Michelle’s Musing

My thoughts on our Arabian visit.

I was excited to be visiting Saudi Arabia with awareness to respect the cultural ways of a country not long open to tourism and quite different from New Zealand. I have learnt patience whilst being here, nothing is quick or instant, which is not a bad thing unless you are on a schedule. Perhaps it’s to do with the heat (it’s still winter here so the locals find it a bit cool actually!) We have met with equal helpful friendliness to open suspicion/unfriendliness. In the local supermarkets the women are less happy to see me and do not return smiles. The men greet David well and ignore me, which is I accept.

The first neighbourhood we stayed in seemed fine on the outside, with lots of modern looking hotels. However, there seemed to be no people walking around and when we ventured out we were met with openly hostile stares. This made me feel slightly afraid each time we left the hotel. After a few days the hotel staff seemed to get more used to us but not outside the sanctity of the hotel. This resulted in us no longer going out or walking around, just Ubered directly to our destination. By the end of our stay, the hotel staff had mellowed so much there was much laughter and smiling along with trying to communicate! English is hardly spoken.

Uber is not very viable here, although it comes up with drivers available a few mins away, there is generally a 40 minute wait and most the time the driver cancels after accepting the ride. This is very frustrating and we’ve been left stranded a couple of times. The country is still getting used to tourists.

I have not seen many women without full burqua, however at the Grand Prix there were more women wearing head scarves and abaya as well as burquas. Surprisingly even in the international areas (malls etc) the women are still all mostly veiled and most men wear the white thobe and headdress everywhere. This ensures that they are appropriately dressed for prayer at all times. We ensure we are always modestly attired, I wear loose trousers and long sleeve shirts. It is not lost on me that the men are always cool in white (literally) but that the women attract the heat and in summer it must be very uncomfortable wearing black from head to toe. I find it is too hot to wear dark colours even now at the end of Winter.

The call for prayer comes 5 times a day and is quite a different sound from the call in Bahrain. People will pray wherever they are, ie in the shops, malls, outside, at F1 etc. Along the beach front we saw ingenious permanent roll out prayer mats! All the hotel rooms provide prayer mats as well.

A city of 5 million the main roads are mostly 6 lanes wide as you’d expect, however driving in Saudi is not for the faint hearted – the lanes markings do not mean anything with cars just driving wherever they want, so there is this constant fluid sideways movement of cars travelling 100 kph with lots of gentle hooting as they duck and dive! It also seems de rigueur to be on your phone whilst driving and our driver had the football playing on his dash-screen which he was fully invested in watching whilst careening down the motorway! (I noticed David watching too!) Having said that, we have not witnessed any aggression on the roads or altercations – somehow it seems to work! We have seen only very few woman driving.

There are some fabulous cars on the road, lots of Bentley’s! There is lots of obvious serious wealth in the city of Jeddah. Like Bahrain there is a heavy use of plastic, not only is everything wrapped in plastic and put into separate plastic bags but there is lots of disposable plastic implements being used all the time. We wonder about re-cycling – we have not seen any evidence of it, except at the GP where there were recycling bins but we felt that was just lip service?

This city doesn’t seem to sleep and families only start coming out to socialise around 10pm and eat around 11pm. After midnight there were hundreds of families picnicking in the park! This results in late starts with nothing happening before 11am. We’ve adapted really quickly – not sure how we’re going to get up before midday in Melbourne!

We are in a different hotel now for our 2nd week in Jeddah, it is much more international and some of the reception staff speak English. However, again, there’s no walking around the neighbourhood. I think folk just don’t walk!! Probably a health hazard in summer with temperatures of 50 degrees C!

Overall, Saudi and Bahrain were incredible countries to visit with so much ancient history surrounding you, seemingly at every street corner! However, I cannot get past or forget the political and social rules of these countries particularly human rights, freedom of speech and the male dominance over women who have no voice or place or rights. There is also a real fear of speaking about anything of importance in public with a constant nod to the ever present Big Brother watching and hearing and the punitive control of the government.