December 5th – Going Round the Bend in Khasab

Peaceful little Khasab is a geographical anomaly. It sits at the end of the rocky Mussandam Peninsula – a small enclave of Oman overlooking the Straits of Hormuz, but the peninsula is separated from the rest of the country by the UAE. This gives the place a "world apart" feel, because it's pretty much unvisited by Western tourists – in fact the main foreign visitors are the crowds of Iranian smugglers in their speed boats who we shared the port with.

Every morning they zoom across the 70 miles from Iran, their boats full of goats to sell in Khasab's markets. The poor goats are literally thrown one-by-one from the boat over to a man on the shore, who attempts to catch the mass of flailing legs and fur being chucked at him, before loading them onto a truck. Over the course of the day, the Iranians then buy up contraband goods (particularly American cigarettes), but also TVs, fruit juices and cuddly toys (who knows why?), and they all set off in a high speed flotilla at about 5pm – our ship had to negotiate a path through the teeming mass of smugglers as we left the port.

During the day, we visited the impressive Khasab Fort, which was built by the Portuguese in the 17th century, and then we moved onto another historic fort – both are a sign of the strategic importance of this place. Even today, 15% of the world's oil passes through the Straits of Hormuz above Khasab.

There is one historic British connection with Khasab – in the 19th century, a telegraph relay station was set up on one of the sun-blasted islands off the coast, to provide a communications link with Imperial India. Back then, as one of the most isolated places in the world, this was just about the worst posting a soldier could possibly get, terrible boredom, loneliness and the extreme heat, which was enough to literally send them mad. As a result of the psychological
problems of the British soldiers here in Mussandam, the term 'going round the bend', entered the English language. What a fascinating fact!

Saturday December 4th - Fujairah

Today I did a tour of "the highlights of Fujairah", which a cynic might say shouldn't take very long – this little-known Emirate doesn't have much history or money to boast of. However, we ticked off the main sights – the distinctive-looking little Al Bidayah Mosque (the oldest mosque in the UAE – non-Muslims allowed inside); the beautiful long coastline; a busy Friday Market (confusingly, the Friday market here happens every day of the week) – if you want to buy bananas or carpets then this is the place for you; and finally the floodlit Fujairah Fort, built by the Portuguese in the 17th century.

With Tracy taking the fjord snorkelling tour, we can now safely say that we've seen everything there is to see in Fujairah.

December 3 - Abu Dhabi

Today was the National Day for the United Arab Emirates, which was formed 39 years ago. It's certainly been a fortunate few decades for this young country, as the petrodollars have poured in, and the skyscrapers have shot up.

Today I visited one of the most remarkable construction projects in Abu Dhabi - the amazing Grand Mosque. This multi-domed marble miracle is the third largest mosque in the world (the Top Two are in Saudi Arabia), and can accomodate 40,000 worshippers.

They won't reveal the budget for this opulent mosque, but no expense has been spared in its decoration - tons of gleaming white marble, the largest carpet in the world, the most expensive chandalier in the world (by Swarowski) etc etc. In spite of all this, somehow it didn't seem too over the top, and was impressive without being overwhelming.

Next, we drove around Yas Island and Saadayat Island, passing the Grand Prix Circuit and various sandy construction sites that will have the biggest this and the largest that (including a new Louvre and Guggenheim, complete with bizarre modern designs).

The celebrations for the National Day caused massive gridlock on the streets which curtailed my sightseeing activities, so Tracy was lucky that she was out of town, in the desert on a 4x4 safari in the dunes.

She was holding on tight as the sand-based roller coaster ride took her up the steep dunes and then slid to the bottom - only once did the jeep crunch into the ground and she was faced with the remnants of someone else's windscreen. The fairground ride was paused briefly to visit a camel farm where she observed that some of the camels had better dentistry than their owner.

December 1 - Dubai

Dubai is famous for its shopping and its over-the-top attractions, so today we combined the two at the huge Mall of the Emirates and the ridiculous SkiDubai.

To get there we caught the super-efficient, spanking new Dubai Metro - it proudly boasts that it's "the world's largest automated metro system built all in one go" (even though it's not finished). It's largely overground, so you get to see the the cartoon city sprawl in front of you as you zoom past all the traffic jams. As you travel, you're hit by how incredibly multi-cultural Dubai is - you share the train with locals in their full Arab regalia, Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos, Westerners and countless other nationalities (what unites them all is that they're all on their mobile phones constantly).

The Mall of the Emirates used to be the largest Mall outside of North America, but now it's only medium sized by Dubai standards - "only" 400 shops. Because of exchange rates, we've found the shopping to be quite pricey, so we managed to resist the worst of the retail therapy.

So, we ended up at the ludicrous SkiDubai (the world's largest indoor ski slope). The logic of building a ski resort in the desert is hard to fathom, but logic isn't something to enter Dubai's equation. So people ignore the 30C temperature outside to put on their gloves, hats and ski gear to enjoy a global warmingly good time. I think we'll save our skiing for real snow in real ski weather.

November 30th – Bahrain

The tiny island state of Bahrain has had oil wealth since the 1930s, so it's not got the same nouveau riche feel as Dubai or Abu Dhabi. It also hasn't got anywhere near the same amount of money as the Emirates, so it's not as flash and has a more "genuine" atmosphere, where you do actually see the locals out on the streets.
Even so, there's still an incredible amount of building and land reclamation going on here, so the outskirts have something of the feel of a building site, while the fact that the whole island is mostly sand, gives the place a fairly dusty feel.
We wandered around the huge souk, which was more aimed at the locals than tourists, and everyone seemed very friendly. We ended up in the Aladin's-Cave-Like Gold Centre, which was full of flashy jewellery and loads of natural pearls – before oil, pearls were the mainstay of the Bahraini economy and they still like to call the island, "The Pearl of the Arabian Gulf".

The Souk starts at the Bab Al Bahrain, the Gateway to Bahrain which was built by the British on the waterfront in the 1940s. These days the Gateway is hundreds of meters from the water, because Bahrain is expanding all the time through land reclamation. We went to the latest development, the Bahrain Financial Centre, an ultra modern marina with graceful sloping twin towers. It will be impressive when it's finished, but it was pretty dead in there at the moment.

Next we went to another iconic Bahrain Development, the World Trade Center Building, looking like a pair of upturned icicles with wind turbines between them – a sign that Bahrain is looking beyond oil for its power, and more importantly looking towards trade rather than oil for its economy. Judging by what we saw today, it's doing it in a more sustainable manner than Dubai.

November 29th – Close Encounter With The Axis of Evil

Not much to report from a fairly routine day at sea, consisting of much eating, two lectures and a little gymming.

The most exciting thing was that we were able to see Iran, part of the so-called "Axis of Evil", as we rounded the Straits of Hormuz. Rather alarmingly, the ship was approached by 2 heavily armed gunboats from the Iranian Navy, who came pretty close, had a look at us and fortunately left us to go on our way – enough to spook anyone who saw them.

November 28th – Royalty Spotting in Muscat

Today Muscat was welcoming rather more important visitors than just the passengers of the Silver Wind – to celebrate Sultan Qaboos' 40th anniversary of coming to power, various dignitaries from around the world had been invited, with the guest of honour being Queen Elizabeth II.

In reality, this meant that many of the roads were closed to allow the dignitaries' convoys to pass through, which meant delays and traffic jams for those wanting to go about the business of sightseeing. We avoided the worst of it, by heading to the outskirts of town to visit a couple of museums that brought to life the early history of Muscat and Oman. As we left one of the museums, an enormous cavalcade sped past, and a lady in a hat was spotted in the central limousine – whether this was the Queen or not, I don't know, but I'm claiming it as genuine Royal spot.

We were supposed to be having lunch at the palatial Al Bustan Hotel (one of the poshest hotels in the world), but unfortunately the Queen's visit meant that they cancelled our booking – seeing as it was the Queen, most of us took it in good spirit. So, we had a look around the sumptuous hotel anyway, before heading off to the Shangri-La instead (which was still pretty luxurious anyway).

At the next museum, I walked past a man who I recognised from the ship and said hello to him, and he said hello back. Then, I noticed that he had a film crew trailing behind him, and I realised I didn't know him from the ship, but from the news. It was Gerhard Schroeder, the former German Chancellor – I'm sure he was just as excited about seeing me, as I was to see him.