Accommodation and visas

Tomorrow we will move back to villa after living for 3 weeks at bed-and-breakfast. We have had very fast changing and messy information about the accommodation but now it seems there is one free room for us in the rented villa (where also other Estonian and Serbian colleagues of Andres live) and we can hopefully stay there until leaving. We have had really great time here at the bed-and-breakfast and the landlady said she would miss us – how sweet:) We are also sure we will miss the interesting chats with her and rich breakfasts and the boys will surely miss the company of the male servant.

In meantime when we still had information about not having possibility to move back to villa we were also looking for accommodation by ourselves. If everything else is about at same price level as in Estonia then accommodation prices are very high here. Cheapest hotels in Muscat seem to have double rooms for 60 euro per night. We were looking for some furnished villa or apartment but it seemed to be complicated to find one for short term rental at reasonable price. In example for a furnished studio flat the rent had been around 1500 euro per month! Minimum 6-months rental for two-bedroom furnished flat had been in example around 1200 euro per month. Another thing is the rental contract itself. The real estate companies can make the contract only with the local registered company or with a person with residential visa. So when you are here with tourist visa (like we are) the only possibility seems to live at the hotel after all.

Mentioning visas, the tourist visa is issued on the border (at the airport) for 30 days for 20 OR (around 40 euro) per person. We were not asked any questions about the aim of our visit or where we would stay, after the payment, they just looked at the passports and stamped the visa. This week Andres went to prolong our visas (that can be done once, for another 30 days, one just has to pay the money again). He claimed me and the boys did not need to come along to the airport, so he just took our passports and went. I was still a bit skeptic because doesn't it sound like an illegal passport issuing office when a man has 3 other passports with him? But there had been no problem, even if he admitted the man behind the desk had looked funnily at him first when he had handed 4 passports but he had “calmed down” when Andres had said “For the family!” :)