In Oman, you end up in jail if you say something bad about the Sultan and you get a €25 fine if you drive around in a dirty car. If you drink a bottle of water on the street during Ramadan, even as a non-Muslim, you go to jail for 10 days. On Saturday morning, we visit a large market in Nizwa. There are only men and boys roaming around. According to our guide, who seems open-minded, it is too hot for women to be outside. Local women were nowhere to be seen in the streets. On almost every long-distance trip, I’m reminded that our free way of life shouldn’t be taken for granted.

One of the natural phenomena we are travelling to Oman for are the wadis. A wadi is a lush riverbed in an otherwise barren desert landscape. The periodic river and what little groundwater and rainwater there is transforms the river valley into an oasis-like environment. The contrast between the aridity and the greenery is simply beautiful. As we walk through our first wadi, our guide asks if there are any wadis in the Netherlands. I say yes and explain that we even have seals in our wadi. Then, I tell him more seriously that our country is actually one big flat wadi.

On the second-to-last day, I stumble during a photo shoot. I don't fall very hard, but my right hand ends up in a prickly bush with thorns the size of skewers. My hand feels like I’ve stuck it into a wasps' nest. While I pull the thorns out of my hand and arm, the others stop some guys driving by on a motorbike. Not for first aid or anything, but to ask if I could ride the motorbike up and down the mountain for some video footage. I can feel that my hand is still full of thorns, but the show must go on! In the evening at the hotel, I pull at least 10 more thorns out of my hand. I’ve never had such intense contact with a plant before. After 24 hours, the red spots become inflamed and swell even more. Three weeks after my “bush dive”, I finally pull the last thorn out of my palm.

Near Muscat, we also shoot 3 photos with Katja Schuurman. We take the third photo in a small fishing village on the Gulf of Oman. Our guide, who is wearing his white dishdasha robe all day, asks if we want to change in the car. I squeeze into my light blue suit in the back of the car and wait outside for Katja. When Katja wants to get out of the car, our guide says, 'No, no, please change your clothes in the car'. The only thing is that Katja already has changed her clothes. Her hot pants are so short that our guide thinks she is standing in her underwear. Shortly afterwards, a senior-looking man walks by. Our guide talks to him, the man turns to us and says 'No problem, go go'. We get permission to take a quick photo anyway. The spot where we took the picture doesn't work for the video though. Cameraman Niels takes us into a pretty little street where we are supposed to walk up and down for the camera. As I stand next to Katja ready to walk towards the camera, I happen to look back. A huge minaret towers over the street. Katja's hot pants right next to a mosque seems like a bad combination. Everyone else thinks I'm making a fuss, but I'm not in the mood for another media scandal.

The night of the photo shoot, we eat sushi in the hotel restaurant. Katja offers me twenty euros if I eat the bowl of wasabi in one go. Sometimes, you simply have to do something like that in life. If only to show that you aren’t completely predictable. Like a mafia boss who is always friendly and then suddenly shoots someone in the head in cold blood. What followed were two pretty intense minutes. For the first time in my life, I was coughing and sneezing at the same time. But I cashed in the twenty euros.