the rock embankment to the beach below, before walking towards the turtle. As I feared, he or she was dead, but I couldn't tell what had caused the death. It was very sad to see such a magnificent animal in this state.

Back in Salalah, we headed out of town again to the north and eventually arrived at our destination after approximately 30 km.

The grounds of Job's Tomb are quite lovely, with lots of pretty flowers, a mosque, and the building of the tomb itself.

The tomb's guardian beckoned to us as we approached on the path, and we followed him to the entrance to the tomb, where we removed our shoes. Sarah additionally had to put on a green headscarf before entering.

Inside the tomb, the casket (or whatever it is) is shrouded in colourful sheets. At the far end of the mound, large amounts of frankincense are smoldering in an incense burner. The scent is strong and quite lovely.

A small tray next to the incense burner contains banknotes that some people have seen fit to leave behind. You can tell that Americans have been here, as no other country's people travel to the other side of the world and still try to pay and tip in their own currency.

After visiting the tomb, we drove back to Salalah and tried to find something to eat near the Frankincense Souq. There were only a couple of shops selling juice, however.

We saw a person we purchased some perfumes from this morning and asked his advice. He called someone on his mobile phone and then handed the phone to me. The voice at the other end gave me directions to his restaurant, which we then drove to.

The restaurant in question was the Taj Al Arab, which was just a few streets away in the direction of our hotel. The food turned out to be good, but better yet, the fruit smoothies they make are incredible; and for just 600 baizas for their largest, fruitiest drinks.

The Taj Al Arab isn't mentioned in either of our guidebooks, but it's an absolute must if you come to Salalah. You have been told.

It was now just before sunset, so we headed back to the hotel, got changed and took Eloïse to the children's paddling pool. As always, she had a great time in the water, climbing out of the pool and jumping back in, with Papa's arms waiting to catch her, of course.

Today, we explored the surroundings west (and for Job's Tomb, north) of Salalah. Tomorrow, it's the turn of the east.

After breakfast, we filled up with petrol and headed east out of Salalah, through the town of Taqa, past Wadi Dirbat and towards the village of Tawai Attair, just outside of which there's a gigantic sinkhole.

By the time we arrived, Eloïse had gone to sleep, some two hours earlier than she normally does. All of the exercise and adventure must be taking it out of her.

The sinkhole turned out to be down a steep and rocky climb. Because Eloïse was sleeping happily in the car, I made the descent alone, spotting a very large lizard (the largest I've ever seen in the wild) on the way.

The sinkhole was so deep, that I couldn't see all the way into it from my vantage point. There's supposed to be water at the bottom, but I could only see as far as birds flying around in its gaping maw. Further down, everything looked black.

I climbed back up the rocks and we continued on our way over 16 km of graded track along a plateau. This carried us to the top of Jebel Samhan, with lovely views out to the coast.

The descent of the range was steep, for 4x4 only, and carried us to the coastal road, where we turned left and headed towards Mirbat.

Mirbat has definitely seen more prosperous days. Entire neighbourhoods have fallen into decline and buildings stand decrepit and dilapidated. The roads in these neighbourhoods have decayed to the extent that they are now, to all extents and purposes, unsurfaced. The area makes for an interesting drive, however.

Turning down towards the beach, we stopped in front of the Mirbat Castle and went inside. A loud voice was emanating from one of the rooms by the entrance. As the doorway came into view, we saw a bunch of men, sitting on the floor, sipping tea and animatedly discussing some topic or other.

They beckoned to us to come inside, so we took off our shoes and joined them in the room. One man poured us some tea, which turned out to be very, very sweet; I don't like tea in any case, but as I've said before, it's very impolite to refuse hospitality here.

The conversation quickly turned to children. Everywhere we go in Oman, people's first or second question about Eloïse is whether she's our only child. Logical, because I'm no spring chicken (nor is Sarah, for that matter) and people expect you to have several by our age. One of the men in our group had six children and his wife was now pregnant with a seventh.

They told us about the local abalone, which is supposed to be an aphrodisiac, or "our Viagra" as one man put it.

After the stop at the castle, we left Mirbat via the same road and immediately turned left to get to Bin Ali's Tomb. Bin Ali was a 14th century prophet and scholar.

There's a very old cemetery in the grounds, which makes for quite an stirring sight, with its hundreds of tightly-packed headstones, two for a man and three for a woman.

The tomb itself is an interesting-looking building from the outside, but non-Muslims are allowed inside only as far as the incense room.

Continuing back, we stopped at a grove of Baobab trees 3 km up the unsurfaced road that had brought us to the coastal road. The Bradt guide got the direction of the turning wrong, which had us scouting around, looking for the trees. Eventually, we found them, though. Sarah was more impressed by them than I.

We backtracked the 3 km and turned right on the coastal road, which carried us to the turn-off for Khor Rouri. This is the site of an ancient city that was of key importance to the frankincense trade. It has been excavated and can now be visited (although the Lonely Planet guide will tell you it is still closed to the public).

It's also the site of a harbour that has silted up and been closed off. In the distance, we could see camels drinking the fresh water from lush grasses along the bank of the old harbour.

Our final stop for the day was Wadi Dharbat. At its best during the khareef, it was nevertheless impressive and quite verdant, with a river of some kind flowing over the plain. Camels were here in abundance. One can only imagine how lush it must be during and just after the khareef. I hope we can return to see it some day.

That was the end of our final day of travels around the province of Dhofar. We put 550 km on the clock, so we got a good impression of the region.

We picked up fruit shakes at Taj Al Arab on the way back to the hotel and then went down to the children's playground in the hotel grounds so that Eloïse could run about and climb.

We got talking to a Lebanese woman who teaches at Salalah University. We told her of our desire to visit Lebanon and expressed our sadness at what Israel had done to her country. We chatted for quite a while, as Eloïse played with her son.

Eventually, it was time to go to dinner, so we said our goodbyes. She asked us to come to her house in the coming days for dinner and to be shown around Salalah, but we regretfully had to tell her we were leaving the next day. It was another shining example of the unbelieveable Arab hospitality that greets us wherever we go.

What an amazing thing travel is. In January, we were in Iceland with just a few hours of dim daylight per day and temperatures of -10°C. Now, we're on the Arabian gulf, close to the equator with sunset at virtually the same time every day of the year. It's scorching hot and as humid as a sumo-wrestler's jockstrap.

Every day that you wake up, feel healthy and get to travel like this is a gift from... well, Larry and Sergey in our case. Thanks, Larry. Thanks, Sergey. And thanks, also, Lady Luck.

It was a stifling 36°C in Salalah today, but will reportedly drop somewhat tomorrow, only to rise to 39°C again on Friday. Tomorrow, we're getting out just in time and flying to the north again, where it will be somewhat cooler (or perhaps less hot is a better way to describe it).

After breakfast, we had just enough time to drive back to Salalah's Frankincense Souq to purchase another kilo of the venerable sap.

After checking on-line and discovering that 25 g of the stuff costs half as much back home as a 1 kg bag over here, it was clear that it would be foolish to find ourselves buying more of it in the near future in The Netherlands. So instead, we added another kilo of weight to our luggage.

After purchasing a couple of small bananas at a fruit stand, we filled up with petrol and drove to the airport. There, we dropped off our hire car and checked in for our flight.

The flight was another pleasant one, although Eloïse was restless and fidgeting a lot. Sarah was soaked by the end of the flight, as Eloïse spills a lot of water as she drinks from cups and bottles. Fortunately, it's so hot that it doesn't really matter; it dries again so quickly.

Back in Muscat, we retrieved our original hire car from the car park (three days of parking just a two minute walk from the terminal cost just OMR 3.100 [± €6]) and drove to the Amouage Perfumery for a tour of the place.

I thought this would be a bit like a brewery tour, but with perfume in the vats instead of beer. It turned out to be nothing like that, however; it was more of a potted history of the brand, followed by summaries of the individual perfumes, complete with main ingredients, launch years, etc.

The most interesting part was when we were taken behind the scenes to see how the perfume is bottled. Muslim ladies were busy manually putting bottles in boxes, boxes in cellophane, and sticker seals on the cellophane. I was thus surprised to discover that every single stage of the process is performed by hand, even the packaging of tiny samplers.

Amouage is set to release a new perfume, Reflections, at Easter (earlier in Oman). It was hard to resist purchasing a pre-release bottle of the potion, so we bought a bottle of the men's variant, along with a bottle of a different scent for Sarah).

That was all we had time for today. After that, we drove across the sprawl that is Muscat to reach our hotel, where we checked in and dropped our stuff in our room.

Dinner was at an excellent Mexican restaurant called Pavo Real. The waiters, mostly Indian, were dressed as Mexicans, complete with bandana, gun belts and tassled waistcoats. I was reminded of the Thai men we saw in Chiang Mai, back in 2002, wearing complete Bavarian regalia, including lederhosen, at a German restaurant.

Thankfully, what could have been a kitsch disaster was actually kitchen bliss, as the chef turned out to be a real Mexican! The food was therefore surprisingly excellent. There was even a live band, playing cheesy pop covers.

Tomorrow, we check out and head back west to a city split across the border between Oman and the UAE. On the Omani side, it's called Buraimi. On the Emirati side, it's known as Al Ain. We'll be staying on the Emirati side.

That doesn't mean we're finished with Oman, however. If all goes according to plan, we'll reenter Oman in the form of the geographically isolated Musandam peninsula in just a few days' time. This peninsula is physically separated from the rest of Oman by UAE territory and is supposed to have a character all its own. Hopefully, we'll see.

The family split up for the morning, with Sarah and Eloïse going for a swim outside, whilst Papa stayed inside and tried to contact a hotel to make a booking for our stay in Musandam next week. It took a long time to finally make contact, by which time the girls were back from their swim.

The single most tedious aspect of unscheduled travel is having to make bookings and reservations en route. This means having to be flexible in your schedule (sometimes taking different nights at a hotel than the ones you wanted; sometimes taking fewer nights; sometimes not getting the only decent hotel in town), replanning your itinerary (going to B first, then A, rather than vice versa), dealing with communications difficulties, paying extortionate hotel phone tariffs, recovering from botched reservations (they were expecting you two days ago; or they made the reservation for one night, not two, and now the hotel is full on the second night), finding travel agents to book flights, finding flights that aren't full, hiring a car at the other end, booking excursions, etc., etc.

There's really no other way, however. Even with the most exhaustive research beforehand (not that we were exhaustive for this trip), one can't always conclude how many nights will be needed at each location or, indeed, which locations should be picked for each overnight stay. Even if you did have things tightly pinned down, you can still find yourself wanting just one more night somewhere, or finding yourself in special circumstances that dictate one night more or fewer somewhere.

Besides, the sense of adventure and exploration is that much greater when you plan as you go. With relatively little hassle, one's itinerary can be changed at the drop of a hat, which means that only your flight arrival and departure dates need be set in stone.

So, you take your chances and try to arrange everything whilst on the road. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but usually it does, even if some kind of compromise is necessitated. At this point, there's only one night left in our trip for which we don't have a hotel booking.

At noon, we bade Muscat a final farewell and took the Sohar road that first brought us to the Omani capital back in February. I had forgotten what a dull drive it was, but at least we managed a steady 120 kmh all the way to Sohar.

Sultan Qaboos must really love his flowers. The dual carriageway in and out of Muscat is embellished for a good 50 km on both sides by a stunning blaze of colour. I can't imagine how much work it must be to keep that length of flowerbeds looking as beautiful as they do.

We stopped to fill up with petrol and food in Sohar. An anonymous, menuless chicken-and-rice shop provided the calories and we were on our way again.

Thankfully, the drive towards Al Ain now became more interesting. The road began to bend and wind its way past hills.

The border crossing into the UAE was painless. We filtered into an aisle containing three checkpoints, and stopped first to show our passports and car registration paperwork. They were handed back with a slip of paper bearing a scribble (probably to verify payment of vehicle fees, but our car is registered and insured in Dubai).

We then drove forwards 50 m to the second booth, where another official withdrew our scrap of paper and printed out an A4 sheet, apparently with three visas in Arabic. He then handed it to us and waved us on.

50 km ahead, we handed the visa paperwork to the third official, who stamped our passports and welcomed us to the UAE. Perhaps nowhere in the world is government bureaucracy and labour duplication quite so evident as at border crossings. I suppose it keeps the unemployment figures down.

Soon afterwards, we were on the outskirts of Al Ain and arriving at our hotel. By that point, the headache that had been with me since the early afternoon had now developed into a real grinder. I wasn't up to going into town, so we took Eloïse to the playground at the back of the hotel.

It was full of expat families, who come here on Thursdays -- it's the weekend, after all -- to relax, use the playground, socialise, etc. The immediate assumption of those around us was that we, too, were expats.

I was forced back to the hotel room to catch forty winks in an attempt to suppress my headache. I awoke at 19:30, my strategy having at least partially worked, and now just in time to drive us into town for dinner at a Lebanese/Iranian place called Al Dewan.

Al Ain is very big, much larger than I had anticipated. The reason for this is that it is a low-rise city, and such cities frequently suffer from urban sprawl. Reykjavík is another such city that comes to mind.

We need to get a good night's sleep tonight in preparation for packing in all of the sights tomorrow.

At this stage of the trip, we've covered more than 2500 km.

After breakfast, I made the final hotel reservation of our trip, so barring any unforeseen changes, the rest of our trip is now solidly planned. Our restaurant reservations for each night in Dubai have also been made, as we learned at the start of our trip that it's impossible to get into some places without booking in advance.

We dropped off some laundry at a local laundrette and then drove into town to visit the local livestock market. That was quite a hoot, with goats and cows being loaded, unloaded, carried and driven all over the area.

We watched and smiled as goats were sold from the back of SUVs, and looked on with pity as others were purchased and placed in unventilated saloon car boots, the lids slammed shut, and then driven away.

A number of merchants placed goats on the ground or pulled them forward in their pick-up trucks, so that Eloïse could stroke them. While I was away grabbing a few photos, an Arab man posed for his picture with Eloïse, which Sarah took with the man's camera phone.

I enquired about the prices and discovered that a goat would set me back some 400 dirhams (± €87), whilst I could expect to pay a good 3000 (± €650) for a bull. No doubt haggling would work as well here as anywhere else we've been.

After the livestock market, we wandered through the oasis, lush and teeming with tall date palms, crisscrossed by falaj irrigation channels.

This oasis is where the original Al Ain began, and just 50 years ago, the only way to reach here was a 5 day camel trek across the desert from Abu Dhabi. Today, the journey will take you under two hours in an air-conditioned car along a tree-lined highway. How times change.

All modern countries have undergone such changes, of course, but more commonly over hundreds, if not thousands of years. In the Arabian peninsular countries, however, such changes have occurred in a matter of a few decades. Somehow, they have managed to assimilate such changes, including the great wealth and external (read: western) influences without losing their identity. On the contrary, the governments of these countries have done much to protect their society, its traditions and values.

Our wander through the oasis brought us to the local souq, which was very disappointing: just a handful of shops selling domestic appliances, hair products, scarves and such.

We walked to the Hut Café, which we feared may be shut (most things are on Friday), but were happy to find open for business. The food and drinks were delicious and the surroundings very pleasant, too. It was clearly popular with locals, in spite of lots of concessions to the western pallette.

Soon after we arrived, the door was locked behind us, as typically no-one is allowed in or out around prayer time.

After lunch, we returned to the hotel, as Eloïse had become inconsolable. Back in the room, she turned out to have diarrhoea, so she's obviously a bit under the weather. Perhaps it's the heat, although Al Ain is famously cool by UAE standards, or perhaps she ate something dodgy. Hopefully, it'll turn out to be a one day thing.

After Eloïse has slept a while and I had read today's edition of Gulf News, we tried to go to the Al Khandaq Fort on the Buraimi side of town. I forgot our passports, but that shouldn't have mattered, because both of our guide books tell us that you can pass freely between Buraimi on the Oman side and Al Ain on the UAE side.

Unfortunately for us, that turned out to have ceased relatively recently. This open border crossing has now been closed and a passport is thus required to go from one side to the other.

I couldn't be bothered with going back to the hotel to pick up the passports and then deal with the formalities of two border crossings within as many hours, so we instead chose to drive into town and have a look at the Al Ain Museum.

This turned out to be a nice, relaxing way to wind up the daylight hours. The museum wasn't too large and had some nice exhibits, including a nice selection of old black-and-white photographs of various Emirati cities, back when they were just small towns and the UAE hadn't yet been born.

Dinner was at Luce, the Italian restaurant at the Hotel Intercontinental, just up the road from where we're staying. It was really good and I recommend it if you're feeling saturated with Indian, Lebanese and Iranian food.

We thought our plans to go to the camel market tomorrow were scuppered, as it, too, is just over the border in Buraimi; or so we thought. In another fine example of printed matter being out of date by the time the ink dries, the camel market is now located on the Al Ain side, so no border formalities will be required to visit it. I'm glad we asked at our hotel.

I also enquired about the new border checks and was informed that the Emiratis instituted these a few months ago. It has nothing to do with the Omanis, so they're not checking passports on their side, either as people enter or as they leave. Only the Emiratis are performing checks and it's apparently really annoying to the locals, as some live on one side of the border and work on the other and commuting is now a lot more awkward.

Tomorrow, the camel market awaits, and then we leave Al Ain behind us, as we continue westwards through the emirate of Abu Dhabi to its eponymous capital city, which also happens to be the capital of the entire UAE.

One final thought: I keep forgetting to mention that Wiesje has discovered a fondness for Arabic music. As we drive, she sits in the back of the car, clapping her hands and shaking her head to the upbeat songs coming from the radio. She likes other types of music, but Arabic seems to be her favourite.

An early start again, as we wanted to visit the Al Ain camel market.

It turned out to be quite a spectacle, with hundreds of camels of various sizes and colours in various pens. We were met as soon as we parked by a bunch of enthusiastic camel traders, who quickly coralled us along the pens, encouraging us to take photos and even trying to remove my camera from around my neck, so that they could take photos of the whole family. I was wary of letting them do so, however, and kept a firm grip on it.

We posed for pictures, touched some gigantic, fearsome-looking camels, and cooed over baby camels as we walked from pen to pen.

After about ten minutes came the shakedown. One of the men, the one who had been grabbing at our camera, suddenly demanded 50 dirhams. I should have seen it coming, of course, but I didn't; I mistook the whole performance for ebulient hospitality.

On the other hand, I have a lot more respect for people who try to make a quick score from tourists if they're up-front about it and a price can be agreed in advance, so I was unimpressed with the tactics employed.

I decided on the spot that a few photos with camels wasn't worth 50 dirhams of my money, so I pulled out my wallet, handed over a 20 dirham note (± €4.20) and made it clear that I wasn't going to haggle. To be honest, I saw the 20 dirhams more as a self-inflicted fine for being so naïve than as a payment for services rendered.

He backed off, but then the next of the traders indicated that he was ready to receive his 20 dirham note, too. Nice try, mate, but nothing doing. I shook my head and we simply walked away.

We took a few more photos and talked to a couple of traders about prices. We were told which camels were for meat and which were not. The latter category are presumably for breeding, riding or even racing.

Ever since childhood, I have recalled the cliché of the westerner who visits Arabia and is offered camels in exchange for his wife. Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, the same happened to me today. I was offered a whole batch of camels in return for Sarah, plus a sizeable lump sum of cash for Eloïse. I made it clear, however, that Sarah is good breeding stock, and that I'm therefore hanging on to her for the time being.

With the camel market ticked off, we picked up our clean laundry, went back to the hotel, packed and checked out. We pointed the car in the direction of Abu Dhabi and sped off across the desert.

What an amazing road. Route 22 to Abu Dhabi is a six-lane motorway (three lanes in each direction) with almost no traffic. It runs in what amounts to a virtually straight line right across the desert; you could make a safe attempt at the land speed record across most of it.

This massive boulevard is lined with trees across its entire length, but not just with trees, either. No, the entire length of motorway is also illuminated by lampposts, which must make it the longest stretch of illuminated road I've ever come across.

As in America, cars cruise along the middle lane with little regard for what's going on to the left or right of them, never mind behind. Dunes rise up on either side, then fade away again, only to return a few tens of kilometres further down the road.

One need never take one's foot off the accelerator until one reaches the first set of traffic-lights on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. We drove all the way into the city until we could go no further, then turned right along the corniche and admired the stunning skyline of the nation's capital. It's an impressive sight, it has to be said.

We pulled up in front of our hotel, unloaded our bags and left the car in the hands of the valet while we went inside to check in.

We're staying in the Sheraton, which in my experience is usually a so-so hotel: perfectly comfortable, but unremarkable; a bog-standard hotel, in other words. Not so this one. The reception area is beautiful: gorgeous high ceilings, exquisite furnishings and tasteful masonry.

We were greeted with glasses of chilled apple juice to drink while we checked in. Then, it was up to a really lovely room on the fifth floor to enjoy the view of the sea from our balcony.

Sarah and I were champing at the bit to get out and explore the city, so without further ado, we had our car retrieved and then set out to inspect the Abu Dhabi Mall, which comes highly recommended as a taste of the city.

As expected, it wasn't quite the almost surreal experience that Dubai's Mall of the Emirates offers, but it was great fun to see the cosmopolitan spectacle of men in dishdashas, women in beautifully adorned abayas (which the Muslim women use to great effect to express their personality), western expats, Indians and people from all over the Asian subcontinent. What a fabulously diverse and international place this is, and with little sense of racial tension, too.

The modern shopping mall is really the latter-day equivalent and logical extension of the age-old souq. Here, too, as in the West, women love to shop for the latest fashions and designer brands, which they sport under their alluring abayas. Behind their veils, they press the latest model of mobile phone against their ear and catch up on the latest gossip from friends.

I have come to think about Muslims quite differently during this trip, especially the women. Like so many people, I once saw the veil as a form of oppression, but for some women, it can lead to the discovery of a type of freedom unavailable to many women in the West.

One western woman writes: "From simple hair-tie to hat, from scarf to veil until finally the full outfit. With every step, the reception was warmer and the freedom fuller. From within the veil I could see without being seen, understand what without being understood, and ogle the magnificent tribesmen without suffering inspection myself. It protected me from the sun and kept out the dust. It hid blemishes and bags. It concealed uncombed hair, a crumpled shirt or clumsy cosmetics. When I returned to London, the pressure to appear feminine, au fait and fashionable again seemed overwhelming. To my surprise, I secretly longed for those days in the veil..."

Having travelled around this part of the world for the last few weeks, I can completely understand those sentiments. Yes, for some women, the veil is a cultural obligation, but in practical terms it affords them as much freedom, if not more, than it removes.

The visit to the mall was Sarah's idea, but, as usual, she ended up buying nothing. This time, however, I shopped until Sarah dropped at the Virgin Megastore.

An attractive Muslim girl in headscarf helped me pick out various Arabian CDs to listen to. We've had music blasting from the car radio throughout this trip, but I have no idea who any of the artists are. Faced with an overwhelming selection of Arabian artists, I needed some help to navigate the field.

Between her and the store DJ with whom I struck up a conversation, I was more than catered for with one fabulous CD suggestion after the other. I'd expected to buy just two or three CDs, but I eventually left the shop with no fewer than nineteen (with plenty more yet that I would have listened to, had I been alone). Sarah was grimacing with boredom by this point.

After a cup of coffee, we crossed the road and went to a small shopping centre with vendors selling goods of a more ethnic nature. We spent quite a bit of time in a Persian carpet shop and were rather shocked to discover how cheaply one can purchase a sizeable, hand-made carpet over here.

From there, we returned to the car and drove back along the corniche, stopping just before sunset at the Family Park, where children were flying kites and playing on the best set of climbing frames, swings and roundabouts either Sarah or I have ever seen.

As the sun went down, the place really came to life.

Parents and children here seem to keep different hours. Whereas a European park would be desserted by 19:00, this park was now buzzing with life, as children ran and jumped in every direction, whilst their parents, mostly the mothers and their female friends, sat on large mats on the grass, eating a picnic supper and smoking wonderfully fragrant shisha in large hookahs, the scent of apple tobacco wafting through the air like an orchard.

People from every walk of life were present in the park. It was clean and unspoilt, there were no unsavoury types hanging around, and the atmosphere was joyful. Eloïse joined in with the rest and it was easy to imagine being a part of life here.

Amazingly, a cool breeze had begun to blow through the park. It's the only cool breeze we've felt during our entire stay in the region.

What a great place Abu Dhabi is revealing itself to be. We're eager to sample more of what it has to offer tomorrow, but already we're sure we'd like to return.

The Sheraton gets full points for its breakfast spread. No fewer than five different freshly squeezed juices were on offer this morning, along with the usual vast array of breakfast items. Surprising treats were bowls of baked yoghurt and strawberry smoothies. So, as you can see, we're really going without our creature comforts over here.

We retrieved our car and drove around town, looking for a carpet shop mentioned in our guide book. In spite of locating the correct street corner, we couldn't find the shop, so we dialled the number in the book and received directions to its new location.

Upon our arrival somewhere close to the shop's new location, however, we found ourselves in front of another Persion carpet shop, and decided to visit that one first.

Well, this shop contained quite simply the most impressive collection of Persian carpets that either Sarah or I had ever seen; and we've seen quite a few, especially on this trip. Consequently, we never made it to the shop we'd originally been searching for.

Expansive, pure silk carpets hung from all the walls. Some of them were 5  m x 3 m or greater, which is larger than most shops back home (and a good few here) can even display.

One side of the shop was adorned with photos of foreign heads of state and similar VIPs, purchasing their carpets in the shop. Clearly, we had come to a high-end supplier.

The woman who assisted us was Iranian and very helpful. She gave us a full tour of the shop, which was spread across three floors, and showed us carpets more beautiful and detailed than anything you can imagine.

She explained to us the reputation of the shop, that it deals purely in Persian carpets (no Afghan or Indian, etc.), that it was the first such shop to be established in Abu Dhabi some thirty years ago, and so on. Her family runs it.

The time came to commence the enjoyable and somewhat fatiguing process of looking through the shop's stock. We had in mind a nice replacement for the living room rug that we purchased from IKEA a year ago. That sad old thing is looking tired and stained now, as if it has suffered repeated and unrestrained attacks from a rampant baby. Funny, that.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we found a nice 3 m x 2 m carpet with an extremely original and striking geometrical motif, yet still very traditional in overall appearance. I loved it at first sight. It was made in Tabriz in north-western Iran.

Some time later, we finally left the shop with the carpet rolled up and packed in plastic, our wallet much the worse for wear.

A nice, long walk along the corniche was called for, in order to cogitate on our purchase and allow Eloïse to sleep. We parked the car along Sheik Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum Street (commonly known as Airport Road or Second Street -- are you surprised?) and then walked up to the corniche and along it, stopping periodically for snaps of the impressive skyline. A strong wind had kicked up and made for a very breezy stroll.

On the way back to the car, we stopped off for a spot of lunch and then headed over to the Marina Mall to purchase a cheap suitcase in which to haul our carpet back to Amsterdam. We managed to find a decent-enough one on sale and were pleased to find that its dimensions were just large enough to accommodate the carpet.

Afterwards, we took some more photos of the Abu Dhabi skyline, but this time from the breakwater near the mall. We then drove all the way along the corniche to the carpet market, but it just wasn't in the same league as the shop we had been in that morning, so we left immediately.

Back at the hotel, we took Eloïse down to the paddling pool and then relaxed while she played on the slide.

We haven't done all that much in Abu Dhabi, but I must say that I have enjoyed my time in the UAE's capital. I look forward to returning.

There is a reported $100bn of construction going on here at the moment. The city's skyline is set to change drastically over the next five years, with all manner of cultural institutions, hotels, apartment complexes, restaurants and so on being built.

The plan is apparently to turn Abu Dhabi into a major global destination, in much the same way that London, Paris and New York have enjoyed being for as long as any of us can remember.

I think they'll achieve it, too. No other country in the world has the resources, either financial or physical, to take on the development projects that this country has contracted. The world's most famous architects have been commissioned and are building modern feats of engineering that will put Abu Dhabi on the world's map.

It remains to be seen whether the UAE's capital city can compete in this regard with Dubai, which is the world's fastest growing city and home to development projects, such as the palm islands, whose scope takes one's breath away.

Tomorrow, we head north and exit the UAE for a three night stay in the geographically isolated Omani province of Musandam, along the Strait of Hormuz. There's not a tonne of infrastructure there, so I doubt we'll have access to the Internet during our stay.

One thing's for sure: it'll be a stark contrast with the metropolis of Abu Dhabi.

Today has been a long day; our longest, I think, in terms of kilometres travelled and without a doubt the longest day of driving.

Because we have to time our departures around Eloïse's sleep patterns, we revisited the Family Park in the morning and let Eloïse play around on the various climbing frames and slides. The place was virtually deserted in the daytime heat. As we had seen on the day we arrived, it doesn't really come alive until the late afternoon.

And so we bade Abu Dhabi a fond farewell around noon and headed for the Al Maqta Bridge to take us in the direction of Dubai. On the outskirts of town, we stopped to take photos of the humungous mosque that is being built there. It's already very impressive. The original plan was to make it the largest in the world, but the Saudis got upset at the idea of the great mosque in Mecca being displaced from the top spot, and so Sheikh Zayed relented and scaled it back. You wouldn't know to look at it, though; it's huge.

As I've suggested before, they certainly know how to build roads here. A four-lane highway in each direction links Abu Dhabi with Dubai. The absence of cruise control was, once again, a royal pain in the arse, as one never has to lift one's foot from the accelerator as one races across the desert from one modern glass and steel oasis to the other.

When we flew into Dubai, we had no car, so we spent our two day stint there being ferried arround by abra and taxi. This made it possible to see that Dubai was big, but not exactly how big.

This time, our drive to Musandam would take us right alongside Dubai, which loomed up on the horizon when the clock was still reading a good 50 km to go before reaching that most famous of the emirates. The road widened to six lanes in either direction and started to feel more like a race track than a utilitarian road.

The sprawl of Dubai has to be seen to be believed, and it's not due to the city being low-rise, either. On the contrary, this city has skyscrapers to dwarf those found in New York, Hong Kong and other cities. It seems like no two things are within walking distance of each other in Dubai. A visit spanning a few days could probably run to a few hundred kilometres if not planned correctly, without your ever having left the city.

We followed route 11, driving close by the world-famous Burj Al Arab hotel, its sail-like form quite unlike anything else protruding into the Dubai skyline.

Another building, planned to be the world's largest when it is finished, currently reaches some eighty stories into the sky, just half the number it will boast when completed. Looking at Dubai is like looking at a vision of the future from a science-fiction story written just a few decades ago.

As we headed out of Dubai near the airport, the traffic arteries started to clog up as we reached the next emirate of Sharjah. (We'll spend a night here before returning to Dubai.) The signposting also worsened, and it became increasingly less clear which exit we should take from each passing roundabout. More than once today, we would take the wrong road and have to figure out and correct our mistake. Thankfully, we incurred only slight delays each time.

Sharjah gave way to the emirate of Ajman -- blink and you'll miss it -- and then to Umm Al Quwain, where we finally stopped, much too late, for lunch. A rice dish for me and hummus for Sarah would plug the gap until dinner.

Whilst there wasn't time to visit any actual towns, it was clear that Umm Al Quwain is a much more understated emirate than either Abu Dhabi or Dubai. It, too, has a good number of construction projects, but nothing of the scale of what is going on in its two famous cousins.

With fewer visitors coming to this part of the UAE and fewer commuters, the road had long since narrowed to two lanes in each direction.

Ras Al Khaimah was the final emirate we would pass through today. Here, the signposting of the roads became truly useless and Sarah began to navigate by the position of the road relative to the sea and the mountains. The road surface, too, was becoming less and less worthy of its purpose, as it carried us past towns of ever decreasing size.

Finally, we reached the border with the Omani province of Mussandam at just before 17:00.

There was a fair bit of bureaucracy, but no problems, unexpected or otherwise, to deal with. Our only surprise was needing to fill in and purchase three UAE exit forms, which set us back AED 60. We hadn't needed to do that at the Hatta exit point back in February. Different place, different rules.

With that out of the way, we could drive the 50 m or so to the Omani checkpoint, where three more forms needed to be completed and three visas purchased. We were given the option of paying in dirhams, so we did, to the tune of AED 180. We also had to demonstrate that we had appropriate car insurance for Oman, and we did, as the insurance we had purchased when passing the Hatta border in February was still valid.

The border formalities had taken half an hour, so we had only a little more than thirty minutes to reach our destination before sunset. Happily, we were only another 35 km removed from it at this point, so we made haste and followed the winding road as it hugged the side of the cliffs, first inland and then sharply curving back towards the sea.

The clearly visible strata of the cliffs and the small villages tucked into coves at their base reminded me quite vividly of the Faroe Islands, although the cliffs here were much less green, of course.

Around 18:15, we reached our hotel after some 340 km and checked in for the evening. We'll spend three nights here before heading back along the road that brought us.

We've booked a half-day dhow cruise for tomorrow, as the only way to see a lot of Musandam is by boat. Roads are a relatively new invention here and one village, Kumzar, can still only be visited by boat, a journey that takes two hours by speedboat.

In a single day, we've travelled from the bright lights of the UAE's capital to this Omani outpost, Arabia's least-known and least populated corner.

Musandam is cut off from the rest of Oman by Emirati territory to the south and the Strait of Hormuz to the north. How did this come to be?

Well, basically, the semi-nomadic Shihuh people who live here didn't really care which country they were in, but then came along the British in the sixties and early seventies, and they wanted to grant oil concessions to their companies. This meant that all of the tribes in the region had to pledge allegiance to one of the big-wigs, and the Shihuh chose the Sultan of Oman, rather than the Sheikh of Ras Al Khaimah.

And so it came to be that the Musandam peninsula is a slither of Omani territory, whilst being physically and geographically separate from the rest of the country.

There are no exploitable commodities here -- no oil, no copper -- and that has ensured that the peninsula has remained relatively isolated. Fishing, goat herding and limited agriculture are the staples of the local economy.

Beyond the Strait of Hormuz to the north lies Iran, and we're informed that Iranian smugglers also help bolster the local economy. Perhaps we'll see a few in the next couple of days.

Breakfast at the Khasab Hotel is definitely the worst of our trip (so far, I should say, but we're in the home straight now). It consisted today of white bread, some of which was toasted, and some individually wrapped portions of jam, butter, cheese and honey.

Only after eating most of it did we discover that an ommelette could also be ordered, albeit it at extra cost. We were in for a long day, so we ordered a couple anyway, but this made us a little late for our 09:00 pick-up for our dhow cruise.

Down at the harbour, we boarded our dhow and were delighted to discover that we had the entire boat to ourselves. In fact, we are virtually the only people staying at our hotel, too. There's only one other guest, as far as I know.

Part of the reason for that is that Oman Air has flights to Khasab only on Thursday and Friday, so anyone who wants to fly here from greater Oman either has to stay one night or six. Dubai, on the other hand, has daily flights (although I'm unsure which airline operates them; probably Kish), so Musandam is a popular weekend destination for expats.

Anyway, aboard the dhow, cushions flanked either side of the boat and carpets were draped over the remaining areas in the middle, so the boat looked comfy and inviting. We took up position along the left side.

Our crew consisted of two men, an older Omani gent and a younger one, probably in his twenties. Neither spoke a word of English and we speak no Arabic, so sign language would have to do.

We headed out into the Khor Ash Sham, a long and sheltered fjord (then again, which fjord isn't?).

Before long, we saw the village of Nadifi in the distance on the south side of the fjord. We passed by at quite a distance, however. The boat doesn't land at any of the villages on this trip, in order to respect the privacy of the locals. These are very remote communities, accessible only by boat.

Nadifi has about a hundred inhabitants, mainly fishermen. Because there's no access by road, the children travel by boat to school in Khasab and stay over from Saturday to Wednesday.

Next up was Qanaha, which we passed by more closely. Stone houses could be made out in the distance.

At this point, Telegraph Island (a.k.a. Jazirat Al Maqlab) loomed up ahead, the former site of a British telegraphic relay station in the 19th century. The sheer isolation of the island, behind a bend of this remote khor, apparently drove many of the workers stationed there to madness. The saying "to go around the bend" still persists to this day. So now you know.

Ahead lay the village of Maqlab on the right-hand side. This is a mountain village, where the people earn their living from goatherding and fishing. Maqlab comprises about ten or so houses and can also be reached by climbing over Jebel Maqlab.

At this point, the men on the boat brought us into the shallows and made it clear we could jump off the side and go swimming here in the beautiful green water, but we indicated that we didn't want to swim and were offered a slightly longer journey along the fjord instead.

We gratefully accepted and fared on towards the end of the fjord. Seebi Island could be seen in the distance.

To our great astonishment, some kind of flying fish would periodically leap out of the water and literally run across the water for a good 10 - 20 m using its tail fin as a leg. It was one of the strangest sights I have ever witnessed first hand and it was totally unexpected.

We now turned, looped around Telegraph Island and passed by Sham, which we passed by more closely than any of the other villages on our cruise. Again, this village is home to about a hundred residents, but not a soul was stirring, as had been the case in each of the other villages. They could have been deserted, for all we knew.

Along the route, we were kept watered with tea, Arabic coffee, water and soft drinks; and nourished with fruit.

On the return voyage, we stopped at a cove to observe dolphins swimming in formation at the left side of our boat, then in front of it, then off to the right and finally behind. I think this was the high point of Sarah's day, as she had been very excited at the prospect of seeing dolphins and was even more jubilent now at having got to see them so close.

Eloïse seemed to enjoy the trip, too, and was very well behaved. By the time we made it back to Khasab's harbour, she had fallen asleep. Sarah expertly managed to get her into her car seat without waking her.

With only one more full day in Musandam, it was important to make good use of the afternoon, too, so we decided to head up into the mountains. It was now 13:30 and the guide books made it sound like a tricky 4x4 drive, with narrow roads hugging the mountains, precipitous drops, and vertiginous views.

We decided to see for ourselves; we could always turn back if it got too hairy.

As we began the drive, signs at the side of the road warned of the steepness of the gradients and cautioned owners of non-4x4 vehicles not to attempt the ascent.

The road probably was the most difficult we have tackled on this trip so far, but at slow speeds it was still comfortable (mentally, that is; physically, it was somewhat less comfortable). A handful of incredibly steep switchbacks put the car under considerable strain, but we eventually made it to the top of Jebel Harim, the tallest mountain in the area. We parked near the radar station to rest.

On the way to the summit, we had passed the wonderfully verdant Sayh plateau, where goats wandered without a care in the world and some obvious agriculture was being cultivated. If you looked at that plateau out of context, you would have no idea it was high in the mountains; it looked like a meadow at sea level.

At the stop of the mountain pass, we took some time to take photos and change Wiesje's nappy, after which we began the descent. On the way dowm, we passed a convoy of Hummers, doubtless ferrying cruise line passengers on a mountain excursion. We had seen a liner docked in the harbour that morning and surmised that that could be the only source of enough tourists to fill six or seven Hummers.

The descent, which I imagined might be hairier than the ascent, was made quite quickly, as we were now familiar with the terrain. We found ourselves back down at the base of Jebel Harim by 16:30.

That left enough time for the 10 km drive to Khor Najd, the only khor accessible by car, which rewarded us with a glorious view of the surrounding mountains and fjord.

We made it back to Khasab with enough time to stop off at a beachside park, where Eloïse could tire herself out, prior to going to dinner for the second night in a row at the Golden Tulip Hotel, just outside of Khasab.

The advantage of eating there was that there's an office of Khasab Travel & Tours located in the hotel. After dinner, we arranged to charter a large speedboat tomorrow, which will take us to the remote settlement of Kumzar. This is the northernmost settlement in Oman and reputedly the remotest on the whole of the Arabian peninsula. There are no roads and a two hour speedboat journey (or four hour voyage by dhow) is the only way to get there.

The villagers of Kumzar speak a language known as Kumzari, which is a mixture of Farsi, Arabic, English and Portuguese and Hindi. I think it's going to be a fascinating visit to an area of the world that has almost certainly retained its own character and remained largely impervious to the onslaught of the western world.

The voyage will take us out into the Arabian Gulf and then into the Strait of Hormuz. Somewhere in the distance to the north will be Iran, but that's as close as we'll get on this trip.

Today was possibly the highlight of our trip so far, but tomorrow has a sporting chance of surpassing it. Either way, it'll be a terrific day, I'm sure.

What a day. We're knackered, and I do speak for all of us.

Our speedboat was a partially covered affair with two outboard motors. We set off from Khasab harbour pretty punctually, after the food and drink had been loaded on board.

The first leg of the journey went very quickly, with the boat bouncing up and over the waves as we headed out towards the Strait of Hormuz. Our guide explained to us in good English that he had learned the language simply from talking to tourists. He had received no formal English tuition. In fact, he then informed us that he had not attended school of any kind, making his linguistic ability all the more impressive.

The scenery was pleasant, the wind created by our speed refreshing, and Eloïse looked very sweet in her little lifejacket. She was not happy to be on the boat, though, and had protested loudly about not being taken to the park instead.

As we headed out into open water, one yellow fibreglass speedboat after the other rocketed past us in the opposite direction, its crew almost catapulted from the vessel with each wave they rode. Our Kumzari guide explained to us that the occupants were the notorious Iranian smugglers, heading towards Khasab to pick up their bounty of household appliances, electronics, cigarettes and other contraband -- all of which arrives at the harbour tax-free from the UAE -- to bring it back to Iran, which I'm told is some 50 km from here. There, it will be sold on the black market.

After about half an hour, one of our outboard motors gave up the ghost, slowing our pace dramatically. When the motor died, the skipper stopped the boat and, at first, it wasn't apparent that the other motor was still working, so it was quite a relief when that one was started up again and we stopped drifting.

The only stop on the way was to drop off a passenger, a friend of the skipper, at a fishing boat moored along one of the cliffs. High above, on top of the cliff, a look-out post was manned by someone searching for fish down below in the clear water.

Just before noon, we got our first view of Kumzar as it came into sight. We docked, but there was no sight of the promised smaller boat that would bring us to shore.

No matter, we would just walk, and it turned out to be an interesting walk, bringing us past fields of glittering sardines, lying baking in the sun, waiting to be picked up after three days spent drying. Our guide told us that up to 1000 kg of sardines are landed here some days.

Our walk towards the village took us past a desalination plant (for producing drinking water), a power station, a small hospital and a school. Schoolchildren were walking towards us on their way to attend the afternoon session. Both the boys and the girls were wearing immaculately clean uniforms, although they were nothing like the school uniforms we have in the West.

The girls in particular were very interested in Eloïse. Not many white babies make it out here and even fewer of them are redheads. In fact, according to our guide, only three or so trips come here each week, which means just a handful of visitors (unless yesterday's cruise liner has docked, in which case an excursion might contain as many as 25 people travelling here by dhow).

The girls posed for some pictures, but were very shy. Then, the boys got in on the action and were considerably less shy, jostling for position and striking macho poses.

Finally, we arrived in the village and were met by smiling, happy faces everywhere.

We walked through the rocky streets of the village. The road is unsurfaced, which makes sense, as there are no cars here. The married women wear facial masks similar to the Bedouin ones we have seen elsewhere. It was immediately clear to us that traditions and the old way of life have been better preserved here than anywhere else we've visited in Oman.

Goats huddled up in the shade of doorways, women wove fabrics and the men relaxed in shaded enclosures on the beach. Children were playing everywhere. Most families have five or six, we were told.

We walked out of the village on the far side and were taken to the large well, which was the only source of water before the desalination plant was built. Electricity comes from the power station. Telephone lines also come all the way out here.

I checked my mobile and saw that I had a decent signal. It's funny to think that there were moments back in Palo Alto, California that I didn't have a good signal on my mobile, yet here I am now in the remote, northernmost community of the Arabian peninsula, where there are no roads and the only way in or out is a two-hour trip by boat, and I have a respectable signal.

We took a different route back through the village, this time weaving in and out of the mesh or narrow alleyways that separate the houses, some of which are two to four hundred years old, we were told.

Occasionally, we would turn a corner and encounter an entire family sitting on their doorstep. As is the case wherever we go, we would point at each other's babies and encourage hand waves and greetings. Babies are the international language of womankind, and if you take one with you, you'll receive a warm welcome from other mothers everywhere, it seems.

The call to prayer went out from the mosque and reverberated around the mountains. Back on the beach, boys were playing. It seemed as if every one of them was wearing a football shirt. I spotted a couple of Beckham shirts.

It was now time to leave, so we headed back to the boat and got underway again. It was now lunchtime, so the food was brought out and we all tucked in. There was chicken, vegetable stew, rice, salad and bread; all in all, a very good spread.

The trip back took just under three hours with our single motor. Just before we docked, we were shown where the Iranian smugglers dock. There were dozens of boats and their owners were busying loading and tying their cargo of electronics and cigarettes. In the mornings, they apparently arrive in Khasab carrying goats for deposit here.

We had a quick look around the new souq area of Khasab, which took mere minutes, and then took Eloïse to the park, where she got a good hour's playing time.

Afterwards, we headed back into Khasab for dinner at a local restaurant, picked more or less at random. The fruit juices were very welcome and prepared us for the food, which consisted of a large local fish called Sharji.

While we were eating, a large bus of Philippino people, mostly women, turned up and emptied into our restaurant. Almost every seat in the house was now taken. As you might expect, the table of women nearest us started cooing over Eloïse. We got talking to them.

It turns out that they all live in Dubai and are all on visitor visas while they attempt to find work. Their visas have all run out, so they have come to Oman's Musandam peninsula purely so that they can reenter the UAE and start the clock ticking on a new visa.

They told us that 3000 Philippino people arrive in the Dubai every day, looking for work. Can that possibly be true? These women's English was excellent and many of them were beautiful; it's sad to think that they have such a hard time finding their feet and making ends meet. One of them confessed that things really aren't any better in Dubai for her than back home.

Eloïse was now dead beat, so we had to get her back to the hotel. We paid our bill and reluctantly left, as it would have been nice to spend more time talking to the Philippino ladies.

Tomorrow, we leave Musandam and therefore Oman, too, behind us. We'll head south through the UAE, back along the road that brought us here, towards the emirate of Sharjah, where we'll spend the night.

We hit the road at about 10:00 today, stopped for a few photos on the way out of Musandam, and eventually reached the border by 11:00. It was a simpler affair on the way out: no fees to pay and no forms to fill in.

We continued along route 11, the road that had brought us to Musandam, but this time took route 311 outside of Ras Al Khaimah City. This road isn't on our map, which is a shame, as we would have got from Dubai to Ras Al Khaimah City a lot more quickly on the way in.

Oh well, at least we could now take it on the way out. Thanks to route 311, the trip back in the direction of Dubai was now a piece of cake. Just short of Dubai, we took the route 88 exit and drove into Sharjah, our stop for today. It was only 13:00 and we had travelled just under 170 km, so we had made very good time, all things considered.

Sharjah is the third largest emirate of the UAE and definitely the strictest. Alcohol is prohibited here and even shisha is banned. This makes it an unattractive stop-off for many westerners, but for us, it's a plus, as it means that even more places sell even more really great fruit drinks, as otherwise there'd be nothing on the menu but water and soft drinks.

Our hotel room overlooks the Khalid Lagoon, which provided a nice view when we arrived, but offers an even better one now. The skyscrapers on the east side of town are lit up and dots of light cross them at their base, as cars race along the corniche. The mosque is illuminated and the trees in the palm plantation in front of it have beaded lights twirled around their trunk.

After heading into Sharjah, we first got some lunch and then walked around the heritage precinct and looked at the reconstructed buildings. The Souq Al Arsa was open, so we strolled around it, but saw nothing that really took our fancy.

Next, we drove along the corniche to admire the view of the skyline and then doubled back to stop off at the park, so that Eloïse could play. She was in a decidedly whingy mood and only a good forty-five minutes on the steep and fast slides there was likely to provide relief.

After a walk along the lagoon, cut short because of Eloïse's bad mood, we drove down to the Central Souq, which didn't disappoint. We spent some time in a nice Persian carpet shop, but had to leave, because Eloïse became inconsolable.

And so we had to cut short our visit to the souq, which is a great shame, because we saw several other very interesting carpet shops that we would have loved to spend some time in, which a very real danger of coming away with yet another piece, although it would have been a much smaller one this time.

We can't go back tomorrow, either, because it will be Friday, and so the souq won't open until 16:00, by which time we'll be in Dubai. Dubai's only about another 25 km from here, but it would be too inconvenient to come back and would, in any case, take away from our time there.

Tomorrow, we head back to the emirate and city where we started, Dubai, for three final nights. This time, we'll be staying at the famous Burj Al Arab hotel, a self-professed seven star hotel and the subject of countless television documentaries and travel programmes. If you recall seeing on TV an absurd, sail-shaped building rising an improbably into the sky close to the Palm Jumeirah island project, which built on reclaimed land, this is that same hotel.

It's supposedly the best hotel in the world with service quite literally second to none, so we're intrigued to see what kind of reception awaits us. We have little on the agenda for these three days in Dubai, as we want to relax and make the most of our luxurious surroundings in order to justify the extravagance.

Well, what can you say about the Burj Al Arab that hasn't been said already?

Let's start at the beginning.

Breakfast wasn't included with our hotel room, so we had breakfast at Café Undici, a nice place popular with locals.

The drive from Sharjah along route 11 was a bit strange, as a sandstorm had blown up and was bringing visibility back to a few hundred metres. It was rather like yellow fog, you could say. It wasn't blasting across the road or anything, but it was enough to send little spirals and twirls of sand dancing in interesting patterns across the road.

Dubai was just a stone's throw away and it was Friday, weekend, so there wasn't as much traffic as usual on the roads.

We first drove to Palm Jumeirah, to try to look at the artificial island that has added over 100 km of beach to Dubai's coastline. Unfortunately, the sandstorm made it impossible to see anything and most of the area is still under major construction, so there are checkpoints stopping you from going most places.

We turned around and headed for the Burj Al Arab, normally an unmistakeable behemoth on the Dubai skyline, but today a barely visible ghost-like image and, even then, not until we had left route 11.

One more left turn and we were there, pulling up to the security checkpoint. Yes, indeed, it appears that one cannot simply walk into this hotel. Our name was checked against a list of guests, the barrier lifted and we were waved through. A second checkpoint dropped its roadblocks under the ground and we drove on to the front entrance, where a team of valets and doormen pounced at our arrival.

We didn't even have to unload our luggage. We simply indicated which bags should be brought inside and then we were ushered inside, where we were given rosewater to refresh our hands.

It was explained to us by the lady who greeted us that our suite wasn't ready yet, so we were escorted upstairs to a café, where we drank juices and relaxed.

Gigantic aquaria line the escalators up to and down from the first floor. Clever, choreographed waterjets make for mesmerising fountains on both the ground and first floors.

Eloïse caused her first mayhem by yanking the tower of nuts and olives from our table and scattering its contents across the floor. An Arabian band struck up in one corner of the café and we began to people-watch.

It was busy at the hotel, as it was around lunchtime, so lots of foot-traffic was on account of restaurant reservations. Cameras were being pointed in every direction, as people seized the opportunity for a few snaps of the ostentatious and resplendent interior. Others posed for photos to prove they had been here.

You could grow poor here very quickly. Boutiques selling everything from gigantic, pure silk Persian carpets to skeletonised Vacheron Constantin watches to 24 carat gold, diamond encrusted jewellery are worked away into the walls.

After 13:00, the curious tourists and restaurant-goers ebbed away and it became relatively quiet again. Eloïse was getting past her nap time and was also hungry, so I asked one of the staff if she could have some banana. Sure enough, a plate soon turned up with banana slices on it. There was even sugar on top of the slices.

14:00 arrived and we were collected and accompanied up the escalator. We were taken to the ninth floor and brought to our suite. Our lady left us and told us that our butler would soon be with us.

And he was. He came in with three glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice and started to show us how to use the remote control. This controls not just the plasma screen in the living room, but also operates the main door. If someone rings the doorbell, you can see their image on the TV and let them in with the remote control.

The remote control also operates the curtains, so you really can do almost everything from the comfort of your fat arse. Similarly, a press of a button on the phone connects you with your butler.

Next, we were shown the newspaper menu. It's impressive: you can choose to have any of 300 newspapers from all over the world delivered to your suite each morning. All major Dutch newspapers were available. I chose De Volkskrant and Sarah opted for the Boston Globe.

The suite itself is as big as our house in Mountain View was. I estimate it's a good 175 m².

Fresh fruit and dates were in the room, along with crackers, biscuits and whatnot. There's the standard complimentary bowl of fruit, plus a free bottle of wine. Fresh flowers adorn the room in multiple places.

There's a laptop on the office desk. The system administration around these parts must be efficient, as it's already running Vista (the first time I've even seen it). The laptop has wireless Internet. In fact, each of the 202 rooms here has its own network. The ESSID is your suite number and is cloaked, presumably to stop you from stumbling onto your next door neighbour's network. Still, if you're out to get on his network, it's trivial to type in the suite number yourself. There's no WEP, let alone WPA.

There's a fax machine in the office area, too. We had a fax waiting for us, welcoming us to the hotel and informing us of our own private fax number. It will be abandoned when we leave and not reused, to avoid privacy issues. I'm not sure whether the same thing applies to the suite's telephone number.

We needed to get out and about at this point, so that Eloïse could have her nap. We went downstairs and out to the foyer to request one of the golf-like buggies that the hotel offers on a complimentary basis to guests.

Because the sand was still blowing about, they told us that a buggy wouldn't be quite suitable now, and would we mind going in a white Rolls Royce instead? Well, OK then, you've twisted our arm.

And so we turned up at Souk Madinat Jumeirah in a white Roller. Well, why not? When in Rome, etc...

The souq was very good. The Arabian architecture is straight out of 1001 Nights and the boutiques inside sell everything from baby wipes to very expensive pure silk Persian carpets. We had to prise ourselves away from them.

Happily, we finally left the souq empty-handed (apart from the aforementioned baby wipes, that is) and took a complimentary shuttlebus back to the hotel.

Back in the room, a mysterious visitor had been and left a cuddly Burj Al Arab teddy bear for Eloïse. Aww.

What about the bedroom? Well, the bedroom has a Dux bed, but I haven't tried it yet. Sarah says it's great, though. After turn-down service, the bed had been bedecked with chocolate-covered dates and his-and-hers eye creams. The bedroom ceiling has a mirror on it, but as I tend to sleep with my eyes shut, I can't think of anything more useless.

Just before dinner, the doorbell rang. I answered it and a waiter was there, bearing gifts of tiramisu and the most fabulous coffee I have tasted on this entire trip. This waiter received an extremely warm welcome, as you might imagine.

Dinner was at the The Wharf, a delicious seafood restaurant just a complimentary buggy ride away.

After dinner, I collected the car from the valet and Sarah removed Eloïse's car seat from the back to chants of "our car, our car" from Eloïse. She's grown very fond of our dusty Mitsubishi Pajero and probably has a stronger impression of it now than our own car back home.

Sarah took Eloïse inside to put her for bed, while I headed off to fill up the car with petrol. I had had the hotel call Thrifty earlier in the day to find out if we could return the car at a closer location than where we had hired it, as the airport would be a long drive from the Burj Al Arab and an equally long taxi ride back.

Happily, they told me I could return the car to their office at the Mall of the Emirates, which is a short distance from here.

The mall was absolutely buzzing. What seemed like a kilometre long line of taxis was queueing along the slip road to get down in front of the adjoining Kempinski Hotel.

I parked the car in an arbitrary spot (which was hard to find, even though 6000 cars can park here), went inside and located the Thrifty desk. After a few formalities, we were carless once again.

The final odometer count was 3854 km and the car was definitely showing signs of its ordeal. It had been across the desert, up and down mountains, over wadis, through cities, across four borders and along more unsurfaced roads and dirt tracks than you can shake a stick at. I was sad to say goodbye to it, even though it's underpowered and has that annoying >120 km chime.

Afterwards, I went to the Virgin Megastore to purchase a pile more CDs. The mall is open to midnight at the weekend, which is very convenient for people like me, as I can shop at the end of the day without taking anything away from the family's daylight hours. I couldn't believe how many people were there. The scenes inside and outside were more reminiscent of an airport than a shopping mall.

Virgin has this cool listening post system, whereby you slap on the headphones, run the CD's bar code under the scanner and then -- more often than not -- it pulls ripped samples of each track from Virgin's database. How convenient is that? It's DIY try-before-you-buy.

Close to midnight, I headed out to the front of the mall and grabbed a taxi back to the hotel. I paused to take a few nighttime pictures outside. The Burj Al Arab is even more extraterrestrial-looking at night, with purple, green and orange spotlights shining onto it's sail-like white front.

What else can I tell you about the place? The bathroom is very large and features a jacuzzi and large shower cabinet. There's a complete range of Hermès toiletries in there, for both men and women, which we were encouraged to take home with us. I don't know about such things, but I'm told these are expensive products. It includes aftershave, deodorant, soap, etc.

Other items are a decent shaving kit (proper Gillette razor and having foam) plus all the stuff you're not supposed to take, like dressing gowns, etc.

There's a beach bag, too, and we were encouraged to keep that when we leave, also.

Oh yes, and there was even a bag of toiletries for Eloïse, consisting of sun cream, ointment and a couple of other bottles.

There's a pillow menu with about 15 different pillows, including one that has been infused with vitamin E and aloe.

And a separate menu in the bathroom informs you of all of the baths that they will prepare for you in your suite. Top of the price list is Beyond Decadence, which includes caviar, chilled champagne and a bowl of strawberries. This will set you back a mere AED 3000 (±€625).

Outside, a row of expensive Ferraris and Lamborghinis is available for hire. A very nice Ferrari 430 with glass-topped engine compartment will set you back a mere AED 9000 (±€1878) for 24 hours. The mind boggles. I guess some people really must pay it.

Our butler offered to show us the presidential suite tomorrow, which costs a mere $13000 per night. He told us that people have been known to rent it for two months at a time! Can you imagine checking out and receiving your bill for three quarters of a million dollars? Again, the mind boggles.

This is our chance to see how the other half live and, for a few days, to live that life ourselves. Rubbing shoulders with the other guests, it's obvious that we come from different worlds. The men are snappily dressed and the women in their designer gear and high heels look like they're fresh from the Oscars. We're definitely on the shabby side, but hey, our loot is as good as anyone else's, right?

What an experience, anyway. We're unlikely to forget this place in a hurry. It's the tallest hotel in the world; taller, in fact, than the Eiffel Tower. One of the tours on offer here is a helicopter tour of the city, which leaves from and returns to the helipad on the top of the hotel. Wow.

The lift here travels at an ear-popping six metres per second.

Every detail in this hotel's presentation, service and engineering has been designed to astound and impress; and impress it does, too.

The only thing wrong with it -- apart from the price -- is that it's all going to look dated very quickly. In fact, the remote control unit and the plasma screen would have been absolute state-of-the-art back in 1999 when the hotel first opened, but they are showing their age now. Not that there's anything wrong with the technology; just that it doesn't look new any more.

Anyway, it'll be a busy day tomorrow, so it's time to retire for the night.

We had very little on the agenda for today, which is how some people like to spend every day of their holiday, but for us, it's something of an exception. We get up earlier and do many more things when on holiday than when we're at home; and the same was true when we both had jobs, before you ask.

We awoke to a better view today. The sand has died down, but it's still a little hazy. At least we were able to see Palm Jumeirah through the floor-to-ceiling windows this morning, or one or two of its fronds, in any case.

After a refreshing shower under the four jets of our lovely shower cubicle, breakfast was taken in the Al Iwan restaurant. It was a fantastic buffet spread, but didn't quite manage to justify the exorbitant price.

Really, the only way to deal with a place like this is to enjoy yourself and look at your credit card statements when they arrive. If you studiously analyse every bill you sign for, you're going to put yourself on edge pretty quickly and taint the experience for yourself. It's better to indulge in the moment, try not to think too much about the cost, and then just look back on the place with fond memories after the fact.

After breakfast, we collected complimentary vouchers for the Wild Wadi water park and had one of the buggies ferry us down to the park.

I've never been to a water park before, but I suspect that this is a good one. I enjoyed it immensely, at least.

When we arrived, it was a shockingly low 20°C. I couldn't believe it. Just before we left the hotel, it had even rained for a few minutes. We were actually worried that we might be cold at the park.

It's best to come early, especially at the weekend, as it can get busy very quickly. Luckily for us as guests at the hotel, we were able to enter at 10:00, one hour before the park officially opens. This helps one beat the crowds.

Eloïse wasn't too sure about the family ride, which involved sitting in a large paddling pool and being blasted around a water chute by fast-moving water. It wasn't anything wild, but Eloïse didn't much care for the experience, possibly because the splashes of water were cold, moreso when the breeze then blew across you.

As the morning wore on, the sun started to put in an appearance and both the air and water temperature started to rise.

The Jumeirah Sceirah (read: scarer) is the ultimate ride in the park, a huge slide that plunges you 33 metres at 80 kmh over three or four seconds. The ride has no deep water, so it's perfect for me, as I still can't swim. All you need is a head for heights and a stomach for the speed and steepness of the descent.

I climbed the tower of the ride, which offered excellent views of the Burj Al Arab. Warning signs on the way cautioned the prospective rider to "know his own limits" and be aware that "swimsuits may be pulled off by water force".

Atop the tower, I climbed into position and prepared for the descent. Sarah waited for me at the base, along with Eloïse. I was told to cross my arms and feet, in a kind of pharaoh position. Presumably, this prevents something getting wrenched painfully on the way down.

Anyway, I did as I was told and nudged myself into motion. The first second or so was easy, but before you can even think about what might be coming next, you are plunged over steep humps in the ride, your stomach lurching and your body becoming weightless as you feel yourself lifting slightly out of the chute. At this point, you can't even see anything, because the water is blasting into your face so quickly. The view is rather like that from behind the windscreen of a car going through a car-wash.

An involuntary yell found its way out of my mouth and I found myself submitting to whichever fate awaited me. Amazingly, my body weight suddenly returned, my speed slowed, the view cleared and it was all over.

If I make it sound improbably exciting, believe me, that's how I personally experienced it.

Sarah didn't fancy the look of the Jumeirah Sceirah and Eloïse didn't want to be parted from Mama, but I persuaded Sarah to have a go on one of the uphill roller-coaster rides. Sarah jumped in an inflatable ring and was launched up a chute and off to god knows where. It was a good ten minutes before she returned, having enjoyed the experience immensely.

It was coming up on the small one's nap time, so we went back to the hotel and changed for lunch. We headed down to Souk Madinat Jumeirah and ate outside at a waterside table. The setting was gorgeous and the sun was now blazing. It was a comfortable 23°C or so.

We went looking for presents in the souq and then, when Eloïse finally woke up, we took her to the Jumeirah Hotel's children's park. I didn't stay long, however, and returned to the hotel to relax. I also wanted to check out some of the hotel's boutiques, just for fun. I was shown a €283,000 (±$340,000) watch. Cool; I'll take four of them. Put them on my tab.

At this point, I'm now recognised by some of the security staff at the euphemistically named Welcome Centre (Fuck Off Centre might be a better sobriquet, as it exists primarily to keep people out) and they wave me and my buggy driver through.

It's amazing to be staying at a hotel that has become a tourist attraction in its own right. Busloads of tourists are constantly pulling up just short of the security checkpoint, so that the occupants can pile out, take a few photos, and then reboard and move to the next stop on the sightseeing tour.

Ordinary folk need to call 24 hours in advance if they want to visit this hotel. If allowed to visit, they'll be met and given a short tour before having to leave again.

Guests of other Jumeirah properties, on the other hand, can come here at set times during the day for a nose around and a few photos. Outside of those hours, however, the Burj is a sanctuary for its residents.

It's strange to be on the inside looking out. When all's said and done, it's still only a hotel, but the experience is definitely unlike any other and I'm very grateful for the privilege of being able to undergo it.

If you can afford to spend a couple of days here, you'll definitely go home with lasting memories. It would make a wonderful honeymoon destination, for example, perhaps for a couple of days en route to somewhere further afield.

My only complaints about the place are very minor. I can't print from the in-room laptop, for example. I'll live. Neither of our ordered newspapers turned up today, either; it turns out they're unavailable, so the huge complimentary newspaper list suddenly becomes a lot less impressive.

One of the boutiques on the ground floor sells Burj-branded products of every description, including a couple of interesting-looking CDs. However, no way is offered to actually hear these CDs before buying and, unsurprisingly, they're unavailable elsewhere and more expensive than normal CDs. There's a DVD about the hotel on sale, too. Its asking price of about €20 doesn't seem unreasonable until you check the playing length and see that the DVD lasts a whole ten minutes. Sorry, we might be a little indulgent from time to time, but we're not that giddy.

Dinner was a buffet at the hotel's Al Iwan once again. The food was great, but not stellar. The bill, of course, was astronomical. If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm really not. The ambience was lovely and the service friendly and extremely attentive. They won't even let you pour your own coffee from the pot around here. Even the sugar lumps are plonked into your coffee by Christofle tongs operated by someone else's hand.

Seriously, you're almost afraid to scratch your arse around here, in case someone dives in from the sidelines to do it for you.

So, this is how the other half live, eh? I told Sarah yesterday that I could quickly get used to this. Today, I feel like I am used to it.

But not altogether; it's still an entertaining novelty, a fun thing to do, a privilege and not something to overindulge in. I would say it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I can imagine returning at some point in the future, albeit briefly again.

For bedtime, we've taken the plunge and ordered the premium down quilt for ourselves and the child's down pillow for Eloïse. These are complimentary, before you accuse us of taking leave of our senses.

Tomorrow is our final full day at the Burj and we have nothing at all planned, which is the ideal schedule for our last day.

With no special activities on the list today, we started with a bit of a lie-in. By the time we got up, we decided we should have only a light breakfast, since we had a lunch reservation in the Burj Al Arab's Al Muntaha restaurant.

So, we headed down to the beach area by buggy and found a nice continental breakfast buffet for a reasonable price. The setting was idyllic, outside by the water. The temperature was lovely and cool, too. A helicopter fired up its engines and we say it lift off and fly away from the Burj's helipad. What a way to get around town. Talk about leaving and arriving in style.

Afterwards, Sarah took Eloïse to a nearby playing area, while I went back to the hotel to do a spot of on-line research. Our trusty Minolta A2 camera started having electronic viewfinder problems yesterday and looks like it's on the decline. We wanted to take advantage of being in the UAE to pick up a reasonably priced alternative, so that necessitated some on-line research prior to visiting any shops.

Sarah returned at about 12:30 and we began to prepare for lunch. At 13:00, up we went to the 27th floor, where a window table enabled us to look out over the water. The view was still partially obscured by the haze, but it was still spectacular.

The food was amazing, too: easily the best meal of this holiday and one of the best I've ever eaten anywhere. I had the Wagyu beef filet and Sarah had the sea bass. I noticed that the children's menu even featured Wagyu hamburgers.

Eloïse shocked both us and the restaurant staff by biting a chunk out of her water glass. Amazingly, she wasn't hurt, and the one large piece of glass and several smaller shards fell onto her lap or the baby seat on which she was perched. We wonder if the glass already had a hairline fracture, as nothing like this has ever happened before. Whatever the reason, we'll be trying to give her exclusively plastic cups from now on, or a straw to drink through at the very least.

I got back down to the room before Sarah, who left when Eloïse started to tire of sitting in one spot. The floor manager (each floor has its own) handed me computer-printed copies of De Volkskrant and even De Telegraaf, the latter of which I hadn't requested. No Boston Globe for Sarah, unfortunately. I was also given a complimentary copy of the Burj Al Arab DVD I wrote about yesterday, by way of an apology for the inconvenience associated with the newspapers.

I discovered why the laptop can't print: in their zeal to upgrade all of the computers to Vista, they either overlooked or deemed unimportant the fact that the new version of Windows doesn't have a driver for their custom fax/printer device. I had to get a member of the IT staff to print an important e-mail for me, which contained important camera shopping advice from my good friend, Peter.

Armed with that sheet of paper, we all piled into a taxi and went to the Mall of the Emirates to see what was on offer. Peter had recommended the Canon 400D to me, but he called it by the North American market name of Rebel XTi, so when it came to looking around the shops in the mall, I thought that no-one carried it.

From the models that were on sale there, I quickly decided the 400D was the one that suited our needs and the budget we wanted to spend, so that's what we came home with. Only back at the hotel did I discover via Google that this was, in fact, the very same camera that Peter had recommended.

I purchased a UV filter and circular polariser to go with the camera, along with a 16 Gb CF card. That ought to provide all the storage we need for our future trips.

With the bulk of our purchases mounting up, we decided we had better buy another case in which to lug all of this stuff home. Accordingly, another case was acquired.

We had dinner at the mall, as none of us had the energy or inclination to seek out anything more sublime. The food was actually good, in any case.

The queue for taxis was very long. As we filed along, getting ever nearer to pole position, I noticed another yellow Lamborghini (why are they always yellow?) and a rather nice V10 Audi S8, the first I've seen.

The queue of cars at the Fuck Off Centre was very long, as each of which had to have its occupants justify their attempt to enter the hallowed grounds of the Burj. Eventually, we were back at the hotel and able to dump our stuff in the room.

All in all, today more than made up for the many times we visited a mall during this trip and left empty-handed. Shopping in Dubai is such an integral part of experiencing the city that it was fun to indulge for a change, and it's not like we have no use for the things we bought.

Turn-down service today provided complete his and hers sampler sets of Amouage scents. Very nice. Sarah was also presented with a vase of roses and a cube full of potpourri, in honour of Mother's Day. For some reason, they gave this to her on the British Mother's Day, or Mothering Sunday as it's known there. Mother's Day in the UAE (and other Arab countries) isn't until the 21st of the month.

Soon after we returned to the room, there was a knock at the door and our butler entered with a plate of gourmet chocolates, made in-house by one of the chefs. Mmm. Delicious. What a nice touch. He also brought us the bill for our stay, the only thing so far given to us that we'd rather not have had.

To unwind after a hard day's shopping, the three of us climbed into the jacuzzi and bubbled away the tension.

Tomorrow signifies the final time we will check out of a hotel on this trip, as we say goodbye to the Burj Al Arab and while away the day to meet our 01:30 flight on Tuesday morning.

Before we know it, we'll be back in Amsterdam. The current weather forecast for Tuesday is for rain and a high of 6°C. Back to reality, we go. It's the right time to leave, though, as we've done all we came to do and the season is changing. Life here will be impossible soon, as far as we're concerned.

It's been an incredible trip: fulfilling, educational, eye-opening, exciting and diverse. The region is full of contrasts and disparate elements that blend in harmony, rather than jar in discord. If only people were as friendly and accepting everywhere.

I'll doubtless have some reflections to share once the cold light of Amsterdam cements my perspective. For now, I'm going to enjoy my last night in our sumptuous suite and hopefully awaken to a crystal-clear view of Palm Jumeirah in the morning.

No haze this morning, so the day welcomed us with fabulously sunny views over the Jumeirah beach and Palm Jumeirah.

What a shame we have to check out of our place. 24 hours from now, we'll be back in Amsterdam.

We're back at home in Amsterdam, after arriving early yesterday morning.

To round off our travelogue, I should tell you about our last day in the UAE.

We began Monday with a nice lie-in, since it was our last morning and we wanted to make full use of the noontide check-out and the beautiful, unobscured views from our suite. We'd been told there was even a chance of a late check-out, but in the end that didn't materialise.

And so we were packed and out of the room by noon. To the Burj's credit, we were encouraged to continue to make use of any and all of the hotel's facilities for as long as we wanted, including Wild Wadi if we so desired.

We paid our bill (ouch!) and our bags were wheeled away to be stored until later in the day.

We had a 12:30 reservation at the Al Mahara restaurant down in the bowels of the Burj. Reservations up to a month in advance are required for this restaurant and being a guest at the hotel is no guarantee of getting in, so we were glad we had availed ourselves of the situation and reserved our table some weeks earlier.

Unfortunately, the submarine lift that takes you to the restaurant was broken (and had been for a month already, due to the difficulty involved in obtaining the correct replacement part), so we weren't able to enjoy that part of the experience. Instead, we took a normal lift down.

The lift, by the way, has a couple of hotel staff manning desks next to it. They deal with reservation requests and welcome diners to the restaurant, the effect of which is that you can't just waltz in and take the lift to the restaurant for a look around; you have to have a reservation before they'll even let you enter the lift.

Down below, a short walk leads past a bar and into the restaurant, where a gigantic oval aquarium fills most of the available space, with the dining tables positioned in a loop around the edge The aquarium reaches all the way from the floor to the ceiling and is a living work of art. It's huge, spotlessly clean, populated by all manner of tropical fish -- including a couple of sharks -- and obviously flawlessly and lovingly maintained.

As we entered the restaurant, a diver was feeding the fish. It was an incongruous sight to see a man fully emerged in a gigantic tank in the middle of a restaurant.

The menu was surprisingly small: a few set meals, a couple of signature dishes, private label caviar and that was about it.

Since the signature dishes were both lobster, of which neither of us is a fan, we went for set menus. I had tuna and duck, while Sarah plumped for Dover sole. As we waited for the appetisers to arrive, I took a couple of photos, but was then asked to stop. During our meal, other customers went to take photos and were similarly politely asked to refrain.

The food was excellent, but I actually preferred the lunch I had had the day before, in Al Muntaha. The prices were actually very similar.

Dessert, on the other hand, was out of this world. I had the mango crème brûlée, whilst Sarah had the unusual chocolate sphere. The serving of the latter dish was very impressive.

First, the plate containing the sphere of chocolate was placed in front of Sarah. It was literally a ball of chocolate. Then, the waitress poured hot chocolate sauce over the top of it, at which point the top half of the sphere melted away to reveal a small amount of mousse and raspberries inside. The effect was very impressive and added to the mouthwatering appeal of the food.

The chef at Al Mahara is obviously highly skilled, and there were some interesting and adventurous creations that blurred the border between sweet and savoury. What to think of blue crab milkshakes? And my mango crème brûlée came with curry ice-cream, which was genuinely spicy. I've never tasted anything like it.

Lunch lasted nearly two hours. It was the most expensive meal we've ever had and neither of us drank any alcohol, which could easily send you spiralling into ruination.

Afterwards, we went to the children's play area at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel opposite the Burj and relaxed while Eloïse climbed and ran around.

When she grew tired, we went for a walk along the circular path that surrounds the small man-made island on which the Burj is perched. This takes you past the swimming pools and sunbathing area. We sat down on a couple of sun beds and, before we knew it, a waiter turned up with complimentary Evian facial sprays, lavendar water, cold flannels and a couple of bottles of mineral water.

It's the little touches like that that make you appreciate staying at such a luxury hotel. You're paying for every last perk, of course, but because so many of the little touches are unpredictable and unexpected, they still come as a nice surprise and make you feel that you're getting something you hadn't bargained for. And, once you've enjoyed a few hot and cold flannels at moments when you really appreciate them, you start to desire them. And so it is that one quickly becomes accustomed to luxury.

The three of us fell asleep there at the water's edge, looking out over Palm Jumeirah and the beachfront. At moments like that, you thank your lucky stars for what life has given you and remind yourself never to take anything for granted, even for a moment.

Once we awoke, we took a taxi back to the Mall of the Emirates. I wanted to return the compact flash card I'd bought the day before, as it had turned out that I hadn't got the great deal that I had thought I had.

With that out of the way, we had dinner at the mall and then talked to a real estate agent about property on Palm Jumeirah, just to find out a little bit about the market and how it operates in this part of the world.

Then, it was back to the Burj to collect our bags. Again, the hotel proved how slick it can be. I gave the concierge our luggage ticket and expected our bags to be wheeled out in due course. Instead, a few minutes passed and then I was informed that a taxi containing all of our luggage was now waiting outside for us. Impressive.

As we went outside and surveyed our bags, I wondered how on earth we were ever going to get this lot onto the plane. Even the bags we intended to take on as hand luggage seemed they would be impossible to juggle with a baby and a car seat.

On the way to the airport, I quizzed our taxi driver about living in Dubai. He noted the disadvantages, but then raved in appreciation of all the good things the city has to offer. The enthusiasm people have for the city is contagious. It's big, bold, shamelessly confident and bustling like nowhere else I've ever been or seen. Dreams are big here. Who else would build a ski slope in the desert? If any city's star is rising, it's Dubai's.

At the airport, we paid our taxi driver and were swooped upon by a porter, who somehow managed to pile all of our bags onto a single large trolley, tilt it at an angle, and proceed at speed through the airport towards the check-in desks.

There, it was confirmed to us that our bags were considerably overweight, weighed down as they were with oils, perfumes, (frank)incense and burners, a new camera, CDs, a Persian carpet, luxury toiletries from the Burj's bathroom, etc. We'd weighed everything on our scales that morning and knew that excess luggage fees were a real danger, but there was little we could do.

Happily, I was offered the option of paying for the excess, which was only charged at half-rate anyway, with KLM Flying Blue points, so we didn't have to part with any cash. Our carry-on bags were loaded with as much heavy stuff as we could cram into them, so we were getting off quite lightly, as I'm sure those were over the official weight limits, too.

Dubai truly never sleeps and the airport is at its busiest around 01:00. Airports in other cities are all but deserted at this time, but here, it's more alive than at any other time of day. A buggy driver spotted us and gestured to us to come aboard. We were scooted from one end of the terminal to the other, our baby seat and baby buggy trailing on two wheels behind us.

The duty-free area was like a city bazar. It was already midnight and even the post-office was still open. The airport was packed with people of every conceivable nationality.

We proceeded to our gate and then I doubled back to visit the duty-free shops on the floor below, where I bought a few more CDs (which Sarah doesn't know about -- she'll doubtless have something to say on the matter when she reads this).

We finally boarded the plane around 01:00 GST. Soon after take-off, Eloïse fell asleep. Thank God; she had been really melting down in the half hour prior to boarding. 01:30 really is no time to fly with a not quite yet two year old, but the only other choice would have meant getting out of bed at some obscene hour.

Sarah and I fell asleep during the flight, too. The landing came at around 05:40 CET, after a flight lasting some 6.5 hours. It's a slightly implausible sight to see yourself flying over Iraq on the flight tracking screen, knowing what kind of chaos the land below you is suffering.

Amsterdam was cold as we disembarked. Our luggage came through instantaneously and we donned our best poker face for the stroll through customs' 'nothing to declare' channel.

A similarly large taxi brought us to our front door, but at a vastly higher fare than any Emirati taxi ride would cost. You could probably get from Dubai to the border with Oman for the same price.

And then we were home. We crashed for another few hours in our own bed and then got up and went for bagels and juices to ease ourselves back into the 7°C and decidedly unsunny climate.

In the afternoon, we took an almost dead car (battery <10% charged) to the supermarket to stock up on provisions and then relaxed in front of the TV. Eloïse was very happy to be reunited with her toys and books.

Last time we went away for a prolonged period, the sight of a dead mouse welcomed us home. This time, a very much alive rodent scurried across the floor of the sitting room at one point during the evening. When the cat's away, the mice really do seem to play in this house. We're going to have to catch the little blighter and set him free.

We're already mostly back in the domestic groove. The post has been sorted, appointments have been made and contact reestablished with friends. I hope to get started very soon on putting our photos on-line.

This morning, we unfurled our new Persian carpet after moving our couch out of the way. It took about an hour to move the furniture, roll up the old carpet, hoover the floor and unroll the new carpet, but what a reward! We really love this new carpet and it's a heartwarming bonus to have bought it whilst travelling. Every time we look at it, we're reminded of our wonderful Arabian adventure and of Abu Dhabi in particular.

The same goes for the frankincense that is now wafting into my nostrils from the other room as I type this entry. What a wonderfully exotic scent. As I breathe in the delicious vapours, I'm instantly transported back to the souq of Salalah and the ring-nosed Dhofari women are once again right before my eyes.

This is a trip we'll never forget.

One minute you're driving a 4x4, surrounded by palm trees and sand, your air-conditioning blasting away; the next you're riding your bike into the wind, wearing a woolly hat and a thick coat. The wonders of travel.

In January, our little one was trekking out to the Sólheimajökull glacier in southern Iceland and playing in the snow. A couple of weeks ago, she was playing on the dunes of the desert in the Wahiba Sands. The wonders of travel.

I made a valiant start today on getting the photos from our trip on-line. All of them are now imported, so I just have to select, order, rotate and caption them. "Just", he said nonchalantly; that's actually a large part of the work.

I've also started to rip the huge pile of CDs I purchased during our trip. The new music, together with the new Persian carpet and the frankincense burner smouldering away on our mantelpiece, have definitely given our home a slight Arabian flavour.

Around the corner from our house, filming has started on the third series of Keyzer & De Boer.

The DVB frequencies of the national Dutch public TV stations must have moved, because we can now pick them up free-to-air on the DVB tuner in our car. Nice, crystal-clear television while you're stuck waiting for the traffic lights to change. A number of regional stations are available, too, including TV Noord-Holland.

Lenovo are recalling the 9 cell batteries used in the T60 (amongst others). I typed my serial number into their checker and discovered that I've got one of the dodgy ones, although they're deliberately vague about what the nature of the "incidents" is.

Life is slow again and we're feeling relaxed: the wonders of travel.

Frank set me a link to this fabulously deceptive pavement art. I'm bowled over by the quality of the pieces.

As promised, I've been beavering away on the photos we took during our recent trip to the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Many deletions, rotations and captions later, the albums are finally available for your viewing pleasure.

The completion of this task now leaves me free to crack open and play with our new Canon EOS 400D SLR camera. The kit lens has been supplanted by an EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM lens, which will be our lens of choice for the vast majority of our shooting. Like our faithful old Minolta A2, it features an image stabiliser, which is great for us, as we almost never carry a tripod.

Our initial results with the camera today in the Vondelpark were pleasing, but we'll sorely miss the ability to voice-caption our photos. That feature really is unmissable for the itinerant traveller and I'm not sure how we'll cope without it.

This is our first SLR and we're now eager to delve deeper into the science and art of photography, so that we can obtain the results we know a camera like this is capable of. I'm always disappointed by our holiday photos, as almost all of them fail to capture the glory of the moment. Good photographers can achieve the opposite effect, namely that the photo makes the moment in question look better than it actually was.

Anyway, I'm pleased to have the latest holiday photos on-line and must say that I'm missing the region considerably since having returned. On the plus side, the last couple of days have seen glorious spring sunshine warming the city and encouraging us to make for the zoo and the Vondelpark, where lots of other people had obviously had the same idea.