WEEKS 6 & 7

The weather in Riyadh is definitely getting nippier now, averaging around 25 degrees compared to the 35 degrees I experienced on my arrival. This makes going out in the day far more pleasant, and I am amused  to find malls displaying their autumn/winter wear, as 25 degrees is a summer not to be sniffed at back in  London…

Feeling adventurous one evening after work, we decided to investigate a place called ‘The Riyadh Mall’, where we’d heard we could find things at really cheap prices, and flex our negotiation skills. What we didn’t expect to find was the most ghetto-esque ‘mall’ in the whole of Riyadh. This was definitely a a local joint for the poorer Saudis that most of the country like to pretend don’t exist. It was, to put it politely, a little rough round the edges, and it was the sort of place that made us glad we had decided to visit as a group, and not on our own. Men there were even more blatant with their stares than normal, so we knew we weren’t in polite society, and even the taxi driver was bemused that a group of Westerns wanted to visit this place. He tried to convince us it wasn’t the sort of place we’d like, but we were adamant we wanted the experience, and that’s exactly what we got.

It was interesting to see the other end of the Saudi shopping mall spectrum, and we learned one very valuable lesson: Saudis, especially the lower classes with really strong Bedouin and native links, are a very very proud people, very sensitive and emotionally temperamental, especially when it comes to negotiating prices, and foreigners need to be careful not to cross the line and insult them. One minute the shopkeeper will be smiling and ushering you into his shop, complimenting your accent and enquiring where you’re from, and a few minutes later, if you’ve inadvertently offered too low a price for an abaya, he’ll get verbally aggressive quite quickly and visibly upset with you, and when he refuses to sell you the item at all that’s when you know you’ve hit boiling point and it’s time to get out fast…

Mimi in Arabia…by the Sea!

The second major holiday of the Islamic calendar, Eid al Adha, has fallen upon us, and the University broke up for what we thought was a 10-day holiday from the 11^th to the 21^st of November, until we received an email from our administration a few days ago, with an edict straight from King Abdullah:

Dear all,

We would like to inform you that it was announced by the Royal Court on Friday Nov-12 that schools and universities opening after Eid recess has been postponed until Saturday 27-November-2010. Consequently, all teachers working at King Saud University get to enjoy this extension of the holiday.

Wooo hooo!!!! This decision was so deliciously last-minute and typically Saudi, but it was such great news for teachers at KSU, because we are only allowed time off for religious holidays, so this Eid vacation will be our only break until the end of the academic year next summer (we have to be on campus during the semester breaks)

We still have about a week of the holiday left, but so far the highlight of my hols has been the impromptu mini-break a group of us arranged to the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, to the cities of Dammam, Al-Khobar and Dhahran. Although we all enjoy working and living in the capital Riyadh, it was extremely refreshing to travel across the country on a 4-hour train ride to stay in a city beside the sea, and Dammam and Al-Khobar proved to be as different to Riyadh as you can get. We were expecting it to be full of Saudis and tourists spending their Eid vacation there, but  we found that most people hot-foot it out of the country to Bahrain or Dubai or Egypt for the holidays, so it felt like we had the city all to ourselves.

Compared to landlocked desert city Riyadh, Dammam and Al-Khobar are along the gorgeous sea coast of Arabia, and you can see Bahrain from the corniche along the coast – the views are breathtaking, as you can see from the photos. The air was a welcomed break from the dusty and heavily-vehicled atmosphere of Riyadh, and our hotel was right on the beach, so we had balmy soft sea air the whole time.

Views of the sea from our suite:

 

       

And pics on the gorgeous corniche at Al-Khobar:

 

 

You can see Bahrain just over the bridge...

Other than the landscape, we found staying in Dammam an altogether opposite experience from Riyadh. It seemed that just living in a coastal city made the inhabitants far more relaxed and approachable and amenable towards us. On our arrival, we were swarmed by groups of taxi drivers welcoming us, joking about and offering their services, whereas in Riyadh men would never dare to approach a group of women in such a way. We picked Abdul, a driver with a 6-seater who proved a gem on our break and showed us all the hotspots and negotiated a good price to drive us around for the duration of our stay.



The group with Mr Abdul the taxi driver - you'd never get a taxi driver in Riyadh to take a photo with you!


Mr Abdul also introduced us to Al-Rashid, the biggest mall in all of Saudi Arabia, although it was unusually deserted as most of the shops were keeping reduced hours for Eid:

 

Exploring the coast of the city by night, we found picturesque scenes of couples (some not so legal), families, and groups of men chatting on blankets or around tables and chairs, enjoying picnics by the sea, or fishing.  



This was a relaxed and casual side to Saudi that we’d never witnessed in Riyadh, and at times on the corniche we felt like we could have been in the Bahamas or somewhere, if it wasn’t for the uniform black abayas floating about us in the wind. In fact, a couple of ladies in our group didn't let the abaya prevent them from jumping into the warm sea, fully clothed with abaya! The sun dried them off in about 20 mins though.
Although Saudi women still tended to wear the full niqab in the coastal cities, we also saw many with just the hijab, and no-one made an issue about us not wearing the headscarf while walking around.

Our driver Abdul introduced us to a relaxed and beautiful restaurant where you could either have dinner by the sea, or in a cluster of private tables in the midst of a secret garden:

 

Dinner by the sea:

  


Then dinner in the secret garden the next night!

Now, about the hotel. We were thrilled to have been upgraded to the 4 star suites overlooking the beach and all that, but we had booked this place because it had been advertised online as a spa hotel, and we fancied some pampering. So imagine our incredulity when we were told the spa was reserved for men! We thought the manager was kidding at first, but no, the luxury spa in the basement, strewn with rose petals and complete with 6 jacuzzis, waterfalls, gravel walkways, hydrotherapy rooms, Deluxe pampering rooms, steam room, charcoal room, sauna and ice room to name but a few, was reserved for the husbands of the wives for whom spas were surely invented!!! Turns out Arab men don’t spare any expense when it comes to their pampering either. When the manger realised he had made a mistake by giving us a tour of the spa, and seeing our minds boggle at how Arab men could justify spending so much time – and money – in an obviously feminine environment, he relented to our charms and promised to let us have the spa from 7am-8:45am the next morning. It was a small victory, but most definitely worth it…

 

The Charcoal sauna Room

The Ice Room

The Salt Room

We enjoyed our mini-break by the sea so much we were all a bit glum on the train back to Riyadh, but we were amused by the fact that Riyadh has only one railway station and Saudi Arabia has only 2 or 3 railway lines to destinations including Dammam, Jeddah and Mecca.

Even more bizarre was the fact that the railway station in Riyadh and Dammam are literally identical. The design, construction, architecture and interior mirror each other to the last detail, despite the two cities being 4 hours apart.

We were also quite pleased that we’d managed to get 1^st class tickets for the return trip, until we discovered that Saudi’s only rail service has only 2 classes: VIP and 1^st class. So essentially, we were just travelling bog-standard class, and it certainly felt like it!

FUNNY MOMENT
You know how you imagine, gosh, what would I do if I got locked in a supermarket overnight – imagine all that ice-cream I could eat… Well, that does become a reality in Saudi when shops close for prayer. Some of them kick you out, but some of them lock you in. We found ourselves in the coffee-lover's dream, locked in Starbucks at one point this week, and the temptation to sneak behind the couonter and make ourselves a white chocolate mocha was almost too much…