Southeast Asia Celebrity Cruise

When we moved to Oman, we made lists of places we would like to visit.  Then we quickly realized that there was no way we would see all those countries with limited vacation time during just a few years here.  Cruises to the rescue!  Cruises are a great way to see many new places with just 1 trip.

Since we are in Oman, there are certain places we would like to go because they are nearby or at least closer than they are from the States.  We knew that we wanted to go to some countries in Southeast Asia, but there are a lot to choose from!  We did some cruise searches (using sites such as expedia.com, cruises.com, and vacationstogo.com).  We then made a spreadsheet to help us compare options.  We tracked cruise line, dates, # of nights, ports of call, price per night, and any additional notes such as deals or activities for the kids.  With this list, it was much easier to narrow down our options, discuss our favorites, and choose a long Celebrity Cruise Southeast Asia Holidays Cruise that had a very low price per day (we wanted less than $100/person/day, this one was well below that goal).

I can send you our spreadsheet if you'd like a visual.  It's nothing special, and it may take some explaining as it is so bare bones.  But it works for us because we are both Engineers and love spreadsheets.  It really did make it much easier to compare our options.

Before I get to the bullet points of our stops, I'd like to stress how much we loved this cruise.  This was our first Celebrity Cruise, and it did not disappoint.  The food was amazing.  The staff was wonderful.  The captain was hilarious.  The kid's club had many activities and kept our kids excited to go even though they have a small area.  We were scheduled to have 2 "chic" nights for dinner, but we ended up with 3 given the special holidays.  They did the holidays right with special foods, Santa coming for a visit, and New Years hats.  This was a top vacation.  Enjoy!

My family with our waiters.  It's fun getting to know them as the days pass.

December 2019

As you may or may not know, expat life is actually a lot like regular life.  I deal with oddities like no Amazon, signs and menus in another language, and some uncertainty about what I will find at the grocery store.  But, I encounter those as a part of normal things like shopping (in my case more "window shopping") online, eating out, and grocery shopping.  It can be quite mundane.  With that in mind, December started like any other (though admittedly warmer).  The kids went to school, they had some typical end of term days of assessments and reviews, and they had a Winter Fair and program.  We decorated the house for Christmas and enjoyed Christmas decorations as we would see them at hotels, restaurants, or the grocery store.  By the way, Christmas decorations in hotels is what "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" means here in Oman as well as many parts of Asia.

For school, J had an explorer day where he dressed up like an explorer (space explorer in our case because I already had the costume) and did fun recaps of what they had learned about Tudor Explorers this term.  E had a decades day where all the kids dressed up to represent a decade of the 1900s to wrap up their learning about the 20th century.  E went as a boy from the 30s, and he took a cool board game we made with trivia questions dealing with the 30s.

E ready for 30s day at school.

November 2019

I know I've been gone a while.  When summer arrived, I was intent upon posting at least once a week, so I wrote a bunch of posts and scheduled them to post.  Problem was, I didn't really like any of them.  I didn't have anything I wanted to write about concerning Oman.  It didn't feel genuine to post about Oman while I was in the States.  Then we came back to Oman, school, life, and some rather demanding projects right from the start.  I was overwhelmed.  I was stressed.  I was not a happy camper.

Life settled down around mid-october into its new rhythm.  But I still didn't get back into blogging.  I thought about it, I even wrote a couple of posts in my head, but I never put "pen to paper" (or is it fingers to keys?).

My goal is to re-start with fewer posts "required" of myself.  Maybe something like a monthly update unless I have something cool to share (a trip, for example).  I also hope to go back and post about our time in Ohio this summer or our trip to Salalah over our mid-term break or our snorkeling with whale shark adventure.  But those will come when I have time.  For now, the November update:

November in Oman is National Day celebrations.  The streets are decorated.  The stores are decorated.  Pictures of the Sultan grace buildings, stores, and cars.  This year, we celebrated the 49th National Day.  To commemorate the day, there was a military parade, there are fireworks, there is singing and dancing that pops up all over the place, and schools tend to celebrate in their own special ways.  At BSM, the children were allowed to come in traditional Omani dress or dressed in the traditional dress of their home country.  Last year, I sent my boys to school in Texas Rangers shirts and shorts.  This year, they wore their dishdashas and hats that we had picked up last year.  They were definitely a bit small almost a year later, but we made them work.  Underneath, they were US shirts from Mamaw and Papaw.  Good thing because J got hot and removed the dishdasha sometime during the day.  The school day started with an assembly with singing, dancing, and musical performances.  Neither of us was able to attend, which is a bit of a sore point for me.

My boys in their dishdashas and massar for J and kuma for E.

Millennium Resort Mussanah (Again)

For a little summer trip before going home, we decided to head out to the Millennium Resort in Mussanah again.  It's a good little get away trip from Muscat.  It takes about 1.5 hours to get here, the rates for all inclusive are really good, the internet is fast and everywhere, and the food is phenomenal.

Ready to go zip lining!

Waiting for the other two to finish their last trip on the "hamster wheel."

Sama al Wasil desert camp

I heard about desert camps when we moved to Oman, and I knew that I wanted to try one at some point.  The first weekend of Easter Break seemed like an opportune time.  We had no plans to leave Oman, so a staycation of sorts was a perfect fit.  I was a bit worried it would be hot, but we lucked out with beautiful weather.  It actually rained both nights of our stay and we had cloud cover most of our full day in the desert.

The camp as seen from the top of the dune.

Sama al Wasil is a desert camp located near Wasil, Oman.  It is in the middle of the Sharqiyah Sands. We booked this hotel via booking.com.  Sama al Wasil prides itself on being eco-friendly.

Wadi Bani Khalid

We started our Easter Break heading out into the desert with a stop at Wadi Bani Khalid.  Wadi Bani Khalid is a wonderful wadi here in Oman that is around a 3 hour drive from Muscat.  The beginning part is easily accessible, and the farther back parts are still accessible with just a little bit of scrambling.

I believe this was the first pool.  It is a wide open space.

Millennium Resort in Mussanah

Over Easter Break, one of the places we visited was the Millennium Resort in Mussanah.  Mussanah, Oman is about 1.5 hours northwest of us along the coast.  We stayed there for 3 nights in lovely relaxation, food, and fun.

This resort was recommended to us by a man Stephen does work for at PDO.  Then a friend of mine was looking into staying there with her family over the Easter Break.  She found a great deal, so we decided that we had to check it out.  She utilized a resident deal and an Entertainer App discount.  I don't have the app as you have to pay for it, and I am incredibly cheap.  Plus, she called for deals, and calling is well outside of my comfort zone.  The deal we did use is found on their website.  It was an all-inclusive option that required us to stay for a minimum of 3 nights.

Beach Camping at Bandar Khairan

The first weekend of April, our family took a last minute trip to Bandar Khairan to camp for the night.  It was probably one weekend too late for camping.  It was hot hiking in and worse packing up and heading out.  But the night was full of wonderful memories.

It all started with our plan to camp Friday night being upended by remember that I had to attend a baptism class for J that night.  So toward the end of eating dinner on Wednesday night (no school for Prophet's Ascension), we said, "Why not just go now?"  Thirty minutes later, the car was packed, and we were out the door.  We had our tent, our pillows, our sleeping bags, a couple flashlights, books, some playing cards, swim gear, change of clothes, and a bag of water and snacks.  The advantage of leaving after dinner was that we didn't have to worry about cooking dinner.  Breakfast the next morning was going to be an assortment of breads and fruit.  Easy peasy.

My boys were ready to camp!

E in Nizwa

An advantage of private schools is big, overnight field trips.  At our school, they are referred to as residential trips.  Is this a British phrase?  I don't know.  But I know it isn't just a British thing to go on trips because my sister went to a private school for a few years growing up, and she always went on ever larger end-of-year trips.  To keep me from being sad about this, I went to my Grandma and Pa's house for a week by myself.  Hmmm... I see a Throwback Thursday post I could do with that.  I did go on school trips, but band & orchestra trips and soccer tournaments seem different, to me.

My adventurer

Anyways, year 4 children (third graders) are the first to go on a trip, then the trips get a bit longer each year.  Year 5 children go to Nizwa.  Nizwa, as you may remember from my previous post about our family trip there, is a city in the interior of Oman.  It is 1.5-2 hours by car from Muscat.  The school hired buses to drive the kids to Nizwa, then they had to change to smaller buses to get up the mountains to their camp.  By camp, I mean hotel.  But these are kids, and it's fun to refer to it as a camp.  The school had rented out the entire facility.  It's not overly large, but renting the entire facility allows for better security measures for the kids.  They shared rooms 4 or 5 kids to a room, and the teachers came around to make sure they were settling down for bed.

Nizwa

For the boys’ mid term break, we stayed close to Muscat and visited Nizwa.  The trip had many problems, but it was still fantastic.  I want to go back and do some other activities that we couldn’t do (because we popped a tire and came home on a spare).

Nizwa was once a capital of Oman, and it is situated in the desert about 1.5 hours from Muscat.  It sits along a dry river bed.  This feels extremely sad.  Google Maps will still show the river (wadi) in blue, but it is bone dry.

Our first day in town, we got a quick lunch in Nizwa, did some Google searches, then headed to Manah to check out the fort and old village around al Fiqain.  Wow!  The fort was closed while we were there, but the village is always open.  This was a great stop and a highlight for all of us.  J even told us that he loves history and wanted to go to more places to learn about history. 

The flat on the fort through the ruins.

Dubai Wrap Up

Let's finish up our Dubai posts because I'm ready to move on...

Our second day in Dubai, we actually left the emirate of Dubai for the emirate of Sharjah.  We had found a Groupon for tickets with lunch included at Pearl’s Kingdom Waterpark.

Sharjah, to me, seemed much more like your typical big city.  It has regular looking skyscrapers and some traffic.  The waterpark is in a park area of town next to a theme park that wasn’t open and across a main road from Flag Island.  I wanted to go to Flag Island, but we were hot and tired by the time we left.

Pearl's Kingdom entrance

Dubai Dhow Cruise

Our first night in Dubai, we took a dhow canal dinner cruise (another Groupon find).  A dhow is a traditional ship used in this region.  You can find all sorts of dhow trips both here in Oman and in the UAE.  In fact, when looking on Groupon at our options, we had many to choose from.  We originally chose a different one just to find out that they were currently not operating.  We were able to cancel that Groupon the same night to go with a different option.

Family picture at our dinner table.

Family picture with the waterfall bridge.

Dubai Aquarium

Oh wow, this aquarium was amazing!  Okay, it would be topped by the Georgia Aquarium, but this one is also very cool.  I would definitely pay to do the tunnel again.

We found a Groupon which saved us 30-40% says Stephen.  With it, we had access to the tunnel, the underwater zoo, and the behind the scenes tour.

Picture of us from the aquarium.

Dubai Overview

Dubai is the largest city in the United Arab Emirates.  It is in the emirate of Dubai.  On our trip, we went to Dubai and Sharjah.

Americans can visit the UAE without a visa.  This is great and saves you some money.  You will all need visas to visit us in Oman, sorry.  An Oman tourist visa costs $50 for a 30 day or around $13 for a 10 day if we can learn how to get one of those.  The 30 day option, at least, is easy online.  You can get them on arrival as US citizens, but I don’t encourage that because “I had a bad experience.” (Name that random movie quote)

Back to Dubai, it is 4-5 hours to drive there for us or a short hour long flight where you get in the air, they serve you a drink and snack then start collecting to head back down before you’ve possibly had time to finish your snack.  Yes, we walked off the plane carrying our trash because we weren’t done when they collected trash.  The flight is that short.