The Safari Bar

Recently, an Oman Forum member, Samsquatch, had convinced some of us to go and see his band, Earth Beat, play at the Grand Hyatt's Safari Bar.

I had stopped attending this bar a year or so ago because of the number of ladies of the night (or whatever you want to call them) that work the venue.

On a Monday night, myself and a group of friends decided to go and watch the band - and had a thoroughly great time! The band members know how to play their instruments, and were able to fulfil a bunch of our requests, some of them being a touch obscure. Perhaps next time I'll hit them with a request to play the Cure's Close to Me track, and see how they fare with that one!

What was entertaining about the night (other than the band and the company) was my rather weird interaction with a man in a mustard dishdasha. I was standing at the bar doing my best to attract the attention of one of the barmen, when I caught two eyes staring at me from across the bar. Admittedly I was feeling the effects of enjoying a few drinks and probably did a squint so that I could focus on who this person was that was staring at me so intently. I then realised it was a man staring at me. I just shifted my view, and thankfully a barman had finally decided to serve me.

Two minutes later, as I'm putting my change back in my wallet, and getting ready to take the drinks over to where my group of friends were sitting, I became aware of a man standing *very* close to me. It's the mustard man again. "Hello" he says, grabbing my hand (I thought he was going for my wallet) "how are you"? And so went the polite conversation I find myself having with various people all too frequently here. Finally, when I thought the conversation was over, after he had told me he works in the interior on rigs for PDO and only gets to spend half his time in Muscat, he drops this clanger on me: "Do you like Arab pussy"? Excuse me?! "Arab girls - you like? You like Arab pussy?" At which point this guy whips out his phone and promptly starts showing me pictures of women he's claiming to have bedded in various states of undress. I must admit the sheer shock of where the conversation went did take me by surprise but after 30 seconds or so I remembered why I was standing there in the first place, and wanted to go and return to my friends, so I politely said bye, and left.

Mustard man follows me to the table where my friends were (who had rather inconveniently decided to go dancing) and kept asking me for my number. I'd already given the guy a false name (par for the course for me I'm afraid, I never usually give my real name to weird people in bars), and was now struggling to remember the same fake number I had just given him. Finally he left me alone and went back to the bar.

And now for the real clanger. Half an hour later, I was in the toilets and thinking about going home, when again, I feel someone next to me. Mustard man, again. This time he's standing next to me at the next urinal, except he's not using it. He's staring at me, more specifically, my groin. I got out of there straight away, grabbed the wife and friend still left and legged it out of the bar.

So, just watch out for men in Mustard Dishdashas!

Have a nice weekend everyone, and have a great New Year's celebration.

le fin.