Travel day alert. On the itinerary was a six hour bus ride to Oman. But first, dessert. Cindy and I had a quick breakfast and stopped at a neighborhood sweets shop for second breakfast. It was a treasure trove of honey, nuts, and light pastries just waiting to be devoured. We pointed at a few unknown items and sat down in the courtyard accompanied by a pot of tea. Next to us were old men who seemed like they had been at their table for eight years or so. Thank you Arab world for how seriously you take your sweets.

After a quick lunch, we hopped onto our Oman-bound bus. Public transit has been a little confusing for us. We see signs everywhere that instruct women to sit in front and men to sit in the back. Inevitably, I see a few women in the back (but never men in the front). I’m never sure if that’s acceptable, if the offending parties don’t know the rules, or if they know the rules but just don’t care. On the Oman bus, everyone had their own row until the last person boarded, who was forced to sit in an already occupied row. He chose the one in front of me, but while the guy already there struggled to move his bag the just-boarded man decided to just sit next to me instead. Great.

He was a perfectly friendly Pakistani man. He, and nearly all the other passengers, were traveling to Oman from Dubai for work. I realized that Cindy and I were witnessing a microcosm of one of the more dramatic voluntary migrations in recent history–south Asians to and around the Middle East. While my fellow passenger was friendly, he loved to man-spread. Scrunched into my corner, I decided to perhaps violate cultural norms and just go sit with Cindy. Most of the passengers weren’t Arab, anyways.

The border crossing at Oman was painless enough. Our bags were examined and sniffed by a dog with no incidents. We even unexpectedly received free visas into Oman, which impressed the migrant labor passengers. Again, that blue passport with the United States emblem on it is definitely a privilege.

Unbeknownst to us, we decided to travel into Oman right on their National Day. Traffic was gridlocked into Muscat and we sat on the freeway for about two hours. With no cell phone coverage available to us, we had no way of notifying our AirBnB host that we were parked on the freeway. When we finally found our way to his apartment, he was graciously still awake waiting for us. Another travel day down, another country to explore.