Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - Trip #3

Well, here I am on my third trip to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). I have waited this long to blog about it as I wanted to get a true picture.

Oh, and I have one eye on my screen and the other eye looking out the corner to an airforce dude with an AK47 over his shoulder.

Each trip I have had to KSA I have spent two nights in the capital city, Riyadh. The days are long due to the prayer times and closures of everything so often through the day. The main point of me coming here is to visit stores. These are the shop/shopping centre hours – 7 days a week:

OPEN from 9:30AM to 12:00PM

Then close for prayer times

Re-open from 4:00PM to 6:00PM

Then close for prayer time

Re-open from 6:30PM to 7:15PM

close for prayer time

Re-open from 8:00PM to 11PM

So as you can imagine, it is a very long day to knock off a few shopping centres. By the time you travel between them, they are closed. Everyone must leave the shops and shopping centres. All the lights are switched off, doors locked. Generally, the car parks are outside or damn hot in the basement so you have no choice but to just chill for four hours in a restaurant or outside in a sandy park.

All in all though, KSA is really interesting!! So far I have been to Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam. The latter two are coastal cities (different ends from each other) and are much more liberal and home to more westerners than Riyadh. Security is very tight around all of the cities and there is an interesting picture to paint while I type this blog at the King Fahdiya airport in Dammam.

Any major landmarks (hotels, shopping centres, govt buildings) have VERY tight security. All of the cars going to the drop off points or the carparks have an under the bonnet check, a boot check and one of those mirror on wheels things checking out under the car.

Once past this point, there is a tank with guns pointing down. Now, I don’t know about you, but for me seeing this for the first time I didn’t get the point. There is more to a car then the boot, the bonnet and underneath. There is a lot of storage space in the dash area. I best stop there.

All of this security aside, Riyadh is very different to Dubai. It is very low-rise, with the two tallest buildings pretty much the only two buildings over 10 levels – and they are massive! Kingdom Centre and Faisaliyah Centre are the big bastards.

Interesting story is that Kingdom Centre opened on September 12, 2001. one day after you know what.

The centre has a huge arc cut into the middle of it and the celebrations to open it involved jet fighters flying through these holes. The opening date of the building had been planned since the first whole had been dug 3yrs beforehand.

Interesting??