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.