Key Stage 2 Geography Oman

hello good morning good morning hello let's see here hello everybody hello iran hello ibrahim good morning hello joe good morning paul hello eden and skye wonderful to see you good morning reno nova look lily says good morning lily hopefully it's not bad omen man good morning mother good morning joshua hello alex and ridley wow alex and ridley's auntie used to live in oman that's very cool that's excellent mean yeah if you hadn't realized today we're talking about oman which is why the omen work joke works so well hello catmind we are joined by the mind of cat good morning milo hi milo wow let's see let's share up where we're headed today here we go we're headed to oman today good man man hi steve muda says that their dad went to uni in the neighboring country of saudi arabia that's very cool yes we are very close to saudi arabia today in fact let's start there let's see if we can find oman on the map we've got to zoom in quite bit here we are so we haven't really been to this part of the world yet mean for those of you who are joining for the first time the idea here is that every now and again we do lesson about country and we're trying to get through the alphabet so so far we started in australia we've been all over the place mexico nigeria and now we're at oman and oman as you can see is here on what we call the arabian peninsula so this sort of outcrop of land here between the red sea and the arabian sea down here this is where we are and it's kind of huge desert suppose most of this peninsula saudi arabia here being very big country with lot of desert in it and oman of course is going to be pretty similar because they're neighbors and they're part of the same peninsula now paul makes good point here good morning neil good morning yeah there wasn't much choice for today because we're doing the alphabet there is only one country that begins with an and that is oman which left me in bit of pickle because oman usually when do these things know quite lot about the country before start with oman knew the basics but didn't know much detail so i've had to do quite bit of research to find out some cool stuff about oman although didn't have to find we didn't have to research too hard to find some cool stuff it seems it's pretty cool country but yes paul points out that there are no countries beginning with or is going to be hard one can cheat can use wales which know isn't technically country because it's part of the united kingdom but at least can cheat bit there with don't know don't know what i'm gonna do just any ideas let me know yeah good morning amani that's good idea erin janey and willow say the christmas islands spelt with an xmas yeah that could work maybe i'm not sure if they're their own country don't know zaza land i'm not sure abdulhay if that's real place i'll have to find out won't there we go so anyway we're on today so it's while before we get to isn't it oman down here on the bottom part and most eastern part of the arabian peninsula and of course because of our lovely colorful map here we can tell what continent it's on too so we've got the sort of reds and pinks in europe going into the purples of asia so oman is in that section so it's an asian country there we go now the flag of oman is pretty impressive here we are we'll talk more about this bit later about the specific symbol but on the flag we have three swords two crossed one in this cool shape and then we've got white red and green so very cool flag must say neil suggests should write book about country called ex-land then could do webinar on it that's not bad idea could just invent country maybe that's what i'll do for we'll do we'll do fantasy one that'd be quite fun won't it i'll just invent country and we'll see what we can fit into it yeah yeah i'll go for that look muda says all the arabian countries used to be called arabiana that's lovely name isn't it yeah that makes sense and they are very similar countries not exactly the same of course but when we look at the makeup of the people who live in the arabian countries they are mostly arab people as you would expect not everyone oman has about almost 50 of their population are not arab people lots and lots of people live in oman from india and you can kind of see why india isn't that far away across the ocean so in the time this is bit of history here oman used to be protectorate of the great british empire which means that the british empire looked after it sort of you know in the way that the british empire looked after things and so lots of people came from india which was another huge part of the british empire to live in oman there we go amani if you wouldn't mind not so much in the chat just because can't see what other people are saying if you spam lot thank you good morning lucas and joshua wonderful to see you right so let's we'll start with our physical geography today if can find that where are we here we are we'll have closer look at the map so here we have the wonderful country of oman and we can see that here it is it's in the southeast of the arabian peninsula it's got some big neighbors it's got the yemen down here it's got saudi arabia up here and it's got the uae the united arab emirates just the north and the west xanadu oren that would be good one for wouldn't it is that mongolia though i'll have think about that that's good idea so oman as you can see is actually not just one big country it is big country but there's another part of oman up here so it kind of stops being oman becomes the united arab emirates and then becomes oman again and because the people of oman they very much wanted this little bit of land here it doesn't look like much but it's incredibly important because this is little part of man that stretches out into these straights here we'll have look at them bit more later but if you control the land next to water you can get quite rich and powerful so oman have got the very pointy bit that points out into the straight and that's where they they can make lot of money there so it makes sense that they have that bit now if we were looking at map of oman couple of hundred years ago oman would actually be much bigger it stretched all the way down through yemen all the way down the east coast of africa they had quite significant empire but today you know smaller than that nice and compact instead someone's saying it looks bit like face the shape of this map don't know don't see it but maybe if stare at it enough will good morning erin erin we're doing amman today and yes abdul asks about the background my background today am in beautiful part of oman i'm next to wonderful sort of techni colored wadi more on that in just minute actually there we are yeah was quite impressed with this picture so think might stay in amman this week for all my lessons and quite enjoying it must say now there are some big cities in oman the capital is muscat and that's just here on the sort of northern coast the second biggest is seller i'm not sure if i'm saying that right and you can see other cities around here that i'm not even gonna try and pronounce because might get them terribly wrong you never know milo says the shape is like traffic cone don't know can't see the face or the traffic cone but so let's have look at what it looks like in relief so this map here it shows the same country it shows oman but what we have here is relief map so it shows us the highland and the lowland now if you notice if we just rewind for second hello sahin now if we if we rewind you can see that most of the cities there in the north or they're in the south we don't really have big cities there's some small places but they're not big these are more like small towns bordering on the villages and that makes sense when we compare it to our relief map because our relief map here shows that to the north and the south where all the people live we have these mountain ranges this one here little bit lower this one here quite high and in the center of the country we have all this lowland so the the deeper green color on our map here the lower the land is whereas the more yellowy going into brown the darker that gets that means the high points now our low points here although it's shown as green on the map don't let that fool you you wouldn't see grass you would just see nice sandy desert stretching all the way across in this middle part and that means that people aren't going to live there in great numbers because well it's difficult to live in desert as any of you who watch the the lessons on the kingdoms of the sahara desert living is not the easiest you can do it in small numbers you're not going to build any massive cities in the desert unless you have lot of money and you can do lots of fancy things joe has never been to oman same here that's fine yes and abdul haye points out that it looks like might be in the higher lands am yes this photo was taken somewhere in the northern mountains don't know exactly but yes well spotted we can see behind me that there are mountains and hills rising up so must be over here near the coasts in the north in this case now if the land here is flat and desert us the really the best land in oman the land where you can build farms and build cities and you know have quite nice time are the lands that are protected by the mountains not the mountains themselves it's very difficult to build city in the mountains some people have managed it but it's pretty it's pretty tricky good morning clem and gilly but the the safest best land is in the shelter of the mountains between the coast the ocean here and the mountains themselves that's where the nutrients sit that's where the rain comes that's where you can have lovely plants and greenery so that's why most of the people who live in oman live we'll rewind again in our cities that are protected by the mountains in the north and in the south not so much in the middle all right now here's another picture very similar to what's behind me today now we haven't had one of these yet these special countries but there are number of countries in the world who have no rivers not at all kind of crazy saudi arabia its neighbor has no rivers and oman is the same now you're probably saying hang on jake that's ridiculous you're telling me that haven't got rivers and there's river right in front of me it's on the screen well technically technically this is not river this is what we call wadi and the difference between awadi and river is that wadis they're not always there in the wet seasons or when there's lot of rain the wadi's come and they're beautiful and multi-colored like this one here wending its way through the rocks but when the summer comes and everything gets super hot and everything dries up then the wadis go dry too which means there are no permanent rivers in oman instead when it's wet and when it's slightly cooler you do have water and when it's hot you don't how do you spell it here we are elena asks did the mountain range have name don't know mean they do have name don't know them didn't look it up but could do that for you if get moment here we go and we are going to do some animals yes so awadi there we are so they look like rivers they act like rivers but they are not rivers because they're not always there they come and go which again makes it really really hard to live in oman especially if you're you know you might live in the middle of the desert but next to iwadi which is great when it's wet enough but when it all dries up suddenly you're going to be very thirsty and as you know we cannot live without water clementine asked what are we working on we're on oman today for there we are right might use my space pen if remember steve yes yes all right now the question is then we've got hot dry country we've already said we have no rivers that makes things tricky so how do people drink why isn't everyone dead mean how can anyone live in country where the rivers might just disappear now muda says they could dig wells and that's right so back in the day before modern technology the people of oman would dig deep wells and if you dig well you will find the underlying water the water under the ground and you can drink that there are some problems with wells the problem is you have to dig them which is tricky and of course you have to put lot of effort into putting bucket down and then pulling the water up so it's not perfect fine if you just live in small village but if you want to live in massive modern city with cars and bright lights and all that kind of stuff of which there are many in oman we need to find better source of water we can't use the rivers wells don't provide enough so where are we going to get our water from that's good question we'll answer that question second mudda says clouds that's not bad idea although as you can see in our pictures here they're not famous for the clouds joe you're close there that's good so i've got question here are there no fish or animals that live in the wadi there are so there are fish who can sort of depending on what the body is connected up to you get fish that can enter the wadi when it's there and then sort of they leave when the wadi leaves to go and hide in pools and lakes and things or you can have creatures so creatures that don't live in the water so not fish and things who come down to the wadi to drink and so they're gonna because the wadis even when they're dry imagine the animals can tell what they are so they know that water is coming back soon so it's good place to live yeah shaheem says they want to live there yeah i'd quite like to live there too it looks nice doesn't it look we got some good answers here and lot of people got the right answer here so this is desalinization plant and oman has few of these believe this might be one of the biggest so oman doesn't have much fresh water and it's got lot of people around five million people who need to drink so it gets its water from the sea from the ocean yeah few of you got it right well done which is something that is very difficult to do unless you have lots of modern technology that now mudder says it is salty yes so you you cannot drink salt water if you went down to the sea and just started drinking the water it would kill you you know you would get very very sick and you would die because the salt dehydrates us so it takes water out of us so even though we're drinking we're actually getting more thirsty which is bit terrifying and of course most of the water on the planet is salt water so the people of oman have figured out along with people in other countries too they're not the only guys that do this that if you put big factory what we call desalination plant next to the ocean you can suck the water in and you can take the salt out of it now it's kind of tricky to take the salt out of water as you can imagine because if sort of picked up spoonful of seawater and tried to put my hands in it and sort of take out the salt bits it's not going to work is it because it's all just one liquid yeah mudder says hooray you can now sell water and salt it's true you get water and salt from this yes and there are two main ways of doing it and some desalization plants they heat the water up they make it really really warm and as it gets hot the water evaporates brilliant word there well done with yes the water evaporates it floats up into the air or in this case into machines that then catch the water now the salt gets left behind so you're left with whole load of water that's evaporated which you can then catch and cool it down and turn it into drinking water and then you're left with whole load of salt too which is brilliant the other way of doing it which is even more technical is to get absolutely and mean totally tiny bits of well we call them filters so you get like bit of plastic which looks like it hasn't got any holes in it but really it does they're just absolutely tiny holes and then you get very big hose and mean big hose big powerful hose that is going to shoot that water really really hard straight at that filter and as the water hits the filter the pot the individual particles this is how tiny it is the individual particles that are water they pass through the gaps and the salt particles which is little bit bigger they get held back you would need microscope to see them yes so you can just shoot water at at filter and the salt will be left behind and the water will go through believe oman uses mixture of these two ideas even germs couldn't see it think they're bigger than germs mean depending on the germ think germs have different sizes yeah but we're talking yeah so small that we wouldn't be able to see what's going on there because like say you can't look into glass of salt water and see all the salt particles but you know if it's tiny enough filter then the water goes through and the salt gets left behind and suddenly you have lovely toasty drinking water which is very useful now there are several of these plants in oman and of course once the water has been created it all gets put into pipes and it goes off to the cities and the towns so people can turn on their taps and have nice drink mean it's fancy way of doing it must say but it's very useful and needed in the uk we don't do that we don't need to do desalination because as it looks like today it rains enough yeah we can just catch the rain water and there's loads of rivers there's rivers everywhere so we don't have to have fancy machines that turn salt water into fresh water but in hot countries like oman that's exactly what they need there we go amana asks is this pick or or real thing this is real thing and you can see the size of the place if we look at this building down here you can see the windows this is an absolutely huge i'm going to call it factory it's not really factory it's plant but it is like an absolutely massive factory where just gallons and gallons and gallons of water are coming in from the sea being processed and then going out as fresh water and you need lot of course because you're feeding or watering five million people with these plants every day and you can't stop them you can't ever stop or people would die you know you can't go long without water especially not in the arabian peninsula aaron also says don't you need to filter it to clean it and not just get the salt out that's true aaron so yeah another good thing that pushing it through filters does it takes out all the mucky bits and the germs and the stuff we don't want so yes there we are your name means trust that's good name amanda that's cool like that excellent and absolutely says we water plants so then plants water us see like plant yes i'll get you yes that's it different kind of plant but like it yeah it's not bad all right now i'm not going to focus too much on the desert today but there is one interesting thing particularly interesting about the deserts of oman and that is the naman is home to the largest area of quicksand on the planet yes quicksand so quicksand is what we get better say yes the camel here our photo of camels here we can see one two three four live camels did at first think that this camel might be dead but it's not he's having he's having an app okay this photo was taken back in the very early 20th century by british explorer who went out into the deserty parts with local people like this guy here with their camels and went exploring and he came across this wide area of quicksand which is kind of dangerous i've ride the camels to not sink unfortunately camel will sink in quicksand yes aaron says that he didn't know that quicksand is real yeah so so quicksand is what happens when we get load of liquid mixed usually water of course mixed with sandy soil so like you'd find in desert now what happens is you find this in sort of low areas if we think of in fact might go back to our map here this might help us little bit ride boat over it not possible think so our area of quicksand is somewhere around here and oman and what happens is the land kind of slopes down from the coasts all the way down to this area and that's where lot of liquid sort of stores just under the surface you couldn't like drink it but it is there so it's kind of wet almost boggy sand but not quite boggy it's hard to describe now when sand gets exactly the right amount of wet it no longer is solid you can step on it and sink right through but you don't have to be too worried it's impossible to sink entirely in quicksand you might have seen it on like the movies the films or whatever on tv coach shows cartoons people sinking in quicksand and it's like covering their heads in real life it doesn't work like that so much because generally speaking your average human will sink down to their weight or the top of their their torso and because of the density of humans and quicksand they would just sort of stop there and that doesn't mean it's safe because if you're stuck nearly up to your neck in quicksand you can't get out it's really really difficult unless there's people with you to pull you out so if you did wander alone into the area of quicksand and stand still and let yourself sink you would be stuck and of course if no one was there to rescue you you wouldn't be able to get drink you wouldn't be able to eat any food and eventually you would expire so it is dangerous place but maybe not as dangerous as the cartoons say you know in the cartoons you kind of sink down until you're stuck under this quicksand and you can't get out no not quite so dramatic but it does mean that if you no amana says thought camel's big feet can take it it depends how quick the quicksand is suppose so in some areas yes maybe camel's with his wide feet would be able to step over but if it was particularly wet quicksand then even the camel would sink right down yes in cartoons you suffocate but not in real life no that's it does mean it's impossible to take car through though so if you wanted to drive across the desert like some people like driving across deserts and you entered an area of quicksand well you've lost your car i'm afraid unless you happen to have friend with tow truck who lives in the middle of the desert yeah that car is gone so and bit like yeah eva says it's like polar bears with their feet in the snow that's right but yeah depending on how quick the quicksand is even camel couldn't get across it the trick is of course if you step in quicksand to just step out of it very quickly before it before you do you would have to stand there for for few seconds at least if not couple of minutes before you properly sank so most people they'd step on it go no that's quicksand and then just step backwards yeah so it's not that dangerous if you're aware that it's there and you don't get silly suppose yeah and aaron says why is there snow here no so this isn't snow this picture is just old black and white so that the yellow sand just looks like snow see what you mean though yes so yeah this isn't snow this is sand just very old photo there you go and think abdul haye's asking why is there little yellow book think it's just to show the scale so that we understand how big the patch of quicksand is here this isn't the entire batch of quicksand by the way not the biggest patch of quicksand in the world it spreads for huge area but some of those areas are quite firm you could walk across where suddenly other areas you just like plump go straight down in there so yeah the book is there just to show us this is big patch of quicksand it's not just little bit okay so that's our physical geography we've got wadi's we've got decentralization we've got wonderful quicksand but let's have look at some of the creatures that we would find i'm all over the place you know here we are so here's our wildlife now the national animal so remember every country has national animal one that represents the country itself sometimes they have them on their flags but not always in britain we have the in england we have the lion in scotland the unicorn in wales the dragon the chicken of france is probably my favorite the noble chicken of france but in oman we have the oryx the oryx is our creature here and just realized haven't written it up orex there we are so the oryx it is it's an oryx it's got these wonderful long horns which don't know if this is just coincidence but they remind me of the two swords on the omani flag the two that are sort of crossed that mine might be reading too much into that but it they remind me of the swords those horns of the oryx and this is creature which is very hardy and can live in the desert which is very useful because oman is mostly desert there we are neil says that the national animal of scotland is actually haggis i'm pretty sure it's the unicorn it was the last time checked anyway maybe they've updated it don't know don't know and clementine suggests that this might be one of the animals that the unicorn was based on yes maybe early explorers maybe in ancient times they saw an oryx from distance or maybe saw in oryx who had snapped off one of its horns and were like unicorn yes wonder how magical it is perhaps yeah haven't heard any specific stories about that but it would make sense wouldn't it erin says do have picture of baby one well don't but i'm gonna bring one up because don't know what oryx baby is called so i'm just typing in oryx baby and we'll see what happens i've got cute one here of an oryx with its mother so here we are should definitely just do baby animals amani is shouting it's goat it's goat it's not goat it's related to the goat it's like goat but there's little baby there look very cute don't know what you call an oryx baby maybe it's fawn or don't know don't know what they're called can't see name here but it is cute yeah maybe calf yeah or kid because they are very much like goats aren't they yeah they are type of antelope more than type of goat though so don't know don't know what the baby antelope is called either but pretty cute cough yeah it could be calf couldn't it it reminds me bit like deer as well so it could even be an oryx fawn don't know how it works have to find out all right now one of the most rare creatures that we find in oman it's something quite special these creatures are sadly very endangered and very few of them live in the wild anymore there we go know someone's pointing out that the picture is on mud yes it could well be that it's either in zoo although there are areas of oman that are muddy that have soil and it's not all sand yeah wow my sizing's all gone all weird today there we are so this here is the arabian leopard there are lots of different species of leopard around the world the arabian leopard is one of the rarest and across most of the arabian peninsula so in saudi arabia and the uae there are no more of these in the wild but in oman they think there are still few pairs that hang around but as you can see they're perfectly suited to camouflage and if this guy didn't want to be seen it wouldn't be its fur is the same color as the ground around it and those spots all over its body they make it really confusing to see from distance it's just you can't see any solid shapes it's just like blobs so this guy this leopard here she could yeah be very very sneaky good hunter for sure but it's sad that there aren't that many left in the wild anymore hopefully they'll come back erin says that the baby oryx is called an ikyla that's cool that's very very cool there you are and kyla like that word yes that's new word for me abdulhay says it looks like his cat they are that's you've got very pretty cat very good so that's our arabian leopard now not all animals are particularly safe in oman we've got the trusty camel here we've seen few of those already they're pretty safe they help people travel across the desert and they're also how do put this they're also quite tasty apparently lots of nice recipes that you can make using bits of camel but you might want to see camel because they would help you and you can ride the mudra yeah for sure people ride them across the desert the one animal you're not gonna want to meet is the sore scale viper so this creature here is one of the most venomous snakes in the world they are particularly dangerous well in fact it's not even the most venomous snake in the world it's the most venomous for in in oman but there are more venomous ones if you go deeper into africa or australia and places like their poison their venom is more powerful hello beta but this guy is one of the most dangerous because although it's not one of the most venomous it's the one that kills the most people or one of the one that kills the most people certainly an oman and the reason for that is that they're venomous their bite can kill you quite quickly and they have habit of hanging around near people most snakes don't you know most venomous snakes that they're out there in the forests or they're hiding under rocks these guys they like to come into the cities or near the cities they like to be where near where people are which means that you could accidentally bump into one of these things now they don't run around the street or slither around the streets trying to get people that isn't their business but if you accidentally startle one it will jump out and bite you and because they are around people about 500 people end up getting bitten by them in oman each year on an average year now lot of those people because oman is quite well-off country they don't all die they can get to the hospital quick enough and the hospitals have anti-venom i'm being asked here why is it called sore scale viper i'm not sure what that word what the imagine it's because of the pattern of its of its scales and its back they kind of look like the teeth of saw guess yeah but that's me guessing though so yeah these guys that they are dangerous for sure because there's good chance it's not like many people go through their lives that ever meeting one but there is good chance that if you disturb it it will bite you and because they hang around near humans that means that yeah people do get bitten joe says that there in the mulvane hills they have adders yes so in in britain we only have one species of venomous snake and that is the adder and we're pretty lucky because the adders they very rarely go there near where people are and people who generally get bitten by adders are people who are you know maybe tromping through bit of wild land bit of scrub land or something and they accidentally step on one or near one and even if you do get bitten by an adder in britain it's mostly not fatal you can assuming you're with someone you could just drive down to the hospital quite leisurely and they'll they'll sort you out whereas if you've been by one of these you've got few hours to get to the hospital or you'd be dead that's it yeah let's see i've i've gone behind on my chat here rebecca says it's called sore scale because the noise it makes when it rubs its scales together that's cool like sword that makes it slightly more scary if you ask me something like yeah that scared me little bit thank you few people told me that in the chat that's wonderful there you are so yes it makes sawing that's that's frightened me little bit must say and clementine asked are they only in oman no they're all over the place actually they are the most dangerous in oman but yes you can find them all over the arabian peninsula believe you can find them in india too so if you go across asia you'll still find different varieties of school sex sore scaled vipers too there you are so it's not just an omani thing but thought it was interesting and then off the coast we have wonderful creatures too the arabian sea is absolutely full of life because lot of the arabian sea is quite shallow not all of it but because it sort of snakes up around different countries we've got lot of what we call the sunlight zone the areas of the ocean where you get find the most fish in the most creatures now this here is whale shark the biggest type of shark and something in the chat is telling me they're actually giant fish thank you steve so here our whale shark is love these animals love them because of their patterning and the fact that they're ginormous but peaceful and off the coast of oman the whale sharks well they're bit of mystery people aren't quite sure what they do we know that they dive deep down out of the sunlight zone they go down into the dark depths but scientists are still bit divided we're not entirely sure why they do it most fish they sort of stay near the surface that's where they find their food that's where they eat the whale sharks they'll disappear down and no one knows why do they have their babies down there is there special food down there maybe they're just playing down there we don't really know and armani says does it have spots or is it sunlight well it's spotty but we've also got the sunlight playing on it as well so it's bit of combination this picture here yes but the the actual little white spots they're all spots here but maybe the lighter glare areas that's from the sunlight yeah good question so whole load of lovely animals in amman too now let's let me near me gotta press that button we're gonna come up here and we will see if we can find out about the government now oman has quite an interesting government most of the countries we look at have similar sort of government structure prime minister or president or both in oman we don't have either we have sultan sultan is suppose the closest thing to king suppose very very similar sultan is person who has the power over the country and i've got here on the screen the last three sultans of oman we have syed bin taima he used to be sultan then we have and i'm not very good at his name here but think it's caboose binsaid assayed and then we have the current sultan the one who is who's with us today that's haytham bin tariq al-saeed now these three guys they kind of give us nice bit of the modern history of oman and yeah and bin means son that's right so yeah we can see here that caboose bin saeed is the son of saeed whereas haitham bintarik surreed he is the son of tariq which tells us that they are not he is not his son yeah there we are and steve asked what's the religion so the majority religion in oman is islam in fact they have special kind of islam which the name escapes me now but it's not quite sunny and it's not quite shia it's different one again so it's quite i'm going to say rare type of islam compared to the big sunni and shia schools of islam although there are sunnis and shia too because there are people who live there who originate from iran which is shia and there are people who originate from sunni countries too so there is big mix there are also lots of christians and quite few hindus too because of course of all those indian people who came from india during their time in the british empire they have their own hindu temples their mandias and stuff so it's actually quite mix of religion but the majority is islam now these three sultans they tell us bit about what it's like to have sultan suppose these guys had complete power and sayed bin taymor when he took over in that think the 1950s he wasn't great sultan it would seem he started off all right but his country was quite poor and he didn't really make it much better when he was the sultan there were only three schools in the whole of the country which means that most people were not learning to read write you know learn about maths or other countries or anything like that in the 1950s there was an attempt by some people in the city of doha to take down the sultan they rebelled and he needed help from the british government to stop that rebellion so soldiers from britain came in and they fought together with the sultan but after that the sultan wasn't quite the same he started getting scared paranoid he started thinking that everyone was trying to get him everyone was trying to kill him so he started making strange laws he stopped people from being able to meet each other for more than 15 minutes at time in case of course they started plotting to kill him he banned people from wearing sunglasses because he said if you're wearing sunglasses you might be acting like shifty spy he banned people from smoking in public because he thought that those people out there smoking their cigarettes might actually be plotting against him you see how this goes so the country people ended up quite scared and worried and he kept making more and more strange laws until in the year 1970 he was taken down by his son so his son caboose here he he gets rid of him he says with help again from britain the sultan he gets sacked as sultan which isn't really an easy thing to do but he is he's taken away to england and he lives the last two years of his life in nice very posh hotel in london the dorchester which in some ways is good because he has good two years of his life but in some ways is bad because he's lost his power and he's not allowed in his country and his son has taken over there we are now then under caboose here we have here's picture of him with the queen there we are so showing again the links between the two countries and the queen is supposed to be personal friend or was personal friend of the sultan he is sadly dead now but she would visit him lots there were several visits over the last few years between queen and sultan and believe the sultan has also visited england as well so yeah they get on pretty well as of course britain used to be protectorate so we used to have lot of control in oman that it's good to see that friendship still remains there we are so we'll put the queen back down there now when caboose took over he completely started changing everything up he built schools and said he was very our first sultan here he was very strict he said people have to be muslim and if you're not muslim don't really like you whereas caboose said no hey let's build some hindu temples let's build some churches for the christians let's build different varieties of mosques so people can pray in their own ways he opened up loads of schools he opened up hospitals he started building these huge cities aaron asks who's the guy in the tuxedo that's prince philip the the queen's husband you know he looks like he looks slightly like ghost there doesn't he but he's not he's just very old it's okay it's okay so yeah they're no not king philip he doesn't get the name king because we can't we only have one queen or king so the queen is the queen prince philip is her husband yeah there's all kind of political formalities there it might be the ahmadi muslims there i'm not sure yeah can't remember what the name was i'll have to look it up now so he made the country bigger and bigger and bigger he made it more and more free he said you know people can have whatever the religion you want you don't have to just be muslim you can be whatever don't mind as long as we all get along people and he you know told people that they could be more educated especially women as well and so the country got richer and richer and stronger and stronger and more intelligent more intelligent now we have destabilization plants and skyscrapers and massive roads they're even building railway which is something unheard of in amman they haven't been in railway before but at the moment they're building big one that's going to link it right up to the top of the arabian peninsula go all the way through saudi arabia so pretty cool but our new guy who started just last year one of the year before last 2020 haitham bin tariq assad he's made it even more free and just last month having been tariq aside he may started changing the laws bit more he said that it's now illegal for the government to check your facebook pages or your emails which it wasn't before you know if the government wanted to have look at what you were learning online they could just have look not anymore haitham bintarik aside says people should be more free to do what they want and say what they want and dress how they like so they are that's up-to-date news for us just last month january 2021 oman is getting even more freedom so that's very very different between say bin tamur there not letting people wear sunglasses or meat outside compared to haithan bin tarika siri which is you know everyone can just do what they want sort of as long as you you know don't break the serious laws yeah it's not completely not completely free so and joe says that oman is one of the most safe countries in the world it is pretty safe yes it doesn't really have any enemies it's it's you know there are lots of countries in the middle east who fight against each other and they argue and they they have wars and things oman doesn't really get involved in any of that they're friends with countries like jordan and saudi arabia at the same time as being friends with their enemies the israelis in israel and the iranians and india so yeah they seem to do good job of just sort of being everyone being everyone's friend which is you know that's not easy is it clement gilliaz how is it coping in lockdown really don't know didn't research that but you know i'm not sure it sounds like an interesting thing to look up though all right everyone's favorite bit econo economy and development and we're going to have look at the gdp per capita it's just me cheering okay now every country in the world can be looked at in terms of gdp per capita which means gross domestic product per person in the country now what we do to work this out is we take all the money from the country from everyone we just take it all take it all and we shove it in great big pile and then we divide that pile by the amount of people that live in the country and suddenly we find out if everything was fair how much each person would have now we do this in dollars american dollars because that's the world standard and to give us some idea in britain the average person at the moment if we divided all the money in the country up the every every person would have forty two thousand three hundred and thirty dollars per year which is quite good now that's not the richest the richest that we've looked at so far in our alphabet is denmark which is now up to sixty thousand one hundred and 170 that's lot of money per person per year now amman isn't quite that rich it's only 15 343 per person per year so it's not the richest country in the world we can see but it's also not in the category of the poorest countries either our poorest countries down here liberia my goodness about two thousand dollars year yes something like that you say yeah maybe little bit more with the exchange rate then we've got ethiopia another poor country in east africa haiti an island in the caribbean very poor india not doing so well and nigeria relatively poor too but then you know we start going up through our countries brazil kazakhstan mexico china they're getting bit richer and then we have oman so oman is doing better than lot of the countries in the world even if it's not one of the richest there we go but this means that the people are pretty well off there are some very rich people the country the the sultan himself has good amount of money which means they can do things like build those desalinization plants to get fresh water from the ocean and they can build schools and tall buildings and railway tracks so yeah they're not doing too badly at all and it means that most people there you know they don't have to worry about being hungry or not having electricity and things like that you know the people are generally speaking pretty healthy pretty happy people there we are unless of course you get stuck in the quicksand that's okay not many people do now one of the things that makes amman pretty rich country is as we said earlier this straight that comes through here now there's very narrow piece of land it's only about 20 miles wide it's called the strait of hormuz and this is really important because the world runs on oil and gas that's some of the main fuels that the entire planet uses and every year coming in between this this strait of hormuz is about 25 to 30 percent of the world's oil and gas pass through this on boats and most of that comes from places like kuwait and saudi arabia qatar big oil and gas producing countries but of course they can dig the oil take the oil they can suck the oil out of the ground and they can suck the gas out the ground but that's no good unless they can get it to the rest of the world and to do that they're gonna have to pass through the strait of formers and then they're going to have to come down past oman and of course amman takes little bit of money every time they do that which means that oman can be quite rich now if we look in bit more detail here it's only about 20 miles wide but really the area that's deep enough to drive big ocean liner through is even thinner than that so these yellow lines they show shallow water so there's shallow water all the way around the peninsula here here's oman or the tip of oman and then there's shallow water all the way around here so the ships have to be incredibly careful they have to make their way through this very narrow channel whoop and then out to the ocean and of course they're going to need help from the sailors of oman to do that and that means that ammar makes bit of money what's this joe asks is it gone is it joe steve asks when's the next mythology lesson don't know i'm kind of hooked on the countries at the moment so hopefully i'll get back to doing mythology lessons soon though yeah they are joe says the world's largest shipping boat is quarter of mile long can you imagine driving that thing through this very narrow peninsula it would be bit scary you'd have to be bit of legend wouldn't you to be able to do that properly i'd crash it i'd crash it straight away and probably wouldn't even notice for at least at least an eighth of mile probably wouldn't even notice that crashed it there you go all right so let's take quick look at some culture here so we've already said that oman is fairly well-off place it's very peaceful place too it's not famous for wars and things like that there have been conflicts of course because they have in every country but it's not like an incredibly violent place it's pretty safe and joe says this ship when fully loaded weighs quarter of million tons that's good isn't it now having said that oman is not violent place we may remember from the flag here that we have the cross swords and then we have this special kind of knife or sword it's curved completely so you see it sort of goes down and goes up and this is real thing which many men in oman wear now it's not religious there are you know sikh people will have kirpan daggers that they wear and that's part of their religion in amman it doesn't really work like that the curve dagger is just to represent the country so if you're someone who is armani and happy you know yes am happy to be an oman am proud to be an omani man or woman mainly men think wear them then you would wear the kanja which is the crossed the curved dagger now it's not to attack people with assume it could be useful if you needed to cut piece of string or maybe butter some toast but it's not really violent thing we're not entirely sure where this comes from it seems to be quite an old tradition but whether it was assume at some point they were used as weapons but not so much anymore but it tells us they're kind of important because they represent oman they represent the sultan as well and there they are on the flag so if you wear around one of these curved daggers then you can then you can say you can show everyone that you love your country suppose in england or britain it would be like wearing around union flak flag union flak union jack flag on your hat or something you know if you walked around with that everyone would say yes they're happy to be british in this case you would wear the curved sword to show everyone that you are omani not armani and that you are happy and proud to be so there you are all right so here we have now oman is also home to many suks which are wonderful markets the markets they sell pretty much everything in north africa you probably call them like bazaars instead but souks in amman and around arabia and these are well suppose nowadays we just compare them to shopping centers they're places where you can go and you can buy anything from gold or silver statue of camel like here we've got little chests we've got loads of clothes lanterns and stuff like that lots and lots of clothes but you could also buy some takeaway camel stew tasty or you know anything else you need really they're places where people go to haggle and to argue about prices and to buy all of the cool stuff that they want there we are and we also have here's an outside of souk this area here selling lots and lots of pottery but what i've got this picture for us to really show what the color of the buildings are all of the buildings in oman are at least all of the traditionally built ones are either kind of sandy colored like this or white and it's not just because everyone likes sandy colored buildings and white buildings is because it's actually against the law to have buildings of different color the sultan very much wants people to look at oman as clean and beautiful and very traditional so traditional style buildings that you would have seen hundred years ago in the traditional colors of sandstone and white that's all that's allowed so you couldn't go to oman and build yourself like bright pink house or purple shed just wouldn't work you know the gotham would say no you're going to have to paint that white or it doesn't fit in around here so there we are thank you mudder i'll come back here that's interesting mudda is learning arabic so he says that the name of this shop in arabic if we're going to translate it into into english meaning muhammad ali's cave that's pretty cool very good like that there we are yes so all the buildings they stay this color we have one last little bit of culture to look at camel sorry not cave sorry murder muhammad ali's camel that's what it is it's the camel shop of course it is mean that makes more sense because there's loads of camels in it yeah yusha says are you allowed to build it out of sandstone and white color and then paint it no the important thing it has to look white mean you can have whatever color you want inside you could have your pink bright pink bedroom if you wanted but no on the outside it has to stay with the government regulated colors so that everything looks the same and sort of looks clean and crisp suppose quite like the idea stops it looking all shabby guess now our last little bit to point out is the music and it's at this point where i'd like to play you some music but find that tricky with the technology but one of the main instruments in oman and this is the same around the arabian peninsula is the ood which is wonderful guitar-like instrument and here we can see an omani woman and an omani man getting down and boogian with the ood yeah seems quite fun doesn't it and muda points out that the buildings have flat roofs yeah that's right yeah you're exactly right because he says there's barely any rain so why would you need it to roll off you wouldn't would you yeah perfect all right so thank you very much everyone hope you enjoyed this little trip around oman very much did thank you for all your comments and questions and yeah i'll see you in the future when we'll do another one lbp next and i've got couple can't quite decide it's either going to be pakistan or portugal don't know i'm going to have to give it some thought i'm tempted to do portugal because i've actually been there most pakistan haven't although pakistan is very interesting so don't know we'll come to pea country in the future for sure all right thank you very much everyone goodbye