Getting Ready to Represent PMU at Seef Mall, Bahrain :D

 

As everyone knows I arrived safely back to Al Khobar and had almost a full weekend to recuperate before heading straight back to work. It was hard… as it’s always hard to get back into the rhythm of alarms, early brekkie, and getting showered and dressed ready for work. Fortunately for me :D I was only back at work for one day when I was asked if I could go to Bahrain for a marketing campaign at one of the large malls……… of course the answer was immediately YES!

 

I was a natural choice as I could do the full 4 days and stay the 3 nights, unlike the other ladies in our department as most have small children which makes it hard to go away for that length of time. They wanted to send two ladies as well as one man to be in the booth, and my boss was having trouble getting another lady. I suggested what if we did rotation and send one lady for one night and another lady for another night which was immediately taken on board and arranged without any trouble for anyone.

 

I turned up to work on Tuesday with my bags (last time I went away to Riyadh the hotel didn’t have a hair dryer, so I thought 4 days - so necessary is clothing, hair dryer, hair straightener, laptop, book etc etc) and was meant to be ready to leave at 10am. Well I asked about allowance, assumed hotel room had been reserved, and waited to be told when the driver would be there. Was told that as it is holiday season at the moment there were no hotel rooms to be had via our travel agent anywhere in Bahrain :( and allowance had not been arranged! So after  spending a busy morning organizing the pamphlets and booklets needed to hand out, making sure I had the surveys and visitor sheets, I was finally told the driver was at the front gate to take me to the bank to cash a cheque and that I would be responsible to distribute it to everyone, and that the other lady going with me would meet me with a different driver that would be taking us across the causeway. Sounds easy doesn’t it? :P

 

We got to the bank in plenty of time before prayer so both the cashier and myself went in and he then asked me – “do you have the cheque?” I gave him a blank look – the one you all associate with me and said no – “you do!” Then the flurry of discussion, the phone calls to my boss and were told to wait there and she would ring me back. I also had to go to the travel agent to collect the hotel vouchers so I rang her back after 5 minutes of waiting to say we would go down to the travel agent because it was now 11.45am and the agent closed from noon until 4pm. She agreed to this move, so back into the car and headed towards downtown to travel agent. We were not quite there yet and we could hear the noon prayer call going out, but luckily the agents had been told we were on our way and they kindly stayed open for us. The cashier and I then went in to be told sorry, no rooms anywhere, our agent over there has had no luck whatever as it it peak holiday time. I had been told to wait until they procured a room for us, so wait we did until we had the call that our colleague over in Bahrain was out searching for rooms himself and to go back to the bank where the cheque was to be delivered to us.

 

Well we then went back to the bank, the cheque arrived at the bank and we went in to cash it – all good one would think. No! – the cheque had been made out in our colleague’s name and even though it had been signed on the back that it was ok for the bearer (me) to cash, the bank wouldn’t even consider it because our colleague had to counter sign – which he couldn’t coz he was in Bahrain :) I was then told that they would get a different cheque and that our allowances would come over the next day with one of the other ladies doing the rotation…… so this was it – we were off overseas to Bahrain.

 

The new driver turned up in a PMU bus with the lady I was to travel with and I was a bit surprised that we would be going via bus, but no, we were then driven to the street where the driver lived to change over into his own car. He disappeared for probably 10 minutes and we were supposed to wait in the car, but the aircon was on its lowest possible setting, the car had been sitting in the hot sun for hours so I got out and waited under a tree until he came back. The lady I was with waited in the car, so I would assume that either she didn’t feel the heat like I do, or that she didn’t feel comfortable waiting in the street. Then we were off :D

 

The King Fahd causeway bridge is something else and is really nice to drive across. It is 28km long and there were about 7 checkpoints to get out of Saudi and into Bahrain. We didn’t take too long to get through but were still surprised at the amount of traffic for that time of day. If traffic isn’t too heavy either going to Bahrain or coming back to Al Khobar it is about 40 minutes all up including, passport control, vehicle check, and the entry/exit boom gates. It can take hours though if traffic is heavy, or as our first experience when first arriving to Saudi via Bahrain on the bus 4 hours.

Driving Across King Fahd Causeway

This is the entering to Saudi side of the bridge and I will post another blog with pics of our display stand at the Seef Mall in the coming days.