Kara and Nate Buchanan vlog about day five of their Oman trip. They open by asking viewers to vote in the Shorty Awards (travel category) through February 22. The vlog shows waking up at a traditional desert camp, deciding to drive back to Muscat via a scenic coastal road despite an extra rental-kilometer charge, encountering goats and small towns, visiting a landscaped sinkhole (noting a Casey Neistat connection), and finishing with a hotel check-in and a traditional Omani seafood dinner (biryani with king fish, hummus, chapati). The hosts comment on the food, the quiet/odd restaurant experience, and travel tips for viewers planning trips to Oman.
Questions this video answers
January 30, 2018
February 22
Day five
Fish with biryani rice (king fish fry), plus hummus and chapati
Chapters
Before we start today's vlog, we thought we would remind you or let you know if you haven't heard yet, that we were nominated for Shorty Award in the travel category.
But we need your help. We need you to vote if we're gonna win. And we wanted to say a special thank you to a few people who we've seen voting on Twitter already. Thank you so much. Shelby. Kim Ellis, florist. Glenn. Larry. We really appreciate the support.
You can vote every day until February 22nd, and you can share it on Twitter and Facebook to get more votes. And if we're a finalist.
And if we go to New York, maybe we'll win.
Play it, play it.
Today is day five in Oman. The fog has lifted. It's turned into an absolutely beautiful day. This morning we woke up at a traditional bedwing camp in the middle of the desert. We had a delicious breakfast. Don't think it gets much better than this.
It really doesn't. I seriously love the desert. I mean, I wouldn't want to be stranded here, but like this. It is so cool and the sand is so silky soft. It's nothing like beach sand. It's like really fine silky sand.
Just love, like, the quiet. Yeah.
But today we're leaving the desert and we're driving back to Muscat. We have a few more things we want to do in the city before we leave. And if we can find the restaurant that we're looking for, we're going to have a super authentic Omani dinner tonight.
Let's go. It's one of the few times our rolly wheel suitcases don't work out so well back to civilization. Yeah.
We just got dropped off back at our car in Badiah, and now we have what should have been a three hour drive back to Muscat. But we just had a team meeting before we started driving and decided that we are canceling all of our plans for today and changing them all. So it's going to take a bit longer now.
So the original plan was to drive directly back to Muscat the exact same way we came and go see the Grand Mosque and the opera house because those are like the two big sights that you're supposed to see in Muscat. But there is a coastal road that'll probably add an extra, I don't, maybe two or three hours of driving that we could take. And we decided that's what we would rather do than rushing back to the city.
The reason this is kind of a big deal is because this rental car charges an Extra fee for every kilometer. You go over 200 kilometers a day.
And we're already pushing that, and so.
We'Re adding a lot of kilometers. But we decided we're way more excited about this plane in, and we're just going to take our time getting back to Muscat and hopefully have a really cool drive.
I definitely was not expecting to see a McDonald's in the middle of the desert. Wasn't sure if it was a mirage.
Just kidding.
Hey, buddy. Look at all of these goats just hanging out. So we just passed through the little town of Tiwi, and when I'd originally looked at the map this morning, that was, like, the biggest town that I'd seen on the coast on the way to Muscat. So I thought maybe that's where we would stop for lunch. But as we were driving through, there really wasn't much of anything, so we decided to keep going. The one thing that I do know that's on our route home is this sinkhole. It's supposed to be, like this giant sinkhole filled with water. Looked really cool line. So that's what we're trying to find now. And now it's looking like lunch might be our leftover dates and some banana chips that we picked up at the gas station.
So this is not at all what I expected. I just expected to drive into the middle of nowhere and just see this hole in the earth, but it's like they've built a park around it. Yeah.
And it has palm trees and flowers, and it's beautiful. It's very nice sidewalk. We were greeted by a very nice local man.
There was a fence around it, like this guy in this little house. And I was like, ah, we're gonna have to pay for this.
Nope, it's all free.
Oh, he's not yelling at us.
Whoa.
My steps are huge. Can you imagine being here when this thing just fell in the earth?
This is huge.
I feel like there's going to be a lot of Googling when we get Internet again. I'm just going to have to make some text.
Hello.
Look how deep it is.
So the real reason we came here is because we had seen this sinkhole in one of Casey Neistat's videos. But we had no idea it was.
An oman until I started doing research a few days ago and figured out that this is the massive cliff that he jumped from in his Just do it Nike video that he made, like, years ago.
We will not be doing that.
No.
I also don't think this wall was here when he did that.
Yeah.
But just getting to that ledge, I don't think I could get there. No way I would jump. 100%.
We're just standing up above the wedge trying to decide if this wall wasn't here and we were allowed to do this if we could make ourselves.
No, it's, like, so gravelly and inclined. Like, just getting to that part where you would jump. I don't think I could get that.
Yeah, that would be super sketch.
It's making me feel weird.
You just really can't get any true perspective with the camera from up here, but.
All right, now we have two hours till we get back to Muscat.
Hello.
Bye.
He said, cristiano.
At the roundabout, take the second exit.
We just got back to our hotel in Muscat. We're going to get checked in, and then we are going out for some traditional Omani food. Not Syrian this time. Omani.
We made it.
This is amazing. He just pointed us in this little room and told us to take off our shoes and sell the floor.
Let's see what's on the menu. Salad, fresh juice, sweets, seafood.
Chicken.
And there's pictures, which is always helpful.
Can we have the.
The biryani rice with king fish fry. Okay. And then hummus. Hummus. Yes. Okay. And. Yeah, that's all. Thank you very much. Welcome.
Thank you.
I guess you get your own private room.
It's just us. Maybe in this whole restaurant.
I wish there was a little Omani family in here with us.
We need somebody to show us how.
To eat this food.
Hello.
Ah, thank you.
So Oman is on the coast, so it has a lot of seafood. And we went to the fish market the other day, but we haven't actually had any seafood in Oman yet. So we ordered the fish with biryani rice, which is supposed to. To be a super local meal. And of course, hummus and bread, because it is so good. And this chapati bread is fresh and warm. Oh, and came with this red sauce that I haven't seen yet.
It smells like salsa.
Yes.
This is about to be my favorite meal ever. Fish is, like, nice and crispy. The rice has all these little goodies in it. I don't know what they are going to be.
Great.
We also heard that you eat with your hands here, but they brought us overware, and I tried to ask him, do you eat the rice with your hands?
With the fork?
With the fork, yeah.
Thank you.
Maybe I'll eat the fish with my hands. This fish is super meaty. I think you're supposed to eat with the rice, but I'm just going to try.
So we know some people watch our videos to, like, plan their own trip. And if you're planning your trip to Oman, this next little part of the video is just for you. The food at the restaurant was really good, but that was, like, one of the weirdest experiences I've ever had eating somewhere.
It was extra weird because we're the only ones in there. Like, maybe it wouldn't have been that way if it was super crowded and.
Normal and, like, it was just kind of, like, dark. And it looked like somebody had had a food fight in our room before we came in there. And the guy who was, like, serving us our food was in another room and he was, like, clearing mucus out of his throat the whole time. And since we were the only ones in there, like, we could hear it. But the weird thing is, like, we came here because we read a lot of good things about it online, and Mark Wiens, who is like a food expert, suggested coming here.
The food was good.
It was delicious. But maybe we just hit it at a bad time. It is.
It wasn't really the experience we were hoping for.
8:45, maybe that's late for eating in Oman.
It's late for us. I'm sleepy.
I don't know. Anyway, so just, like, do whatever you want when you come here. But that was our experience.
