A Holiday When I’m Aleady on Holiday :P………

 

The holidays for the Hajj, which is the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca for muslims began two weeks ago - but Jesse not being part of the Academic staff only had 1 week and begun his hols in the 2nd week.

We started off the first night of the weekend very excitedly making our way down to the car rental souk (this is the word for market) on the main drag. We trekked around many of the rental shops and funnily enough we got the best car for the best price in the shop that Jesse had previously taken a picture of and posted on an earlier post - the one with orange writing & privet driver available :) It was a very small (by Saudi standards) Hyundai. The number plate was very fortunate as it had English as well as Arabic lettering and the letters were NNA which made it very easy for me to find whenever we left it,  as it is Anne's name backwards :P

It is very lucky that I had been going on the  bus the compound provides for daily shopping jaunts as I was then able to find our way from the car rental place, firstly to Rashid Shopping Mall, then back to our glorious home away from home – Jesse would have had no idea how to get back as he is really directionally challenged – I am constantly amazed that he has managed & very ably, to find his way around the world :P and he is constantly amazed that I seem to have an inbuilt GPS in my head…..

Roll on next day………….  Jesse excitedly says “ I can finally take you on a drive to see the university”. So into our freedom machine we get and away we go. I spent the next 3 hours terrified out of my mind which is very funny now, but not so funny at the time. Jesse for some reason decided when in Saudi do as the Saudi’s do whilst driving, so that means in car, foot flat down to floor, which in itself isn’t so bad, but he didn’t take time to get feel for LH DRIVE on WRONG SIDE OF ROAD, and he was very used to being driven around for past 2 months and being able to either look freely (my words were gawk) at everything or snooze.

We made it safely to the Uni and drove all around the main entrance. It was closed because of holidays but still very well policed. After pulling up

at main gate so I could see where he works, we drove down to where they are building new sports ground and female part of campus where hopefully (Inshallah) I will be working in the New Year. We were then pulled up by police on the way out, and luckily Jesse had the presence of mind to bring his ID’s so after a bit of chat and wishing them a Happy Eid (Eid is the period of celebration) we were on our way once more.

It was then along the coast for some way and we pulled into the Holiday Inn resort for a much needed caffeine & cake hit. Would be a lovely place to stay for a weekend. Then we took the long way back into Al Khobar along the coast road and took in the many tents that had been set up along the beach front. You will notice in the pic below the structures behind me – this is what they have all along the beach front and they are great as they provide shade. Most of them were occupied and had canvas strung up at the back and specially made fake grass type picnic carpets with Arabian motif on the floors. We will most likely buy one to bring home as they are a great idea.

It is amazing how many of these older style canvas tents as shown below, that were everywhere over the holiday break. There are  just no modern style tents here and they were set up all over the dunes & fields (of sand) along the edges of the road – both opposite the university, here at Half Moon Bay and all the way along the freeway into Riyadh. What also had me amazed was the fact that they were set up in clusters all close to each other and only about 150–200 metres from road. When you look and all you can see is 100’s of kilometres of desert I was thinking that to get back to their Bedouin roots which is what their camping is all about, they would at least get out of sight of the road over the back of the dunes :)

You will notice as shown below that there is no such thing here as conservation of the foreshore like in Aus. The cars are allowed to go literally right to the waters edge on the beach front and there was a sort of road where they had all driven to get there. I think it would be great to have a 4 wheel motor bike and really get going along there – but being a woman I wouldn’t be allowed to do it anyway :( as it is not allowed!!!