Today is Day 3 of living in Oman and I have WiFi access at my apartment now so I think it's time for me to share my first impressions of the city of Sohar. Ok so first, it's not really a city. The best way that I can describe Sohar is that it's a bunch of random buildings in the desert connected by lots of really nicely paved roads. On my first day I asked where "downtown" was and I was told that Safeer Mall is probably the closest to a "downtown" I was going to get as it's the busiest place because Carrefour is located in it. This mall is where I got my Sim card on my first day and there was maybe 15 people in it, and the other teacher I was with, knew half of them. Sohar is small. I'm literally living in a small desert town. And everything is spaced out, tons of extra space everywhere. Taiwanese would go crazy with all this extra space, they'd easily fit a million people in the space between my apartment and my school (a 20 minute drive). Yes I have another long-ish commute to work, however the traffic here is much much different than in Taiwan. There is a main road that runs through Sohar and I think goes all the way to Dubai one way and to Muscat the other way. The speed limit on this road is 120km, and everybody drives 120 or faster. My car actually has a warning beeper that goes off if I exceed 120. I first discovered this warning beeper my first night in Oman when the school had a driver pick me up at the Muscat airport and drive me the 2 hours to Sohar. I was trying to sleep in the backseat but every few seconds a super annoying little beeper went off, I was literally about to loose my mind. I've only actually made my car beep twice. As of now I'm driving in the slow lane, trying to find my way around the city. The road ways are very unique, and I've never been to a city that's had roads designed like this before. As mentioned earlier, all roads are very nicely paved, I haven't seen a single pot hole yet. To get on to the main road you need to find a round-a-bout, and to switch directions you also need to wait until you reach a round-a-bout. I end up driving much farther than needed simply because I can't get off the main road until I reach a round-a-bout. There are service roads that run beside the main road, and you just need to know when to take the service roads or when to take the main road as they only connect at the round-a-bouts. Because of these round-a-bouts, there are no traffic lights. I haven't seen a single traffic light yet, all intersections are round-a-bouts. The speed limit on the service roads is 80 I think, but it's more like 100. The roads are designed to drive fast and drive further than necessary, it's like the designer had "gas guzzling" in mind. I'm going to see if I can lease a hybrid. Obviously.
Other than Sohar being a small desert town with crazy fast roads, there's also TONS of construction going on. Sohar looks like The Desert of Dreams, "if you build it, they will come." Who? I have no idea, because there's very few people here, but massive development going on. Major road construction, major apartment block and building construction, yet so much open desert. There's tons of shops and restaurants that run alongside the service roads almost like strip malls, but everything looks closed or in process of being built. It's a strange little city, very modern, but so very much in the random desert. As far as the people go, there are so many foreigners here, way more than in Kaohsiung. And everybody is really really nice. And EVERYBODY speaks English, I can't really understand what they are saying (yet), but it's English! More first impressions and photos to come later. I'm off to the Sohar Beach Resort (apparently THE place to be) to meet up with some co-workers and check out the beach. Oh one last thing, I saw a camel today :)
No comments:
Post a Comment