Save me from Fudruckers!

Just a mention about the food here because I’ve finally got a decent net connection and have realized I can spend a bit of time writing without phaffing around worrying about our dialup disconnecting.

First things first…I’m going to go homicidal if I have to eat another meal at an American fast food store. You name it: Fudruckers (I’m trying to not be dyslexic here…I’ve gotten in trouble enough over that), Chilies and every other crap American fast food restaurant is here. A lot of the expat women who take the shopper bus won’t try any of the local food, opting for these places instead. And because it’s not necessary completely safe to be wandering around downtown by yourself as a woman I’m usually stuck with going where all the others are going for lunch. The serves are huge, overpriced and at times completely inedible. (Literally…one of the ladies here ordered a steak she literally couldn’t bite through and it cost her about 70 riyalls…that’s about 50 riyalls more than it would have in an Arabic restaurant) So…needless to say I’m over fast food. Thankfully a lot of the newer people are wanting to try some local stuff so that’s fantastic. One of the things that really freaks me out still in the fast food restaurants…particularly Chilies is that they hire a lady specifically to sit in the toilet, waiting for you to go so she can clean it after you. For all the ladies out there, you’ve never been so paranoid about making noise in the loo until you’ve been in a situation like this.

Now for the good stuff. The local food here is great. Well when I say local I mean non-American fast food. You name it Lebanese, Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Filipino, Italian, Chinese, Thai and last but not least Arabic restaurants are everywhere and are good. Like really good. Oh and don’t start me on the Baklava and Date shops…they are everywhere…and I’m getting to be known well enough that the Baklava guy at Rashid mall makes me up a selection when he sees me coming. I’m wondering if that’s not a scary thing☺ The Lebanese food is particularly good. It’s cheap and absolutely beautiful…you’ve not had Taboulleh or Fattoush until you’ve tried it here. A lot of places here specialize in fruit juices too. The juice here is unbelievable. You can get any type, freshly squeezed. My favourite at the moment is pomegranate. I’ll do the tacky thing and take a camera with me to the shops one day and photograph a typical table full of food because the amount of absolutely fantastic eating for next to nothing is worth capturing for posterity☺ There’s a sneaky waiter in one of my favourite restaurants who asks people for a note from their home country for his note collection instead of a tip and as most people have only the larger notes from their countries in their wallets he’s making a fortune.

There’s also a brilliant little dingy corner restaurant if you’ll call it that in Rahima (the town next door) that sells the most unbelievable dhal. There’s no family area though so its guys only. (This is something I’m getting used to.)

Somewhat unrelated to food but related to eating. There are some really big Saudi guys floating around, especially in Khobar. You know when someone’s a big guy when he’s standing on the road verge and you still have to swerve the car a good few feet because his stomach is sticking that far out into the road. We were going downtown with friends last night and this one guy almost caused a bloody crash. He looked like an impressive white clad whale! I think to a degree the idea that the bigger you are the richer you are exists here.

Cooking here for the first bit was a bit depressing. I’ve got a high tech space age oven which is big enough to fit a sheep into but its digital and getting the thing to work has led to a serious amount of swearing. And then I found out it was broken….. AHHHH…its fixed now and we’re getting to be on speaking terms….just…

No Problem No Problem No Problem

'No Problem' here means no....or sometimes yes...or sometimes go away its nearly prayer time...or sometimes please please please buy something and get out of my shop so I can keep browsing dodgy internet sites or even 'I can't speak English but I'm too stuborn to admit it'...

its really such a versatile statement. Like the time when I walked downstairs and there's three gardeners starting through my back window to watch me walk around in my pyjamas... when I politely asked if they wouldn't rather stare at each other in their pyjamas they yelled 'no problem' a lot before running out my gate...oh my god could I write a ode to my new curtains...hehe...we had to get them cos the guys here just stare at you...constantly...I can deal with it when its out and about but not when its through my windows... Anthony didn't seem to mind so much. He's happy to scratch and snort and be feral in front of anyone...mind you I think most of that was because he was so tired he thought he was still back in Perth.

Its five thirty in the morning and I'm waiting for the guys down the road to get out of bed to walk to my house so we can walk to someone elses house to go for a walk in much humidity.

This place is like the 1950s. I've often wondered what if was like pre the feminist movements of the 60s or even the suffrugettes in the West. Well you got it here. In a way I'm not even talking about out of camp in everyday Saudi, I'm talking about in camp. For starters there's a lot of extraordinarily educated women here who are doctors, lawyers, nurses you name it. And almost all of them can't work. So its back to baking and sewing and childrearing. Think Stepford Wives. Women can't fill out forms with ease unless their husbands are there, they can't open their own bank accounts ...they can't do a lot. Some ladies here haven't left their houses for up to 17 years other than to go to the airport. Their husbands do all the shopping and the kids take themselves to school. Scary eh. I can see how it could easily happen thought believe it or not.

Mind you its really what you make of it. On the other hand this is the ideal place to research and write or to set up a business that caters to all the ladies round here with a lot of cash and not much to spend it on and there are a lot of entreprenurial ladies who do do this...still I can see how some people get their house nice and don't leave it.

Sight Seeing

Ok picture this...

Middle Aged Texan Lady in an abaya........


.....


....


With a bumbag strapped over it

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


this shouldn't be that amusing but you gotta see it. She's actually an absolute sweety...buts its just so bloody funny...

Spaceship mosques and Surly Satelite Guys

We have a mosque shaped like the coolest spaceship near us. Its all tiled, huge and looks like its going to take off at any minute. Its near the local "Farm" supermarket in Rahima which incidentally is shiny, neat and crawling with expats - full of western brand food and crappy vegetables. If you go to the "Panda" supermarket down the road its messy, the floor is dirty and the shop people and extraordinarily cranky and rip you off if you don't count your change. )(Oh and the atm is notorious for taking your card and your money.) However the quality of the food is awesome and about half the price. Also the word "Panda" is unpronouncable in Arabic which has no pronuncuation of 'p' so I shop at the local "Banda".

We now have a satelite dish...make that two! One for the dodgy sat tv network that tell us via CNN that Crispy Cremes are going to be cutting trans fats soon. (AHHHHHH SMITE ME NOW) and the other is the internet satelite. Now the delivery guys...hmmm...can we say they introduced me to my first true taste of mysogyny. Except they we'ren't Saudi they were Bangladeshi. They were in my house for three hours and ignored me the entire time. Openly talked about me in front of me, went through my fridge and almost got kicked out of our house if they weren't the only people who install these things.

So very very soon we should be able to call people via skype for next to nothing.

A whole lot has happened the last few days but I'm almost comatose tired and can't remember them (Oh for a good bed!). So I'll write them all out in the next few days hopefully. Remind me to talk about Texans and swearing, the apparent fear of Dammam, people vacating houses and scavanging, Halloween prep, my curtains and stealth Christmas oh and accidents, ohhhh the driving here.

Thobe or not to Thobe

There's this guy here, whose Canadian, large and very very white who walks about wearing a thobe. After enquiring who he was I found out he was around downtown Khobar when the big truck explosion happened a few years ago and is now trying to go stealth mode. He's really wierding out the Saudis apparently and is one of those guys who is very very very loud. Picture a moving target...You get all kinds here...

Also talked to one of the ladies here who was a nurse round the time of the Gulf War. Her plane took off just as the Iraqi's stormed the airport, she also worked with the Iraqi POWs later and says there were a pretty fun bunch to be around and didn't like Hussein that much.

Oh and Eisha down the road has a Rhodes Scholar for a brother-in-Law who went through the year before Clinton.

Carl over the park got stuck outside after a lockdown on a Nigerian rig with Witch doctors dancing around him "invisible" if he'd looked at them he would have been shot.

My philipino painting guys were singing Achapella style "boys to men" songs the other night when I walked in... It was the end of the road...and they couldn't let go...

Oh and my house is probably the most loudly painted house in the street. (Orange, Blue, Brown, Purple, Yellow and Red are on the walls so far inside...photos shall come later)

Anthony saw tracer bullets being fired up into the sky two nights ago on the way home.

There's a pod of dolphins that come in to shore in the mornings too.

There's an underground market in sweets from home too...freddo frogs are very popular...

Its begukking surreal I tell you. What next...

Oh and we haven't slept for about 3 weeks. Our bed is so small ...Oh for our shipment!

An internet connection that doesn't run by means of Mice on wheels and static electricity would be nice!

No net sucks. We're currently on dialup (oh for those dolcet tones...that telephonic twanging that I've missed so much since broadband!) which means that it takes hoouuuurs to load up anything...so today shall be the day to organise a satelite internet connection. That is if I can get a hold of Nigel down the road and get the number off him...hmmm...

Ok what's happened of late...Well...lots...I just can't remember most of it cos its in a blur. There are a lot more people moving to Ras Tanura...many of them working in Dhahran with Anthony so thats going to be pretty interesting. We've already met a Californian couple who are to be secondary teachers at the local high school (Why do people from California always look so perfect?), A couple named Eisha and Kamal from the UK...Eisha and I have an affinity for shoes so we've decided to do some rampant shopping this week. Also there's a fella named Nigel whose English through and through (read deadpan) but has lived in India and Indonesia for quite a while. He's a nice guy ... called yesterday and said he was bored so Anthony and he spent most of the day here talking politics with me and computer software with Anthony. A lot of the guys who come over here are without their family for the first three months so they end up being pretty bored/lonely. I am doing my best to solve this problem...it could involve running them over with my golf buggy >:)

Oh and there's Hossan. The manic Columbian. This guy is hillarious. He was the dude I brought the golfcart off and the other night we had a lot of *mostly apples* with him and I'm still feeling the after effects. The guy has led the most head on life I've ever heard of. He's 33, coming up to his 3rd marriage, he's worked all over the place as a chopper pilot and was in this crash a few years ago...he wasn't the pilot...apparently the pilot was a vietnam vet having flashbacks.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPoahYSiCRk

Hossan is the guy running at the end.

What else...Anthony's finally gotten his Iquama...thats like a residency pass that allows you to set up bank accounts, get a drivers licence etc. So we've put in for my residency now...hopefully all will be well and that'll go through asap before Ramadan because if it goes over absolutely everything stops. The outlook is good though.

Went to downtown Khobar late Thursday night with Jo and Laurie...the place is fantastic. You almost can't move there after dark, there's cars going everywhere...vendors trying to flog you stuff and you don't quite know what you're going to find in the shops...there's like everything there but its in a type of maze so if you see something you have to get it then or you'll never find the bloody shop again. As I found out the other night...The guys were great tourguides...really layed back which was wonderful considering Anthony and I hadn't slept for about five days due to the smallness and unconfortableness of the standard issue beds here.

Oh, there's so many fish swimming down at the beach with us at the moment I'm going to go get some fishing rods this week. You'll just be wading in the water and a whole school will shoot by you. I was going for a swim the other day and felt something brushing my leg, looked down and it was a ray about a foot by a foot long scoping me out. It descided I wasn't a shellfish pretty quick and buggered off. Note: that I'm maintining I kept my dignity...I didn't almost wet my pants and have a coronary thinking the thing was a shark at first at all...ehem...

Tracie, the aussie lass I walk with ever day, wants to get me out to the reef for some snorkling. I think she'll have to provide me with a sharkproof cage first...I know its unreasonable but just type in Perisan Gulf and SHARKS into any biological database and see how many mostly dangerous varieties come up. Apparently we're near a hammerhead breeding ground. Mind you its not the big ones that worry me ...its the little surly reefsharks that are puported to be out there. And not a lot of people get out to the beach here so I can't use my "that guy looks more like a seal than me so the sharks will get him first" reasoning..

Also found a chaise losenge as anthony calls it at the shops the other day for $200 AUD ... so I bought it and arranged for it to be delivered. This was where the fun started. At the Gazebo coffee morning thingie most of the ladies round here decided to come round for a couch christening the day it was to be delivered at 2 (when it was supposed to be delivered)...about 10 people turned up...I got a call at two "ma'am...ma'am FUNATURE WAREHOUSE! ma'am...no problem no problem mushkalah, mushkalah!" (which incidentally means PROBLEM) I concluded from this the guys were on their way after trying to get a bit of info out of them. 2.30 rolls up...another call "Ma'am...10 minutes no problem....FURNATURE WAREHOUSE MA'AM!!!" Ok, so another half hour rolls round. "Ma'am FURNATURE WAREHOUSE (my ear died about now) at Gate...Mushkalah!" thinking there was a drama, one of the ladies drove me down the gate...no guys there... I came back for a liedown. to cut a lot of yelling short...two hours later I get a call from the furnature shop, go down to the gate to find out that the three guys the furnature shop sent couldn't speak English or Arabic, had spent the last few hours touring all the local towns, Qatif and Rahima in an unairconditioned truck and had no idea where Ras Tanura was. The guard looked like he was trying not to belly laugh, the poor buggers delivered the furnature got some water and a big tip and were off on their way....I think the last sighting of the delivery truck was in Riyadh...

Photos

I figured I should probably take a few photos of our house etc. to give you an idea of where we are. So I took a camera out and about this morning and snapped away. I'll take some better ones later...its so bloody humid out there at the moment, the camera keeps fogging up so I have to wait until either early morning or a less humid day.



This is the view (somewhat foggy) from our front yard.



And this is the view from outside our back gate. You can just see the beach off in the distance. (2 minutes away)



This is a bit of a closer look



This is the beach itself. We've been swimming here every night pretty much. Its really nice except for the odd bit of rubbish that floats in from either Kuwait or Jubail up the road about 150kms.




This is our somewhat blurry little townhouse. Well...actually its bigger that it looks. We've got two more houses in our row. The immediate nextdoor neighbours are an extended Saudi family with many many children who think I'm hillarious since they saw me practicing golf buggie driving. (Lets just say my lawn now has a few tyre tracks in it). And I've yet to meet the guys at the other end of our row. The blurriness is because of the humidity clouding my camera lens. Its about 40 or so today with about 80% plus humidity.

A Camel is a Nobel Animal...(Said the Camel.)

Another Weekend

We are whacked, buggered, bushed

Spent the day today wandering around the Al Rashid Mall in Khobar scoping out the local merchandise. Its pretty diverse actually. I was expecting a lot of the same from home but thats only a part of the story.

However, I'd argue strongly that downtown Khobar is by far the most fun place I've been here. Its all little streets full of shops that sell the same things i.e. the gold street, the rug street, the mobile phone street...(very old and ancient family business is the selling of mobile phones) I brought some marvellous intricately thingied silver earings the other day and managed to do some good haggling...well sort of...I just looked vague and the guy kept coming down in price. Its amazing...I've finally found a use for my really vacant got-no-sleep stare...gonna have to perfect it more I think. At the moment I'm waking up at 3 or so every morning to the morning prayers coming from the nearest mosque (there's two on camp plus one pretty close in Rahima). And I'm staying awake after that. Like really awake...like getting up at 4.30am to make waffles awake... Someone paint me blue and call me charlie but I'm going insane!

We're sitting at our on loan dining table waiting for a Columbian guy from down the road to come pick up some King Fahds for a Golf Cart I just purchased off him. He's late. Like really late. I think he's sleeping...He only lives just down the road and I'm wondering if its rude to do burnouts past his house in his soon to be mine golf cart...hmmm....the thought has potential. If he wasn't so nice and hadn't offered to use Wasta to help Anthony get a drivers license I'd be surly...I want to go for a walk by the beach...well nix that...a golf buggy burn out by the beach! Seriously...I made it go sideways...I was so impressed!

BTW wasta is like a hmmm what would you call it...favour system. We've been told and have seen that money won't get you as far as favours here. So if you help a guy out, he then owes you a favour which means if he works at the liscencing dept he'll process your request for a liscence a bit quicker for you that he would have. Or he could do it faster if you asked and then you'd owe him a favour. The term gets thrown around here a lot.

Oh, the story about the Paint and the Mattawa. The other day, Tracie called and asked if I'd catch a cab to downtown Rahima to get some paint from this store called Jotan...(she'd run out) anyway it was just before prayertime but we thought we'd get in and out just in time. So we go in and the guy takes ages to mix the stuff up (I got some paint to...we've not got an ultramarine loo...pissing in the ocean instead of in the rainforrest for anyone who saw our bathroom in Aus.) THe announcements came on for prayer and he keeps mixing so we're thinking...ok...we're fine here, no dramas he's just going to finish mixing it and we'll leave while prayers are on...then he looks out the window of his store and gets frantic, mumbles Mattawa (the name of the religious police) and opens the door frantically hussling us out. We go out, he slams and locks the door of the shop with our paint still inside and yells for us to sit in the Taxi. So we're watching him and he's frantically mixing, then opens the door, shoves the paint out, madly runs a calculator out to the car looking around furtively and shoves it through the window at me. Ok, I got out the money, paid him a bit more than he was asking for because Tracie was getting a bit stressed and was grabbing money out of my wallet. He then put his hand in the car to signal that he wanted the calculator. Tracie, misconstruing his intent, grabed his hand and shook it. Now, the poor guy almost died. Its prayer time, its illegal to have your shop open and he's out on the street being touched by a strange white woman. (I'm referring to it as the 'groping incident.' Oh and the mosuqe was right over the road and the religious police chose to come round the corner just after she grabbed his hand. Muggins here then asks him for some paint brushes. which were manically thrust through a moving taxi's window then followed by him pulling down his shop front, putting his hands in his pocket and walking off in a hurry...Our taxi buggered off back to camp with the taxi driver shaking his head and repeatedly saying to us 'This is Saudi Arabia!'. I'm now calling Tracie the local groper:) It could have been much worse... but thankfully neither the shop guy or us got into any dramas. So all is good...

Anyway...I'm off to stalk a Gold Buggy owner

Whitey in the Middle

Interesting thing about the class structure here. Some westeners don't seem to handle not being at the top of the pecking order that well. The Saudi guys are like what I guess you'd call an aristocracy. Many of them don't work because they don't have to and their houses bespeak volumes about the kind of money they've got. The middle class is composed of expats from all parts of the world (used to be mainly American and European...now an assortment of South American, Australian, South and West African, Indian...you name it as well as the usual suspects) and the working class guys tend to be from Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philiphines. If anything has gotten me down in the short time we've been here its been over the behavior of a few westerners I've seen while out and about towards Saudis and the Bangladeshi and Philipino guys. They just firstly don't seem to understand that while the people around them are talking in other languages, they most likely understand English very well. So derogitory things said loudly about the Saudi Women walking around, the Philipino guy driving your taxi, or the guy serving you at the shops are most likely understood loud and clear. You know how people in Western countries get angry about immigrants coming to their country and refusing to assimilate, well some people seem to do that over here in a very big way. Bear in mind this isn't by any means a rant about all the Westener's I've been around with. All the guys I've been out with have made an effort to learn a bit of the language and are very polite to the guys serving them/working for them. Its more what I've seen so far here and there thats been a dissapointment. (Western lady abusing guy in food shop was the one today...she publicly humiliated him for not understanding english)

Just going out with Jo and Laurie and Anthony's colleague Denis who know a bit of Arabic has shown how much more relaxed the local guys are when you make an effort and how much easier things get done. Its a realy bugger to hear that some people have been here for years (30 plus) and haven't even attempted to pick up the slightest bit of arabic.

The Weekend and the Whitey Surcharge

The weekends here are on Wednesday and Thursday if I haven't said that already. On Wednesday we went down to catch up with Jo and Laurie again. They'd offered to take us out shopping for house bits and pieces which was fantastic because we drastically needed house stuff and some decent foodage. We had a really great indian dinner right near their compoud and then headed out to the Dharan mall where Jo helped me spend wayyyy too much money on L'Occitaine stuff.

On camp there's a sorta small supermarket called a commissary that I did an initial shop at and I thought that was ok but when I got out to the real shops I realized what a surcharge the people who wont leave the camp to do their shopping get lumped with. Everythings marked up in there an absolutely phenomenal amount. For example, Cherries in the outside shops cost 5 AUD a kilo or less. In the Commissary, (if they stock them) they'd be about 20-25 AUD a Kilo...NUTS and don't start me on the price of meat in there...my god! So needless to say the shops out and about are great. Absolutely massive variety and beautiful fresh ingredients from all over the Middle East. I was like a kid in a candy shop with a visa card.

Jo an Laurie ended up coming out here to see us for dinner and agreed that its really nice here. They ended up making us some much appreciated Sketti Bog and we dragged them out for a walk along the beach. Anthony tried to make them watch Dune at 10 at night when we were both insanely jetlagged and I beat him verily.

New People

Where was I...Ok, within a day of getting here I was invited out for a coffee with on of the ladies groups down at a house called the gazebo which surprise surprise...has a gazebo in front of it...They all seemed pretty nice and relatively open to making new friends. One of the ladies down the road who is also new here, Tracie, offered to pick me up in her golf buggie. (Everyone here rides these things) and since that moment we've formed a pretty cruizy friendship, both being new and all. She's a Kiwi Aussie whose husband Carl works as a Company Man out on the rigs. He's just come off of being a driller in Nigeria for five years having left because he couldn't stomach the corruption et al in the country. Some of the stories you hear are just abominable...mostly to do with pushing dead bodies off roads. Needless to say they seem pretty happy to be here if not somewhat bewildered. (More about the work environment here later.)

There are an assortment of nationalities in Ras Tanura from what I can gather. So far I've met a number of Canadians. A smattering of South Africans, an Ethiopian lady and a lot of Saudis. Oh and the Americans... I'm told there are quite a few English people floating around too but they've all buggered off for the holidays, as have the Americans. (This is the hottest time of the year here with temperatures at around 40 plus degrees with 80 to 100 percent humidity.

So there's this I'd say 60 year old Aussie lady here named Dianne who’s an absolute social powerhouse. If it wasn't for her and Tracie I wouldn't know a bloody thing. You don't get told anything here, you just have to learn it off other people. Its like an initiation of sorts where no one tells you you have to fill out form x to stay in the country, they just expect you to magically know. It drives a lot of people seriously barmy. I've been witness to quite a few white knuckle moments in the past week but so far its been ok for us other than Anthony being told all the wrong things about getting my visa sorted but that seems about normal. Inshallah it will work itself out.

So far everyone I've met has been pretty friendly. I'm told in Dharhan, people are a lot more clicky but that makes sense. There's only about 2000 ppl here all up and about 10000 in Dharhan. We got to go up there Wednesday night (equivalent of Friday night at home) and have dinner with one of Anthony's Canadian colleagues Denis and his wife Sharon (I think that’s the right name...tooo many names). Denis was lovely and took up shopping to fit out our house and proceeded to give us a large amount of stuff out of his garage too. He's a really generous easy to like Canadian guy but there's a crafty bugger under there somewhere I suspect because I think he managed to sell us a TV, amp, and speakers that he had been wanting to get rid of for a while. But either way it was a nice gesture. Dinner was great, he showed us around a bit of Khobar and we got take out to eat at home with his wife who'd been layed up with foot surgery. It was a really nice, if not jet lagged evening. He ended up driving us home because we couldn't get a taxi in which event we got really lost (roadworks...there's always roadworks) and had to ask for directions twice.

Interesting fact. If you are ever lost in a foreign country ask a pharmacist for directions. Apparently they all have to know how to speak English because that’s the language the textbooks come in.

I know I'm leaving out a ton of interesting stuff...Like the bus that I went in on with broken air-conditioning and the mutinying workers going home who almost throttled the poor driver but after being here a bit this is all pretty run of the mill:)

An Encounter with a Magestic Hairy Taxi Driver and the New Home

Back Again...

Had a very interesting experience with some paint guys, prayer time and the religious police this morning after my post but I'll get to that in good time. (remind me if I don't its pretty funny/scary)...

So where was I...Oh yep the taxi drive home from Jo and Laurie's...Now this would have to be one of the outstanding highlights of our first week here. For starters we found out that its bloody impossible to get a taxi here at night time. All the ladies can't drive so they take taxis and go out in a big way. So if you're disorganized like we were you don't book a taxi ahead and end up with the guy we did. Ok picture an Indian guy in his early 20s with an absolutely magestic quif...truly the most sculpted hair I have ever witnessed. Now add to this picture the guy playing a song called habibi over and over (on tape), while text messaging and softly crying to himself all while driving at 150 km/hr in a major built up CBD area. A truly authentic experience if ever there was one. Anthony was exhausted and fell asleep the minute he got into the cab so he unfortunately missed the show. I've later found out its ok to threaten to beat your taxi driver over the head with something solid while swearing at him in many different languages (except Klingon) if he trys anything of the sort again but hey you gotta learn.

Ras Tanura

The next day after all of no hours sleep Anthony went to an induction that informed him that our suspicions about our recruiters in Australia being lying rodents was correct. After that we were taxi'd down to Ras Tanura (about 45 minutes away from Dharhan) to move into our new house. Our taxi driver was really booring in comparison to the one we'd had the night before and even stuck to a 120km/hr speed limit...Amazing.

The drive down was our first introduction to Saudi outside of the city centre. Its dusty, flat and a semi industrial wasteland. Property development here is massive. Well, people are building a ton of houses at least so all the rubble gets dumped in the least popular areas of town. I.E. next to a major highway. Anthony was still pretty relieved to see that it didn't look like Mauritania, which I found out he'd been expecting our entire move. (I beat him thoroughly for this...I'm sure thats against the law here:P) There are many goats and camels on the sides of the road which I was very excited about. Yes, you can get goat here and I hear it is very very tasty too.

After that drive we were working up to something pretty dismal and were pleasantly surprised. Ras Tanura is pretty spectacular. Initially seeing a whole lot of houses that look identical was daunting (We got lost in the taxi trying to find our house) but once we saw inside ours we were stoked. Its a two story house with massively tall ceilings on the first floor and three bedrooms upstairs. We've got two really big trees in our garden and two whomping begukking HUGE airconditioning systems (almost bigger than the house) next to it. They sound like jet engines going off. But enought about the house...more about the beach. We're literally 2 minutes walk from a beach that could be on a resort. Its long, beautifully maintained and has a reef not far offshore. Its one of the two beaches in the eastern province that allow swimming and we've taken advantage pretty much ever day since getting here. The water's about 34 degrees during the day but when the sea breeze gets in at night its really nice. Interestingly, most nights we're the only whiteys on the beach. The new islamic bathing costumes are all the go and the Saudi women and men bring their kids out for a swim almost every night. (For you guys who haven't seen one, the cozy is composed of loose fitting pants and top with a bathing cap...all in a fashionable black.) Just down the beach is a coffee house that serves over 15 different types of turkish style coffee and a surprisingly good library. Again, all the whitey's are at home at night after 6 even though its the nicest time of the day here and its the Muslim guys/ladies whether they be locals or expats who are out and about with their kids/ just going for a walk or having a barbecue. There's even a group of ladies who go down to the beach for prayer time by the looks of it. (we caught sight of them this evening.)

A taxi driver summed it all up when driving out of the compound a day or two ago when he said that outside Ras Tanura is the real Saudi Arabia, inside is very different. Even the Saudi guys who live in here seem to chill out a lot more.

Anthony has to get up every morning for 5 to catch the 5.40 bus so we're up pretty early here. The first morning I had someone ring my door bell at 7. It was a gardening guy asking if I needed a gardener. I wasn't sure what the process was...whether it was on the company or whether we payed so I told him to come back later. A few minutes later, I had another guy knocking, then another one etc. All turned away. I just didn't know what the go was. So I did a small induction with one of the local housing people here named Claire who took me around and told me that the Gardeners are hired by us and gave me an approximate price for my garden. (its really small). Anyway, I got back to the house and one of the guys immediately knocked on my door asking if I wanted a gardener, I agreed on a price with him and said yes. No sooner had this happened then the first guy who knocked on my door came running over and all the others arguing that they should get the job, yelling at each other and asking me to descide. Essentially the one who yelled the loudest is now doing our garden. He's a really nice guy who keeps bringing me plants. I've learnt from him that most of the gardeners are Banglideshi or Pakistani and come over here on really restrictive visas that don't allow them home for three years. (I'd voice more on this but I'm not sure if this blog is going to get vetted). Either way he's off home for his first visit next month and is looking forward to it.

So the middle of the week was pretty chilled out. Anthony started work and they didn't want him to move mountains the first day...he's pretty full on now but not unmanageably so. He also seems to be managing the comute to Dharhan on the bus every morning pretty well. The guys in his office keep offering to get him a house there but we like the beach so much we're going to stay here for a bit then reavaluate.

Anyways...its late and we're up early so I'll write more tomorrow...this is taking much much longer than I thought...much to tell!

Arriving and the First Week

Ok Guys, I'm writing this a week or so later under the continued influence of Jet lag so forgive me if all the interesting bits have come out all dull. (and lifeless...maybe panteen is an option!) I'm going to try and write everything from the last week in one sitting but we'll see how we go.

Getting There

Ok so we left a rather rainy and windy Perth at 6 in the morning Friday before last. Our flight was my first business class flight and Anthony's 5 millionth so while I was looking around the Emirates Business Lounge like a kid in a candy shop he lummoxed on a couch in a corner and looked slightly bored while tucking into the nibblys on offer. Its pretty amazing the difference the lounges and the little things on flight make for coping with being cooped up in a tin can for an insane number of hours.

Anyway, I'll skip past all the in flight stuff...needless to say, probably one of the few business flights I'll ever do and well worth it. I did get to see 'Stranger than Fiction' ...if anyone hasn't seen it yet go watch it...really really good flick. We had a 8 hour or so stop over in Dubai and then a one hour flight to Dammam which also went pretty cruizy...although we were pretty buggered by the time the plane hit the ground.

Oh, what we saw of Dubai was fantastic...the weather was awesome...about 40 or so degrees and humid...will want to have a much better look later. The highlight of our stop was reading an article in a local paper about naked workers on construction sites:

http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/07/26/10141900.html

Thats the boring bit, now for the interesting stuff...

We got in at 12 am to be greeted to be greeted with our first taste of Saudi class structure. Everyone on business/first class were allowed out of the plane early, got to go to the passport desk straight away and got processed instantly. All of the economy passangers had to wait in a massive cue for the few of us to go through before they were allowed to move forward even though there were lanes free. We then went through to collect our luggage. There are porters in green overalls everywhere in the baggage collection area trying to talk you into letting them carry your baggage for about 10-20 riyalls ($2-5 AUD). Our guy had his work cut out for him. We had six large cases along with cabin luggage and laptop bags. He only had to walk it on a trolly for about 20 metres though, and then we were met by the Aramco guys who took us through a processing system that got us ID tags for the Aramco Compounds. Beaurocracy gone mad would be the most appropriate way to describe the process. Anthony's 'boss to be' who met us was completely spun out I was already wearing an abaya...why I'm not sure...every other lady at the airport was kitted out in one. He's an old school Texan who worked a few years in Jakarta before coming to Saudi. He kept insisting we take it easy and that Anthony get over his jet lag before coming into work which was great considering Anthony had been given the impression they'd want him at work immediately.

So our Taxi Driver (You'll be reading a lot about taxi drivers) was a very very sleepy Philipino guy who had a taste for 1960s crooners and falling asleep at the wheel while doing about 150 Kms an hour. You know your jetlagged when that kinda thing doesn't phaze you. On the ride to the hotel I got to see a lot of sand at night, and what I now know to be regular Saudi driving. (Cars passing us at about 200km per hour, not indicating and stopping suddenly.)

We were taken to Steineke Hall, a sort of hotel on sight at the compound and stayed there for a day or so. While we were there we caught a taxi down to see friends Jo and Laurie in Khobar (15 minutes away). But more of that in a minute.

So to describe the Aramco compound in Dharan...its green. Like really green. For those of you in Perth think of Pepermint Grove, Dalkieth green. It looks a bit like a surreal idealic American suburb. Which looks all the more surreal when viewing the Saudi guys walking around in throbes and ladies walking around in full abaya, scarf and naguab right next to expats walking around in shorts and tshirts...really disorienting at first.


Aramco Employees can alter their houses to however they want really and everyone has gardeners and cleaners (houseboys...more on my complete dislike of this term later.) so everything is pretty much pristine. The day we got there was about 45 degrees celcius and there were bangladeshi and pakistani gardners working out there in that heat gardening and picking up rubbish at 12 midday...nuts! But more on the whole class structure later...

To describe the world outside of Aramco. Well talking about class, the Saudi Houses going to Khobar are palatial. I have genuinely never seen houses so huge in my life except for in magazine pictures of english mansions. They're all surrounded by huge walls and a lot of greenery. (Green means status I do believe.) The road to Khobar is also lined with an astounding amount of topiary of all shapes and sizes, the sign of a very cheap workforce to trim each individual plant. The untouched bits of scenery are brown desert sand and theres lots of it. Wherever there's a gap between houses or an undeveloped lot theres sand. The first time we saw Khobar was at night and its shiny. Lit up everywhere, huge shopfronts all made of glass and neon with the names of all the big brand names with big apartment complexes and houses next door in some pretty amazing architectural styles.

Jo an Laurie live in a small compound used by a miscellany of companies in downtown Khobar. Its surrounded with a big white wall and would look pretty genteel if it wasn't for the bullet holes pockmarking it. (Apparently a local Saudi guy got a bit irate about 5 years ago and used the wall for target practice...no ones bothered to paint it over yet.) The guards at the gate are pretty interesting too...they're Saudi national guards, mainly Sudanese guys who don't speak english and carry AK47s. Apparently Jo and Laurie found them a bit scary intially and then took them donuts one night and they're really cruizy now. When the guys drove us through they were laughing and joking with them. (When we came though in a taxi a few days later they were pretty scary...no laughing and joking then) Jo and Laurie's house is really nice. Large and spatious...about one and a half the size of our little house at home which is spatious for us. They've turned it into a home with photos and books everywhere. They took us to an absolutely brilliant Lebanese restaurant...just in time for prayer time...

So here's how eating out goes here if you're a woman. Each restaurant/cafe has two entrances. A single guys entrance and a family entrance which is in the shopping centres and in some restaurants to the side but more generally is usually down an alley somewhere...depends... However, I have seen a cafe or two now that allows men and women to sit in the same area with no one blinking so things are changing a bit by the looks of it. Anyway...the food is amazing. You name it its here and its done well. In some places you wouldn't want to look at the kitchen but the foods so good you wouldn't care. We got there in time, just before prayers which meant that we could sit and eat our meal while the restuarant closed up. Everything closes here for prayer times so if you're not a muslim you aim to be in a restaurant or in a large supermarket that will do a shut in so you can either have your very lovely dinner or do your shopping. Otherwise, you just wait until after prayers to go out an about. The driving before and after prayer time gets bloody insane. I'll sit down in the next few days and photoshop up a diagram or two of what is called a Saudi Left Hand Turn.

After dinner we headed on over to the largest shopping centre in the Eastern Province. The Al Rashid Mall. Its huge. Like really huge...As a matter of fact most things are done here in a big way. The entire top story is full of coffee houses, restaurants and pizzerias. Subsequent stories contain a hodge podge of designers (Cheap!), perfumeries (amazing!), Date shops (my god!) and shoe shops...the shoes are endless. That first night I brought myself another abaya because I felt so out of place in the one I'd brought online from Egypt. The abayas here are just awe inspiring. For starters, all the big designers make them, they have the most amazing number of designs and details on them. If you've never seen them and you think that Saudi Women wear dour black this place makes you reavaluate. The taylors in the shop took the one I chose in and hemmed it in the hour for free. (You get this done for pretty much anything you buy here). My abaya has silver detailing and black embroidery all over the sleeves and on the hem on a sort of satiny material. I figure if I have to wear one I may as well like it:) I've also been wearing the one that the Badrians got me everywhere. Its just perfect but its off getting cleaned at the moment. I've been out and about so much and the sand and dust gets everywhere.

There was a really lovely girl in the shop who was out with her sister who had to translate from arabic to english for the taylor. I need to learn arabic because I think I've been getting charged a major whitey surcharge.

Anyway...I've jsut been called by my nextdoor neighbour to go to town with her to get paint...so I'll continue my elongated essay later.