Wadis, Peaks, Souqs and Sands: Oman 2025

[1022]

The Sultanate of Oman has been on the bucket list for quite some time, but never quite reached the top of places to visit … until now. As a tourist destination it offers incredible landscapes from coral reefs, beaches and fjords to rugged mountains and desert sands as well as cities with rich culture, history and architecture from ancient ruins to the contemporary Sultan Qaboos Mosque in Muscat. I’m looking forward to sharing some of the highlights with AFF readers.


Collage of Oman highlights from the web

Booking

Several months ago 1022+1 and I decided to block much of April 2025 in our calendars for an overseas trip given the favourable placement of public holidays vis-a-vis annual leave required for a decent trip. I then promptly cobbled together flights for us from SYD-MNL in early April on QF points (him) and redeemed VA points on SQ for me due to lack of 2 seat availability on any flights on suitable dates. I was able to secure two seats on QF20 for our return flight to Sydney at the end of the month.

The plan was then to use to Manila as a inexpensive jumping off point for relatively affordable paid J flights to yet-to-be-determined far-flung places.

So then, where to from Manila? We looked at Portugal thanks to decent cash fares in J on EY to Lisbon, though it didn’t fully grab me for an April trip as the weather might still be a bit cool for beaches and swimming. We also considered Montenegro because it’s a country neither of us knew much about but once we did a bit of research, realised it has a huge amount of appeal. That would have entailed a ME3 flight to Rome or Milan then connection by land or LCC to Podgorica. Though in the meantime we spent a fair bit of money on another trip at the end of 2024 plus a few other expenses, so the “cheap” circa $4k return fares from Manila to Europe weren’t quite so appealing.

Then in October 2024, Oman Air redemptions became available on QFF. Curiosity led me to look at availability between Manila and Muscat. Despite a few QF website glitches, there were plenty of flights with 2 J seats on days that fit our plans. Slight problem was that we didn’t have quite enough QFF points between us for MNL-MCT return for two. I booked us together on MNL-MCT and +1 on MCT-MNL using up almost all our combined Qantas points at the time. Fortunately our booking coincided with with an AC Aeroplan points sale, so I bought 50-odd thousand points and booked for myself via the Air Canada website (painless) for the MCT-MNL leg, on the same flight as +1’s QFF redemption.

Itinerary Snapshot
All flights are in J, including domestic flights in Oman, apart from my final SYD-MEL which is in Y with a classic upgrade request pending.

Initial Outbound:
Me: MEL-SIN-MNL (SQ218 A350-900 Longhaul config and SQ910 A350-900 Regional Config)
1022+1: SYD-MNL (QF19 A332)

Remainder all together:
Manila: 5 nights at Fairmont Makati

MNL-MCT (WY844 787-9)
Muscat: 5 nights at Movenpick
Jabal Akhdar: 1 night Alila Jabal Akhdar Resort
Nizwa: 3 nights House 76
Jebel Shams: 2 nights Sama Al-Khutaim Heritage House
Muscat: 1 night Novotel MCT Airport Hotel

MCT-KHS (WY 737-800)
Khasab: 3 nights Atana Musandam
KHS-MCT (WY 737-800)

Muscat: 1 night Novotel Airport Hotel

MCY-MNL (WY843 787-9). *edit: MCT-MNL
Manila: 1 night Fairmont Makati
MNL-SYD (QF20 A332)



GCM overview

In true AvGeek form, our initial flights aren't together due to redemption availability. But 1022+1 these days is totally on board with the proposition that occasionally flying a day apart is worth it for champagne and flat beds rather than the whY alternative. There’s also the added complication that we split our time between Melbourne and Sydney at the moment and so MEL is my start and end point for this trip and SYD is his.

Some of the things I’m looking forward to on the trip (in no particular order) include:

• My first time on SQ J in more than 15 years (last time was upper deck on a 747-400!)
• Scrambling and swimming in wadis (deep gorges/waterholes)
• Hikes in the mountains
• Dhow cruising in the “Fjords” of the Musandam Peninsula
• Souks in Muscat
• Pinto Art Museum in Manila
• The Oman Air J lounge in Muscat
• A night in the spectacular looking Alila Resort in the mountains
• Middle Eastern food and hospitality
• Snorkelling and/or diving in the Persian Gulf

So buckle up and prepare for departure in less than a week on my second AFF TR

 

[Pushka]

The Sultanate of Oman has been on the bucket list for quite some time, but never quite reached the top of places to visit … until now. As a tourist destination it offers incredible landscapes from coral reefs, beaches and fjords to rugged mountains and desert sands as well as cities with rich culture, history and architecture from ancient ruins to the contemporary Sultan Qaboos Mosque in Muscat. I’m looking forward to sharing some of the highlights with AFF readers.

View attachment 437528
Collage of Oman highlights from the web

Booking

Several months ago 1022+1 and I decided to block much of April 2025 in our calendars for an overseas trip given the favourable placement of public holidays vis-a-vis annual leave required for a decent trip. I then promptly cobbled together flights for us from SYD-MNL in early April on QF points (him) and redeemed VA points on SQ for me due to lack of 2 seat availability on any flights on suitable dates. I was able to secure two seats on QF20 for our return flight to Sydney at the end of the month.

The plan was then to use to Manila as a inexpensive jumping off point for relatively affordable paid J flights to yet-to-be-determined far-flung places.

So then, where to from Manila? We looked at Portugal thanks to decent cash fares in J on EY to Lisbon, though it didn’t fully grab me for an April trip as the weather might still be a bit cool for beaches and swimming. We also considered Montenegro because it’s a country neither of us knew much about but once we did a bit of research, realised it has a huge amount of appeal. That would have entailed a ME3 flight to Rome or Milan then connection by land or LCC to Podgorica. Though in the meantime we spent a fair bit of money on another trip at the end of 2024 plus a few other expenses, so the “cheap” circa $4k return fares from Manila to Europe weren’t quite so appealing.

Then in October 2024, Oman Air redemptions became available on QFF. Curiosity led me to look at availability between Manila and Muscat. Despite a few QF website glitches, there were plenty of flights with 2 J seats on days that fit our plans. Slight problem was that we didn’t have quite enough QFF points between us for MNL-MCT return for two. I booked us together on MNL-MCT and +1 on MCT-MNL using up almost all our combined Qantas points at the time. Fortunately our booking coincided with with an AC Aeroplan points sale, so I bought 50-odd thousand points and booked for myself via the Air Canada website (painless) for the MCT-MNL leg, on the same flight as +1’s QFF redemption.

Itinerary Snapshot
All flights are in J, including domestic flights in Oman, apart from my final SYD-MEL which is in Y with a classic upgrade request pending.

Initial Outbound:
Me: MEL-SIN-MNL (SQ218 A350-900 Longhaul config and SQ910 A350-900 Regional Config)
1022+1: SYD-MNL (QF19 A332)

Remainder all together:
Manila: 5 nights at Fairmont Makati

MNL-MCT (WY844 787-9)
Muscat: 5 nights at Movenpick
Jabal Akhdar: 1 night Alila Jabal Akhdar Resort
Nizwa: 3 nights House 76
Jebel Shams: 2 nights Sama Al-Khutaim Heritage House
Muscat: 1 night Novotel MCT Airport Hotel

MCT-KHS (WY 737-800)
Khasab: 3 nights Atana Musandam
KHS-MCT (WY 737-800)

Muscat: 1 night Novotel Airport Hotel

MCY-MNL (WY843 787-9)
Manila: 1 night Fairmont Makati
MNL-SYD (QF20 A332)


View attachment 437529
GCM overview

In true AvGeek form, our initial flights aren't together due to redemption availability. But 1022+1 these days is totally on board with the proposition that occasionally flying a day apart is worth it for champagne and flat beds rather than the whY alternative. There’s also the added complication that we split our time between Melbourne and Sydney at the moment and so MEL is my start and end point for this trip and SYD is his.

Some of the things I’m looking forward to on the trip (in no particular order) include:

• My first time on SQ J in more than 15 years (last time was upper deck on a 747-400!)
• Scrambling and swimming in wadis (deep gorges/waterholes)
• Hikes in the mountains
• Dhow cruising in the “Fjords” of the Musandam Peninsula
• Souks in Muscat
• Pinto Art Museum in Manila
• The Oman Air J lounge in Muscat
• A night in the spectacular looking Alila Resort in the mountains
• Middle Eastern food and hospitality
• Snorkelling and/or diving in the Persian Gulf

So buckle up and prepare for departure in less than a week!

Oman is a stunning country. We loved it. The mosque is out of this world. The wadis are stunning. And it's so clean - as a legal requirement of the older Sultan. And then there's the Souk. And camels. Camels everywhere. I have photos just like the ones you got from the web. It's that beautiful.

 

[drron]

MCY-MNL (WY843 787-9)
Manila: 1 night Fairmont Makati
MNL-SYD (QF20 A332)

You had me excited with your MCY - MNL flight. Thought it might open up a lot of possibilites.

 

[1022]

You had me excited with your MCY - MNL flight. Thought it might open up a lot of possibilites.

Hahaha! First of many typos with my clumsy fingers, no doubt

 

[n7of9]

Looking forward to this (I'm running out of places to go )

 

[Scash]

On board! I’ve never really thought about Oman but definitely interested now. Looking forward to the rest of your TR.

 

[I love to travel]

Will be interested to hear your thoughts on Oman Air

 

[Seat0B]

I’m with @Pushka on this - Oman is totally stunning. I’m really looking forward to seeing all the places you visit.

 

[1022]

And so it begins, with cold churros in the fairly underwhelming Melbourne Silverkris lounge.


Despite the international terminal being busy when I arrived at around 22:15, it took 10 minutes flat to get from the value car park bus drop off in front of QF T1 arrivals to SQ J check in and bag drop and through security and eGate border control. I reckon that’s close to a record for me departing Australia!

A quick stop to buy new duty free earbuds to replace a pair I left behind in Tokyo last year and I made a beeline down to the basement lounge precinct. The SQ lounge is on the smaller side but never got totally full ahead of the flight. And as I type people are starting to make their final trips to the facilities prior to boarding which is scheduled to commence in about 15 minutes at 00:05 for our 12:45 departure.

According to EF, 52E is the only empty seat on the whole flight in J, PE and Y. So cabin crew will be kept busy no doubt on the overnight 8 hour trot to Singapore

 

[SuePa]

Bon voyage!
I'm looking forward to your trip.

 

[Flyfrequently]

Am on board @1022 - enjoy!

 

[1022]

Flight: SQ218 MEL-SIN
Aircraft: A350-900 (Long Haul config)
Tail No: 9V-SMO (7 years old)
Seat: 14A
Sch Dep/Actual Dep: 00:35 / 00:25
Sch Arr/Actual Arrival: 5:30 / 4:48

Given the fact that this flight departed well after my usual bed time, my intention was to try to squeeze as much sleep out of the time in the air as possible. So no SQ book the cook for a 1am lobster Thermidor and no leisurely meandering through the wine list.

I left the lounge at about 11:55 for the advertised 12:05 boarding time. By the time I got to the gate they were calling the final economy class group up to board, so it had obviously started a fair bit earlier than scheduled. Thankfully the priority lane was well signposted - at the end of the well organised queuing area rather than over the podium (hello QF!!) and an agent was posted there to direct people to the correct queue according to class of travel or status.

I was greeted upon boarding and shown to my seat. As mentioned upthread, this was my first time on this SQ product. My first impression was how tall and … chunky … the seat modules are. My second impression was that a mother daughter combo who were watching AFL in the lounge on speakerphone (grrrrrrrr) and calling a friend about the match so all could hear their analysis of play (grrrrrrrr) were seated very close by (grrrrrrrrr). Their excitement for what seemed to be their first trip in J was endearing though and a good reminder never to take this stuff for granted.

A stream of cabin crew came through the cabin each playing a unique park in the kabuki theatre of an SQ pre-departure scene. Drinks were proffered. I chose champagne. Hot towels were distributed by one and collected by another. Those who had booked the cook had their meal choices and timing confirmed and then orders and preferences were taken from everyone else.

I forgot to take a picture of the menu for this flight but it was a choice of dinner items or breakfast items, encouragement being to eat once in the overnight flight according to one’s preference. I think this is a really good service flow given the awkward timing of this 7-ish hour flight.

I opted to just request the continental breakfast prior to landing and a cup of chamomile tea after takeoff.



Doors were closed by about 12:20 and we shortly began our pushback and short taxi to runway 27 for a departure to the west. The neighbouring CX A350 reminded me of how much I like the look of this aircraft and the powerful yet whisper quiet takeoff remind me of how much I enjoy flying on it. This was only my third flight on the A350. My first two were recorded in my previous TR documenting my RTW trip in 2023. Tragically, one of those aircraft, JAL’s JA-13XJ was the A350 destroyed in the HND runway collision that occurred in January 2024.

Barely 5 minutes after the seatbelt sign was turned off, pre-ordered meals and drinks started emerging from the galley. Perhaps the efficiency of SQ service is one of the reasons it is often described as impersonal and robotic. There’s no time for small talk and pleasantries when working so quickly. I downed my tea, flipped my seat into bed mode, took an outer layer of clothes off that I was wearing over the top of BA F PJs that I’d changed into in the lounge shower suite and settled into sleep.

I decided that I’m a fan of the SQ long haul seat, both in seat mode and in bed mode. The width of the seat definitely feels luxurious and the craftsmanship, materials and attention to design detail are all excellent. The sleeping surface is much more comfortable than a customary reclining flatbed, despite the slight inconvenience of having to flip the backrest down. There’s also the positioning of the retractable seatbelt while sleeping. Not once during the night did it feel like it restricted movement or press uncomfortably the way a normal metal buckle over the hips often does when lying flat. The footwell was wide enough for me and the sleeping surface had plenty of space to spare length-wise. As a side sleeper can see that you might want to pick your seat depending on which side you prefer to lie on to better contour to the curve of the seat in front.

I slept solidly for a few hours, had a toilet break and then slept again. I’m not sure exactly how long both halves of my sleep were because I think my phone adjusted timezones at some point during the night. I was woken by an FA saying that breakfast would be served shortly. This was despite having my DND light on. I must have been in a fairly deep sleep because I was initially a bit surprised that we only had about 80 minutes until landing, thinking they were waking people up somewhere over central WA for some reason! As it was, we were over the Indonesian archipelago and bouncing around in some light equatorial chop. Hot drinks couldn’t be served while the seatbelt sign was on, but crew were otherwise free to continue service and pax weren’t being stopped from using the lav. This somewhat lax approach to the seatbelt sign surprised me slightly after the amount of publicity SQ got after that mid-air turbulence incident a year or two ago over the Bay of Bengal which probably occurred around the same point in the flight as this.



Eventually the seatbelt sign was switched off for 10-15 minutes at the top of descent and coffee was delivered in a paper cup. After that, final landing preparations were made and we landed gracefully on to a wet runway in Singapore and had a short taxi to the gate which was on the F concourse of T2 - the same concourse that my Manila flight would be departing from in a bit under 4 hours.

This short red eye passed quickly and completely unremarkably. Service - as mentioned - was efficient and polite to the point of obsequiousness but unmemorable. The wide seat and unique bed were both very comfortable. My only quibble was with the IFE. The giant screen is nice to look at, though I only looked at the moving map on the IFE and that wasn’t for long. The non-touch screen interface was very annoying to navigate - almost as if the hand controller buttons and actions were a complete afterthought. Someone who knows SQ better than I do can chime in perhaps. Is it actually a touch screen system and my screen wasn’t working? Or it is it just a PITA of a system to use?

Next up, SQ SilverKris lounge in T3.

 

[1022]

Singapore Transit: SilverKris Lounge T3

Despite the fact that I my flights both used gates in T2, I wasn’t keen to sit in the dark and drab T2 lounge for over 3 hours, so I took the people mover over to T3 and headed up the escalators to the much larger and newer SQ lounge there. When I arrived around 5am there was only a small smattering of people. My first stop was a shower. Thankfully there was no wait at this time seeing as the morning rush was yet to arrive.






The shower room was contemporary and spotlessly clean. Perhaps a little on the petite size. I only had a backpack, but it would have been a bit of a nuisance to open up a folding carry on wheelie bag. Amenities were non-branded and pretty basic. The toilet offered a choice of typical S.E. Asian bidet hose or a Toto washlet.

As a nod to my new favourite YouTube Avgeek/Flight Reviewer, Jayden Wong, here is a photo of coat hooks in the shower. He has this very cute obsession with coat hooks. I must say I was grateful they had 2 so that I could hang all my clothes, including a clean t-shirt to change into post-shower.





After freshening up I first sat in the portion of the lounge that it to the right of the main entrance. This section is open to the terminal below (a little like the HK QF lounge) and has a small buffet, bar and coffee machine. Unfortunately a sign said barrister service starts at 6am, so I just grabbed some fruit and a pastry or two from the buffet and sat in one of the leather armchairs along the open edge of the lounge.






At 6:00 I went and ordered myself a long black. What was served would make a roadside diner in Btfk Indiana proud in terms of its approximation of dishwater masquerading as coffee. After a couple of sips of that I decided to pick up sticks and explore the more expansive wing of the lounge on the other side.

The food options and open kitchen here were truly impressive for a business class lounge. I wasn’t feeling very hungry so just picked at the buffet for some scrambled eggs and a couple of sides. I grabbed a table at the far end of the lounge by the large windows where daylight was illuminating lots of SQ wide bodies preparing to transport people around the world.

About an hour before advertised boarding I was getting a bit bored of the lounge. (Maybe I just picked a corner that wasn’t very interesting from a people-watching point of view!). So I headed down into the T3 shopping area for a bit. You’ll remember that in Melbourne I bought earbuds. I was deliberating between the latest top-end Sony WF5 model and and AirPod Pro. The ones I left in a hotel in Tokyo last year were an earlier Sony model which I really liked. As an aside, I managed to forget those headphones, house keys and car fob in my hotel room safe. They were able to arrange shipping of the keys but the courier company refused the headphones because of the lithium battery in the case. The hotel promised to hang on to them more or less forever!! I love that about Japan. I also love (perversely) that some poor housekeeping manager probably had to fill in reams of paperwork and fax it off in triplicate to head office somewhere. I digress…. Back in Melbourne I opted for the Apple headphones on recommendation of a colleague who had just got a pair seeing as online reviews were six of one and half a dozen of the other. The apple ones were around $80 cheaper too. However as it turned out, I would have saved a further $100 at least had I waited until Singapore and instead gone with the Sony ones. In the plus ledger, the AirPods’ noise cancelling did a good job of blocking out the aforementioned AFL fans in the Melbourne lounge and my favourite music sounded very crisp and clear on the AirPods…though maybe with slightly less bass tuning than the Sony model.

I took the shuttle back over to T2, walked to the very far end of the F pier to my gate, passed security at the gate and had about 10 minutes to wait until priority boarding was called for SQ910 to Manila.