Sabkhat Saqamqam

This is our second time in Fujairah. The first time was in 2017. But on that occasion, we had some errands to take care of, so we didn’t explore the city or any of the sites nearby … just went to the City Center Mall using the guest shuttle to take care of business.

Therefore, I declared this RTW visit as a new-to-us port. After all, this time we had plans to do a city and East Coast tour. HAH! As today’s saga turns out, I am once again not considering this a new-to-us port.

It all started out OK.

Insignia was at her berth well ahead of the scheduled 9:00a arrival. The ship was cleared without delay. Our new CD — Dottie — made the announcement for the gangway location. We went down to Martinis to join up with Pat & Tom for the tour they had arranged. Disembarking the ship, we walked through the terminal, showed our landing cards, had our bags scanned, and walked out to find the shuttle to the port gate since walking within the port is not allowed.

That’s when things started going awry.

I wrote a lengthy journal entry to get the frustration off my chest, so I’ll just give a brief synopsis of how everything fell apart.

It started with the Port Authority “forgetting” to put on a gate shuttle. It would take them another hour to get that organized. A bad omen for things to come? But the issue was easily resolved in the interim by pressing one of the mall shuttles into gate service instead. So, we kept going.

Then the tour guide failed to show up at the port gate. We called the contact number for someone named Sait. He insisted that we had to go to a hotel to meet the guide … “Delonnie agreed,” he said. What? “Delonnie is not on our tour,” we said. Besides, Pat has a message that clearly states pick up from the port gate. Finally, Sait said a vehicle would come to pick us up in 20 minutes.

That turned into a 30-minute wait and a no-show. We called Sait back and he again said we had to go to the hotel. By this time, we’d had enough of all the run around and hung up. Their loss since payment was to be in cash after the tour.

Mui had his swim gear with him, so we decided to part company with Pat and Tom and go to the Hilton to spend some quality time on the beach. The resort had been recommended by the shuttle dispatcher at the cruise terminal. Except that when we arrived at the resort — Palace something or another — we learned that the Hilton was permanently closed. Grrrrr!

We decided to just make this another sea day on the ship.

We’re usually very easy going about such mis-adventures. Sh!t happens, after all.

Could we have gone to the Palace for a swim? Maybe. But it didn’t look like it catered to international tourists and Mui wasn’t “up to more negotiations” to use the property.

Could we have arranged for a taxi tour with one of the pushy cabbies. Of course.

But we were well and truly fed up. Returning to the ship felt like the best idea to us. And it was. Especially since the guard at the port gate put us in an air conditioned waiting area while he organized a port worker to drive us to the Cruise Terminal.

A c’est la vie kind of day.

P.S. If you think this footprint is long, you should see my journal entry 🤭😉.Read more