Not on my Meter

I walk from Qurum to Sabco Center, which is a mistake: the sun beats down on me, I'm receiving unwanted attention from male drivers (apparently a floppy skirt down to my knees is too sexy), and now the sidewalk has ended at several busy lanes of traffic, sans crosswalks or traffic lights. Still, I spy the shopping complex just on the other side, so I go for it, not unlike Frogger.

I barely make it to the Sabco Center, and it's really quite unremarkable (plus, I'm dusty, hot, and irritable). I could find these stupid stores in Chicago. Amouage is the exception. Amouage, coincidentally, sells Amouage, "the world's most valuable perfume," brewed right here in Muscat. I enter the store tentatively, painfully aware that I'm sweatier right now than Brandon Davis on a bad day. The sales clerks are hospitable nonetheless (and probably a little bored): they allow me to sample each of the fragrances. The ornate bottles are gorgeous. What a nice little gift this would make for me, if someone wanted to send it to 17XX North Clybourn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614 (no signature required: leave inside gates under mailbox). I'm too cheap to indulge in a bottle for myself: the little number to the left (less than two ounces) costs $380.

I jump into a cab in the parking lot and off we go. And now we're stopping --not at my hotel, either. We're in front of the mosque, and the driver conveys to me that I am to wait in the car. I totally get that it's got to be difficult to stop and pray five times daily, but there's no way I'm sitting in this stuffy car a minute longer than necessary.

Back at the hotel, I change clothes, grab a book and head to the pool. Aside from the absence of overpriced alchoholic drinks, you'd never realize that you were in an Islamic country: several corpulent tourists are (barely) clad in thong bikinis, which really should be outlawed in any country, Islamic or otherwise. I came here to see camel spiders, dammit, not cameltoes.