Valentine's Day in Bahrain

Dave is in Houston for two more weeks, so Valentine's Day was going to be quiet around here no matter what. But it was guaranteed to be quiet because of the protests and demonstrations planned here last night and all day today. I kept Davey home from school just to be safe. With the scale of what's happened in Tunisia and Egypt, you never know what could happen here.

This morning my friend called me about 9am after being out and said everything looked normal except for the very small amount of traffic. She called again later about noon saying that the police were out en force gearing up for the protests scheduled to happen in a few hours. She said she saw 10 police cars and more men than that and 20 cars and men outside the entrances to two villages she passed, holding bazookas. Apparently, they are not afraid to use force here.

I just watched a couple videos from last night posted to You Tube of people being fired on with tear gas and rubber bullets. From what I could see and reports seem to be, these were fairly peaceful protests. The protesters here often burn tires and wooden structures in the road to impede traffic and make a statement. I have heard of them throwing moltav cocktails, which do scare me. But my basic impression of all of this here is that the protesters will get no where. There are just not enough people in Bahrain to make much of a statement. There are a million or less people in the country and half of them, if they're lucky, are Bahraini and about 70% of those are the Shiite muslims who, reportedly, are the ones staging the protests. The government has quite a fair bit of money. It would be easy to squash any insurrection and judging from the strong police presence and force used so far, though not deadly, still tells me these guys aren't going to get anywhere.

I do support free and equal democracy. Even living here, its hard to get a feel for how much representation the people, especially the poor Shiites, have. But I do wish I didn't feel intimidated to leave my home and that my husband were here to keep me company.

As a side note, I decided to have a last-minute get-together with some gals from playgroup this morning to have the kids decorate valentine cookies. 3 ladies showed up and several more were planning on it until their husbands asked them to stay home.

Helpful Boys

Bahrain is so dusty (as I'm sure you could guess) that we have to clean our porches outside quite often. Davey loves to help...

Charlie also loves to be helpful, loving every time he can get a hold of a kleenex or a wipe that he can use to clean everything in sight.

Davey Should Live in Europe

You might find this a little distasteful to read, but I had to write it down...

Yesterday Davey pointed to my underarm and said, "What's that?"

Me: "Uhh... hair, Davey." I'm thinking: thanks for pointing that out. (It had been a few days since I'd shaved... at least it wasn't so bad it was totally obvious to him.)

Davey: "I want hair like that."

Me: "You'll get some when you get bigger. I cut mine off, though."

Davey, getting emotional: "Don't cut it off!! It looks nice!"

Last Few Days Exploring Salalah

More of the town of Mirbat. Not nearly so remote as Rakhyut but still felt just as back in time. I think this town has looked the same way for hundreds, probably thousands, of years.

Mirbat

Harbor in Mirbat

On the way home we had some good fun enjoying the dunes along the beach...

Nice jump Dave!

I love this picture! My three men :)

Charlie trying to figure it out

Davey got the hang of it

It was such a fun day of exploring

I think the dunes are beautiful

On the way home from Mirbat, we stopped at Khor Rori and to see the ruins of Sumhuram. Sumhuram was an important port city along the Frankincense trading trail dating back to the 4th century B.C.

View from far

More up close

My cute boys exploring the ruins

These sites we saw were amazing... so old and, like the rest of the region, seemed so untouched and accessible. We found a piece of a pot...

The pot shard we found

Up close

The port of Khor Rori in the background

This is the place LDS scholars believe to be the place Nephi built his ship.

Better view

Looking up the inlet, next to the city

View a little further down

I also forgot to mention that our kids had some adopted cousins we met at the hotel. They were amazing at playing with them and keeping them entertained that I actually got to relax and enjoy the sunshine even when Dave was in the room with Charlie to give him a nap. We happened to be on the same flight as them back to Muscat when we left... here's a pic of them hanging at the airport...

We absolutely loved our trip to Salalah. It was the perfect combination of relaxation and adventure.

Eid in Oman - Rakhyut & Mirbat

If you look at the last picture in the previous/first post about or trip to Oman, you can see most of the town of Rakhyut. It is tiny. It looked like a town with a population of maybe 100 or so. But probably more with the size of Arabic families. There were perhaps two restaurants and a mosque or two. So remote and tiny but so beautiful.

When we arrived, I was super hungry and feeling faint (being pregnant). I had to take a chance on one of the restaurants and let Dave try to find me something. I had some chicken and was happy not to get sick. But I mostly stuck to the rice he got me. This town, like Salalah, was super-conservative Muslim from its appearance. I didn't see a single female. I can't imagine living such a life always in the home, no public life at all. Especially with the town being located on such a beautiful beach!

Needless to say, I decided not to shed my clothes and wear my bathing suit on the beach. But the boys had a lot of fun playing in the sand and running waist-deep into the water. The beach had a super low grade decline into the water so it would have been hard to get deeper. They loved it.

The beautiful beach at Rakhyut

Playing in the mud

So untouched

In addition to the camel problem, this area also had a cow problem. So many everywhere just roaming and not looking in good health...

No Mooo! heard here... I think they were too weak

I wish I could have gotten a picture of the actual checkpoint to get the feel of the remoteness of the location and intimidating feel.

I settled for a picture of the sign.

You can see that it is literally up in the clouds.

A view down the steep mountainside just past the checkpoint. Both sides were steep like this.

A view of the mountainous drive. It all felt so remote.

Another day we took a day trip up the coast the other direction to check out the town of Mirbat, a fishing village.

The town is on the far end of the curving coasline, top right of the picture.

Isn't the water beautiful?

The tomb of a local saint, Bin Ali, and neighboring graves.

Davey being silly enjoying the veiws up the coast.

Charlie was sleeping in the car.

Some of the town of Mirbat.

Davey was so interested to see a Dhow boat up close. There were some locals on board that seemed to be inviting them onboard but Dave decided not to go on...

Some beautiful doors we found exploring the back streets

Admiring the architecture

More beautiful doors

More of Mirbat in the next post...

Eid in Oman

We love Oman. We had taken 2 vacations to Muscat since living in Bahrain and decided to go back to Oman again and explore Salalah, on the south coast, this time. There was a week long "Eid" or festivity or holiday, in November, so off we went! It was a great combination of relaxing at a nice resort and exploring the area.

Salalah is the second largest city in Oman, known for its frankincense trade and lush, greenness amidst all the surrounding desert. In the summer, it receives some of the monsoon rains from India. So it wasn't still super green and lush when we were there but definitely more naturally green than anything else I've seen in the Gulf.

And it is considered to be the land of Bountiful from the Book of Mormon where Nephi built the ship and his family sailed to the Americas. It was fun to research this aspect before going and then see it for ourselves.

Our hotel was decorated for the occasion

It was a great place to stay with kids with two pools geared just for them and a great playground and splash park.

Charlie not parting from his trains even in the pool.

This picture just screams of childhood joy and free-spiritedness

Charlie enjoying the splash park.

The slide was perfect for my little ones.

Davey had fun making friends at the pool and organizing water games for them all.

The pools were so great we only walked out to the beach once.

Just two minutes' drive from our hotel were some amazing ruins dating to before 2000BC. The city was a trade hub along the Frankincense Trail.

Part of Al Balid City

Evidence of the ancient city was sprinkled everywhere around the town, still so untouched and it was obvious that so much is still undiscovered. It amazes me to walk around these places and try to imagine life at that time.

A pretty mosque in town

Trying to capture some of the landscape

Enjoying some fresh coconut water from a streetside vendor

Charlie's turn

Another pretty mosque in town

For our first excursion, we took an afternoon drive down to Mughsail beach. The beaches are so beautiful and there's a blowhole where the water is said to jet up to 90 feet high. I say "said to" because both times we tried to catch it we must have timed it wrong. But it was still a beautiful spot to check out. And to people-watch. For the first time since living in the Middle East (!), we saw a group of about 20 muslim men lay out a blanket and perform their afternoon prayers.

The boys checking out a cave on the walk to see the blowhole.

A beautiful glance up the beach from the blowhole in Mughsail.

Another day we took a drive to the town of Rakhyut, which was very interesting and felt very adventurous as the town is located so close to Yemen (less than 15 miles) that you have to pass through a military checkpoint and present your passports. I must say I was intimidated.

See these switchbacks? It was quite a drive to Rakhyut.

The mountains we passed over were incredible. They seem to follow the coastline all along the southern part of Oman and you drive way up on the tops with dramatic steep drops down to the ocean on one side and valley on the other, also seeming to drop back to sea level.

Only in this part of the world...

And, seriously, this sign was needed. This part of Oman seemed to have a camel problem. There were camels everywhere. Some of them looked like they were taken care of and belonged to someone (rope reigns on them and healthier) but many/most bore no signs of ownership. There were seriously so many everywhere and the inhabitants of this region so sparse that I can't imagine someone able to keep track of them all and having a consistent or commercial use for them. Transporting any product of/from them would be so costly, this area is so remote.

Well, hello camel.

We were stopping all the time for these things!

Our first view of Rakhyut.

More on that in the next post...