Word: salalah
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...chopsticks restaurant in salalah, the capital of the Omani province of Dhofar, is no longer open, its "passable" food and "awful" service (as one unsympathetic guidebook had it) now just a sweet-and-sour memory. Yet only a few doors away, the splashiest new eatery in the forgotten, once glorious town is Chinese Cascade, which serves Mandarin prawn toast, cauliflower Manchurian and vegetable wontons. It's "The Authentic Chinese Restaurant," if you believe the sign, but when an unsuspecting visitor steps in, he finds that the waiters, the diners, the owners - everyone is Indian. "Here there are so many Pakistani...
...torpid, sand-colored town, with its bored Indian shopkeepers sitting outside foodstuff-and-luxuries stalls and camels grazing outside the (largely empty) Hilton Hotel, was once the Dhofar that Zheng He's ships (though not, it seems, the admiral himself) sought out, in 1432 on their seventh voyage. The Salalah Holiday Inn slumbers near the spot where old Chinese coins were once discovered. The classified section of the Oman Daily Observer reports that someone named Zou Shichui has lost a Chinese passport - and one wonders which part of limbo the unfortunate now inhabits. To retrace the Chinese travels in Arabia...
Known as the Magic Kingdom, Oman (estimated pop. 2 million) is a land of exceptional beauty and diversity. A 1,000-mile coastline arcs southward from the limestone cliffs of Musandam to the powdery beaches of Salalah, a major trading town in the monsoon-brushed province of Dhofar. Southwest of the former slave-trading port of Sur lies a 5,000-sq.-mi. sea of sand whose dune ridges rise as high as 350 ft. above the Wahiba desert floor. To the north, the Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountain) anchors the Hajar range. Mud-brick houses cling to its steep slopes...
Omani and Western planners fear that South Yemen, with additional East-bloc backing, might be able to launch a tank attack against the principal Omani airbase at Thamarit in the desert plain north of Salalah, the capital of the Dhofar. An armored column would need only five hours to reach Thamarit. That threat is one of the many contingencies that the U.S. R.D.F. is meant to deter and to thwart if it ever arises. Therefore the Jade Tiger maneuvers will probably have the U.S. Air Force landing large transports at Thamarit, which has one of the longest runways...
...started flowing in 1967, the year when past and present began to clash in Oman. Rebel groups had already mounted an insurrection to overthrow Sultan Said bin Taimur, then 56, a paranoid tyrant who hoarded gold from oil revenues in the cellar of his ancient castle in Salalah because he believed paper currency was worthless. Under his medieval rule, slavery was sanctioned, and no one could travel abroad without his permission. It was against the law for an Omani to wear spectacles or ride a bicycle. In the whole country there were only two post offices, three miles of asphalt...
| 1 |