Saudi Arabia, 25-Jan-07

Trip Report
Al-Khobar
25-Jan-07

We have had an extremely quiet couple of weeks. Nothing but working and watching TV. There isn't much else to do. I have been going to the gym at the labor camp fairly regularly and have dropped 5 kilograms.

We did go for a drive last Friday south along the Arabian Gulf. There are several public beaches and the crowds were pretty good despite the cool wind. Most of the beaches are family only, no single guys.

Fish and chips must have been popular once as there are big fish and chip stands all up and down the shore. Big concrete fish, now derelict and empty. These would make great lawn ornaments if only my lawn was big enough.



And speaking of giant lawn ornaments, check out the grocery cart in front of the local Giant grocery store. To give you a sense of scale you can see the construction trailer behind one of the cart's wheels.





The car wash guys in the labor camp parking lot are getting more aggressive. Now that there are two of the car wash guys (we call them “Clean, Boss?” and “Wash, Boss?”) and there is competition in the parking lot they are not content to just casually ask us if we want our cars washed. They lurk in the shadows, jumping out and pouncing as we walk from our cars. I left my room tonight and almost got run over by “Wash Boss?” on his bicycle. I think he was circling the block waiting for me. But I can’t get “Wash, Boss?” to clean the car because “Clean, Boss?” saw me first and is my main guy for car cleaning services. At least that is the way he explained it to me. Must be a Union thing.

I was reading the paper and found that the divorce rate is skyrocketing in Saudi Arabia. Apparently the divorce laws are pretty lax it makes divorce easy to get but pretty fair for the woman financially. They interviewed a young woman who “doesn’t want to become a statistic” so she is taking a special woman’s study class at the University. The course covers all the topics she needs to know about being a better wife like fashion, manners and cooking. Welcome to the 40’s.

Today was our day off so I went for a walk along the corniche. There is a nice walkway in a downtown park that runs along the Gulf shore. The Starbucks there either doesn’t make chai lattes or I just couldn’t explain myself properly. It turns out I don’t like coffee lattes.

We went downtown on the camp bus this afternoon. We had an early dinner at the Thai restaurant and then it was two hours of wandering through the t-shirt souks looking for bargains. Most t-shirts are under two dollars which isn’t bad for a used t-shirt. LeMarr was looking for a movie and ended up buying DVDs off of a back-street vendor. They stand in front of real stores, get you interested and then take you down a back alley to their "store" (as shown). LeMarr says they have everything from Windows XP and the latest movies to the latest PlayStation games. They even have bootleg versions of new games that just came out in the States. He bought Snakes On A Plane.

That's it for this weekend.

Peas be with you.