so THAT'S why they don't fly Saudia...

I finally made a trip to the main Saudi Arabian Airlines office in Riyadh. The reason being that the flight I requested was not available as an electronic ticket, so I had to get a paper one. Lemme give you a piece of advice. If you find out you can't get an electronic ticket, do not bother with Saudia, because for the money you will save with the cheap flight, you will be paying out emotionally and with your time instead.

After being informed by the booking assistance Saudia guy on the phone that I needed to go to a travel agent or saudia office to get my ticket, I asked my husband's office runner to help make a booking. In the evening I proceeded to Saudia head office (the big one off King Fahad near Panda Supermarket). If you have never seen a typical Saudia travel agent work, let me paint the scene for you: a Saudia employee sits expressionless and motionless staring blankly at a computer screen while you approach the counter - he types so slow you have to double check whether you are in real time or whether you have slipped into a slow motion wormhole - he gives you a number that reads 87 while the electronic counter behind him reads 70 - ten minutes later he is still in the exact same position serving the exact same customer - you realize you could be there all night. The office was just stuffed with people, a total mess, and the men's section was a million times worse. After hearing that a friend had waited six hours at that very office, I decided to leave and tackle the task the next day.

The next morning, due to a lack of consensus on where I could pick up my ticket, I visited three different travel agencies and a Saudia office near the airbase, only to be sent right back to the Saudi head office. Finally I resigned myself to the fate of sitting in the pile and took a number from the front desk. Once I got to the counter, it took another twenty minutes to get my precious paper ticket.

My advice if you still decide you want to risk visiting this office is: 1)get the lady in your life to go 2)make sure you have your passport 3)make sure you get a number directly from the employee as they have stopped distributing them from the dispensers 4)go in the morning 5)bring a book or something to stab yourself with, anything to relieve the boredom!

I have heard really mixed things about Saudi Arabian Airlines. On the one hand, some people say the flights are on time and have good leg room. On the other hand, I've heard that VIP's and HRH's that show up last minute are given priority over proper ticket holders who get bumped off their flights, and the planes seem to have more unsoothed toddlers on them wreaking havoc. And now I have witnessed the abomination that is their head office...hmmm....

exit re-entry visa. argh.

You've finally made it here, and now you can't wait to get out, so you've got two tickets to Istanbul and a big smile on your face. Not so fast buster. In order to exit the Magic Kingdom and to re-enter post vacay, you will need to shell out either 200SAR for a single exit re-entry visa where you are allowed to exit once and re-enter once, or 500SAR for the "multiple six month exit re-entry visa" where you may exit and re-enter freely within a six month period starting from the date of your first departure. If it sounds like it's straightforward, rest assured that there are many things that can go wrong.

Typically the office 'runner' will be the man in charge of handling the visa for you, and he will collect your passports, money, your sponsor's scribbly wibbly (i.e. written permission), and sometimes when the mood strikes him, passport pictures. In theory, the paperwork should only take a day or so to complete, but getting anything done quickly in the Kingdom is like putting a stick in the Red Sea and expecting it to part. If your name isn't Moses, then you better plan ahead.

The most important thing to remember after you get your exit re-entry visa is to bring it with you to the airport. That sounds simple enough, but the fact that the visa is typically a loose sheet of dot matrix A4 paper makes it easy to confuse the document, with say, a receipt, or to leave it behind with your airline ticket at the check-in counter, or for your well meaning maid to throw out for you.

Let's explore a hypothetical. Let's say you are now on your way back to Riyadh from a nice trip to Germany. As you are lining up to get onto the plane bound for Riyadh, you notice the flight staff checking visas. Has it been six months since you first used it?? Gee you've had so many Worsteiners you can't remember. You examine your visa, but can't read the dates on any of the stamps because they are in arabic(!), and not only are they in arabic, but they utilize the arabic calendar (!!!). The staff denies your entry on the flight to Riyadh (!!!!!).

Now what? Well remember all those documents you had to collect before you came to Riyadh in the first place? Yup. Resubmission time. Not to worry, your exile should only last a few weeks since the paperwork is already in place and all that needs to be done is for your runner to submit everything again along with the ever important letter from the sponsor. But as we have covered, you are not Moses, so expect there to be mistakes and delays.

happy travelling all!

Are those handcuffs?? Where am I?

I am in Jeddah right now! And I cannot resist posting the pictures I took of a lingerie shop at the Red Sea Mall. I heard that things were a bit more relaxed out here, but I didn't realize it was *this* relaxed!


While I was looking into the store making surprised remarks about it, hubster disappeared halfway down the hall to disassociate himself from the woman with the camera yelling, "they sell WHIPS in here! Come look! Where are you going?!" He is the first to sell me down the river whenever he hears the words, "look out for security, okay?" Honestly where is the loyalty? Curiously, there was no mall security chasing me down for taking pictures anywhere. Was it just good luck? Or is this Jeddah?

Is she? Or isn't she?

Six signs you may be in close proximity to a "working girl" in Bahrain...

1. There's a nightclub in your hotel, and the base from the speakers passes through concrete walls and floors
2. Said nightclub employs a filipino band whose female members are clad in outfits that may or may not be taped onto their bodies
3. In the morning, you watch a pretty young thing come out of the elevator in club wear (e.g. a ridiculously short skirt), full make up and four inch heels
4. There seems to be a suspiciously large age gap between the mixed race couples going to and fro in the hotel
5. At breakfast, a couple fitting the description of above #4 seem to be eating their food in an awkward silence.
6. You watch a really old white guy hug a really young asian girl on a street corner right before they walk in opposite directions, usually with the man heading towards a hotel and the girl walking towards a taxi.

ha ha...now you'll all think Bahrain is very seedy. It's generally not, but you definitely get certain types congregating around the hotels that have nightclubs in them. If loud music or sketchy characters are not your scene, don't skimp on your hotel in Bahrain, or else choose a dry hotel.

Latest trip to Bahrain

This past weekend hubster and I ended up in Bahrain, so I thought I'd share some travel tips even though this is a Riyadh blog, because let's face it - Bahrain is where everyone ends up when they need to take a quick break from Saudi.


We flew Bahrain Air, a discount airline, instead of driving this time. The schedule is definitely not as flexible as the other major carriers, and the planes are not new, but we ended up paying about $300USD for two roundtrip tickets. For that suspiciously low price, as long as we didn't crash, we couldn't really complain. Both flights took off and landed on time, so we were happy with that and actually expected more to go wrong.

We have always stayed in the Juffair area because that is where all the action is. And by action, I do not specifically mean filipino singers, alcoholics, prostitutes, and alcoholic filipino singer/prostitutes. Yes, they are there, but I am referring more to the restaurants popular with the expat community and many of the decent hotels.

We visited Bambu, an asian restaurant, in the Adliya area for the second time and were really happy with the all-you-can-eat-and-drink meal for 15BD. We were so happy, in fact, that one of us may have ended up babbling and giggling hysterically all the way home after a very modest (pitiful?) amount of wine. You know you're drunk when you suddenly genuinely believe you are the world's funniest person. Other restos to mention are Ric's Kountry Kitchen and Jim's for brunch. Ric's being a local dive of a watering hole that serves up greasy spoon American food in the morning, and Jim's being its polite British cousin minus the bar and band. For something more lavish check out the Friday brunch at the Gulf Hotel or the Banyan Tree. And if you truly want to be fleeced and knitted into a sweater, there's always the Ritz Carlton. Trader Vic's on the Ritz resort is a popular spot to sit and have a drink outside.

Other mentionables: this past weekend our friends introduced us to City Center, and it's the nicest mall we've been to in Bahrain. It even boasts an indoor waterpark.


City Center has a slew of nice restaurants on their upper floors and has a cinema as well. Seef and Dana mall also have movie theatres for those inclined. We rented a car while we were there at the airport. Traffic was a mess at certain times of the day. We only got lost once when hubster thought he saw a guy with a cane riding a donkey down the road and took an "alternate route" to prove to me he wasn't hallucinating. With all the traffic restrictions on U Turns and stuff like that we ended up in some shanty town somewhere, but got out pretty quick.

And yes, he was right, there were in fact donkeys on the road.....

Paradise awaits you, two hrs from Riyadh

Hubster and I just got back from a weekend at the Shangri-La in Oman, a two hour flight from Riyadh. We didn’t get to see much of Muscat, though what we did see of the city looked very simple/quaint and surprisingly clean. And coming from a Canadian, that means that you can pretty much eat off the pavement. The big shocker came when we realized all the drivers were staying in their lanes! We really only drove through Muscat on our way to the Shangri La which was located about 30 minutes from the airport and outside of town, but the resort was just fabulous.

The resort is actually a complex of three hotels of varying classes, and it sprawls across quite a bit of land. We spent the weekend sipping cocktails at their bars and outdoor lounges, strolling down the beach at night, soaking up the sun, falling asleep on their comfy loungers, kayaking, watching fish swim by our ankles in the ocean, admiring the extensive grounds and beautiful spa, floating down their lazy river…the list goes on.




The absolute highlight of the trip was getting a chance to watch an enormous hawksbill turtle lay her eggs on the beach at night! This was the last place in the world we expected to catch such an amazing event. The Hawksbill Turtle is on the critically endangered list, and we felt a bit bad that a resort had been built on some of their prime nesting beaches in the area. But at the very least, they seemed to have pretty dedicated turtle ranger on the resort looking out for them, and nests marked off on the beach to prevent trampling.


The lowlight of the trip was watching hubster’s light pink sun kissed skin turn a deep shade of red coming out of the shower, regret in his eyes. It’s always the same story. He goes,“ohh! I wanna go out in the sun *right now*! Let’s get this sunscreen over with!” And then four hours later, “what happened to me??!” with complete and utter shock, as if it hasn’t happened a hundred times before.

I totally recommend that expats try to take trips on the weekends to break up your stay here. It’s something we wish we had been doing the whole time we were here. We booked through an Oman Air package that had a special deal going for Riyadh and picked up our paper tickets at their Riyadh office. We had a very good experience with the airline – planes with adequate leg space, decent food, good service, punctual, etc. - so we would fly again with them without hesitation. Here's the link!

the horror...the horror...

OK ladies and gentlemen be warned that this post is going somewhere that not all of you will be adventurous enough to follow. It's a scary scary place, and I want everyone to turn your nausea centres off, because we are going to the depths of depravity, a place that has not been touched by sunlight, goodness, or a mop in centuries. That's right, we are going to a gas station bathroom on the side of the highway, halfway to Bahrain.

My bladder was full when we pulled over to refuel. The three men in my car all took turns going into the men's bathroom while I tentatively stepped up to the open door of the ladies' loo. The smell hit me 3 feet away. I closed off my nasal passages and gingerly stepped in. Okay, it was dirty and the floor was wet, but I figured it was do-able. I looked into the first stall with its squatting bowl and there was litter everywhere. And I'm not talking office paper twinkie wrapper litter, I am talking no-man-woman-or-dog-should-be-seeing-this litter. Two words. Blood. Streaks. I can't describe the panic. The other two stalls were a similar blur. And I know this is a bit dramatic, but I actually let out a high pitched squeal and a "no no no!" inside the bathroom. When I emerged suddenly back into daylight, one of my friends was standing in front of the car. He asked me, "did I hear screaming in there?" Needless to say, we left. Travelling with men, they of course didn't understand at first. They made comments like "it didn't look that bad." and "what was so bad about it?" and "you just plug your nose." All I had to do was say, "There was blood..." and all three of them visibly shifted in their seats and decided I was completely justified in failing to do my business in the bathroom. The line of questioning came to an abrupt halt and the conversation changed to how high a sand dune needed to be for me to be comfortable taking a whiz.

The answer is about four feet.

=D

The jetlag the JETLAG!

The hubster once told me that travelling West to East is often worse than travelling East to West. After hearing his explanation pontificating on the difference between losing hours and gaining hours, I filed his statement under "ridiculous" in my brain for about a year, along with the notion that delayed planes can "make up time in the air". Notably, I was wrong on both counts to accuse my poor hubster of talking nonsense. First of all, planes CAN make up time in the air as I've witnessed this very phenomenon take place, and secondly, the trip from Toronto to Riyadh is much much worse than the reverse. It's not just because the Korean food in Toronto is so much more awesome than it is in Riyadh so you're more excited. Wikipedia sort of explains the whole thing, and I can tell you from multiple trips crossing the Atlantic that losing hours completely screws up your circadian rhythms.

For me, the only thing that really works is waiting it out. Taking supplements and sleeping aids make me no less groggy during the day. The trick is to not succumb to the Nap Fairy - she is an evil succubus.

some airlines to use

Ok, so because a lot of expat time in Saudi is spent figuring out how to get out of Saudi, I thought this might be useful for those of you who are there and thinking "I need a break!" ...one myth that you might think when you get to Riyadh is that travelling must be cheap because everyone is doing it all the time. Nay. Thou art wrong. It's true people travel all the time and it's not because it's cheap, it's for sanity. Unfortunately, aside from major hubs like Paris, London, Frankfurt,etc. you are often looking at flights with connections when you go on vacation - something you will despise, but slowly, in time, accept.

For what it's worth, here's a breakdown of popular airlines in Riyadh:
Qatar - good food (like so good that you'll ask your neighbour if they're going to eat the cake or not), good service, online check in has some glitches, overall, one of the best in the region to fly with. On the expensive side.

Emirates - good food, good service, but long distances usually result in insanely long layovers in Dubai. Good news is that they will provide you with a hotel stay in Dubai as long as you call in to book it. For whatever reason the demographic makeup of this airline seems to be a lot of working class from the middle east. Also, tix tend to be pricey.

Lufthansa - your standard airline, generally reliable unless snow closes down their Frankfurt airport... This is a pretty popular option for those who can't afford the long Dubai layovers of Emirates. Don't expect anything more than average, but at least they are generally better than Air Canada - the national blight and terror of the skies. Unfortunately, when the two are paired together for routes and there are problems, you can be sure neither airline will take the blame.

Turkish Airways - decently priced, so it's popular with travellers. Don't spring for their business class, it's a waste. Planes are not the nicest, but they do the job, i.e. they haven't crashed in a while ha ha ha...ok sorry, couldn't resist.

Etihad - haven't flown with them but heard good things about them.

Saudi Arabia Airlines (Saudia) - haven't flown with them but heard bad things about them.

It's not a complete list, so feel free to chime in readers, if you've had a good or bad experience with an airline flying out of Riyadh. I am all ears if you have recommendations on what airlines to use.

Departing Riyadh

no, no, its not what you think - not for good. What with all the travelling I've been doing lately, I thought I'd post something I wrote waiting for my plane at Riyadh's airport.

It’s a very special place. It’s almost always clogged with men travelling in packs. Abayas are not required at the airport, but given the amount of men around who do not consider staring rude, I tend to keep mine on until I pass through customs.

Security is always interesting because women go through a private section to be searched. Sometimes this can be nice, because on occasion they'll shuttle the women through ahead of the men. Most recently I was greeted by an arab woman who was on her cell phone during the entire search and communicated using gestures and angry noises. Maybe she wasn’t angry, but her eyebrows were certainly drawn that way. This was the first time my bra went off during a search where security wanted to know what was inside (answer: my metallic boobs). Also of note - the men’s prayer area, denoted by a large section of rugs. It’s quite a sight to see people on it in the open. At any given time, about half of them are engaged in the holy act of napping.

There’s a lounge at the airport that people can pay to get into. It costs 100 riyals and is totally not worth it. Firstly, it’s tiny. Secondly, the food sucks. Thirdly it’s always crowded. Fourthly, the bathrooms are never free. Fifthly, four reasons are enough to steer clear, let’s not be greedy.

I confess I am one of those hoverers during boarding. I always bring a big carry-on with me so I like to be among the first to board the plane to get that coveted storage space. I am seasoned in the art of strategic lineupping. Of course, even if you’re first in line you won’t necessarily be boarded in an order that seems logical and fair. Occasionally, depending on the airline and the types of people with tickets on your aircraft, you can have "the dome" formation of line-up, which is not a lineup, it is a bottleneck rush of madness.

Despite its drawbacks, the big crowning glorious prize is that at the end of it, you get to board a plane and go on a trip to visit friends or family, or be a tourist. For that, many expats would agree, the price they would be willing to pay is limitless. I'm no exception!