Day at the Beach

Yesterday, we went to the beach!  We were invited by a couple that have a car and followed some Exxon friends whose driver knew the way to the beach.  (Our friend who was driving said that it is always best to have someone show you the way the first time.  One time, he was given directions to go somewhere in KSA and the final turn off the highway was to turn off when you saw a post with a goats head on top.)  I am not sure of the spelling, but I think perhaps, it is called Al Hassi Beach.  It was about a 1 1/2 hour drive to it.  On the drive, the Red Sea was to our left and the mountains/hills in the distance on the right. 

It was a nice drive.  We saw groups of camels just hanging out in the desert.  :)  There was a caution Camel Crossing sign, with a picture of a camel.  I wish that I had gotten a picture of that.  But really, I see these things in a flash as we are driving on the highway.  Our friend was driving when the instrument panel started beeping.  I thought "Oh no, we are running out of gas."  But it turns out that all of the vehicles sold in KSA have an alarm installed, so that when you venture over 120 kilometers per hour (which is about 75 mph), the alarm activates to remind you to slow down.  :) 

 

There are certain beaches where Westerners can go and the ladies do not have to wear the abayas.  But if you get to the beach and Saudis are already there, then you either leave or wear the abaya or Aqua abaya to go swimming.  Also, this one has a Coast Guard station, and our guys hop out and give the soldier your passports or iquamas (long term visas).  They hold onto them until you leave.  And they watch over things.  They carry machine guns.  When we were leaving, we drove from the beach up to the station on a small cliff and the guys hopped out to retrieve the passports.  I decided that I would get one last picture.  There was a cute little row boat anchored on the water.  It looked so pretty on the aqua blue water with the mountains in the back.  I had my abaya back on.  But as the guys were walking up the office, they saw a soldier, frantically waving from downhill at another office.  The guys thought that he was yelling at me not to take the picture.  I thought well OK, but I was just going to take a picture of the beach, not the Coast Guard station.  But whatever...  and I got back in the car with no picture.  But then when no one was at the office that they had walked to, we drove down to the other office where the guard was waving and realized that he was just probably frantically waving to tell them that no one was at that office, to come downhill, NOT telling me not to take pictures.  :) 

 

Here is a picture of the beach, with the mountains in the background.  Unfortunately, the gorgeous aqua color did not come out in the picture.  It is a beautiful aqua color from the beach out to the reef and then from there on, a dark topaz.

 

This following picture might be better.

Here is my cutie pie in the Red Sea!  I still can't believe that we are here!  We went snorkeling.  There is coral and lots of pretty fish swimming around the coral.

I asked the driver to take a group picture of our friends and us.

On a different note, I have been trying to find fabric to make a canopy for an outdoor swing.  Ken bought this cute swing for our upstairs patio from a family that was moving back to the States.  It is missing the canopy, which would be fine, but the birds discovered the central bar and must sit there all day pooping on the swing.  I can't seem to find outdoor fabric.  A friend suggested that I get a cheap rug from the grocery store.  It would cover it and would be heavy enough not to blow away in the winds.  So, we got one.  Ken was concerned that the birds would just sit up there and poop on the top of the carpet and we wouldn't be able to clean it easily.  So...we got a cheap plastic tablecloth to attach to the top that we can remove on a regular basis and throw it away and put a new one on.  Well, now, we look like the Beverly Hillbillies, or for younger readers who would never have seen that old TV show, maybe, it looks trailer park chic.  Back home, our community association would have had a note on the door the next day.  Here, so far so good.  Here is a picture of Ken and Chris in the swing in their weekly cigar smoking session. :)  I will probably bring some outdoor fabric back here next time that I go back home.

Random thoughts

This will be another random thoughts blog. 

Before I came to the Kingdom (KSA is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), I tried to  read as much as possible about Saudi Arabian life, specifically what the abaya should look like, how you should act in public etc.  I have to say that most of the stuff that I read was wrong.

Each Muslim country seems to have a different style of dress with the abaya and hijab.  Some countries allow beautiful colors.  In Turkey, they don't wear an abaya, but modest clothing-long skirt, long sleeves and colorful scarves.  But that is not so, with Saudi Arabia.  The abaya is always black.  But what I didn't know/read is how they can be beautifully decorative-accented with rhinestones and embroidery on the sleeves and the body of the abaya.  Before I left the US, I had ordered one online, the plainest one that I could find, but it had a line of white embroidery across the breasts.  I was worried that they might think that I was trying to draw attention to my breasts, so I blacked out the embroidery with a black fabric pen.  I am a nut.  :)  My family gave me an abaya beautifully decorated with stones and rhinestones.  That is my favorite one to wear unless I will be in the heat for a period of time, then I wear the plain jane cotton one.  One blog had said that you should get an abaya that you pull on over your head to prevent a sudden wind from flipping it open and exposing yourself if you had one that had fasteners going down the front.  That is what I ordered.  Well, that is totally wrong.  It is so much easier to take it off and put it on if it opens in the front.  In the shuttle bus, it is funny to see women ripping it off if it opens down the front, as soon as we get past the guard station into the compound.  Mine gets stuck on my head sometimes, so it is better to wait until I get into the villa.  :)  Another thing is that that I had wrong was that I thought only a minority wore the face covering here.  But in fact, most of the Saudi women wear a face covering that covers the lower part of the face and many have a veil that goes over the whole face.  A significant number wear the black gloves.  While I was waiting in the mall with a full shopping basket for Ken to come out of a shoe store, I was people watching.  I noticed a lot of women wearing shoes with heels, stylish high heels.  They had on makeup.  The groups of young women seemed happy-lots of laughing with each other.  My other readings said that you were not to interact-look at or speak with a Saudi man unless he was a member of your family.  Well, that eliminates me speaking with any Saudi men. My cab driver is Saudi and he is very friendly.  People in the mall are friendly.  The Saudi shopkeeper on the compound is very friendly.  So, wrong, wrong, wrong again.

Here are some random pictures that I took yesterday on the way to and at the mall.

This is a gate going over the street in old Yanbu.

Building with an interesting exterior.

 

This is from the old part of Yanbu.  Supposedly, the home of T.E. Lawrence, who wrote Lawrence of Arabia (or whom it is about) lived in a home in this area.  A friend and I are supposed to go there and try to find it and take pictures.

This is the McDonald's at the mall.  Notice the 2 red signs.  The one on the left is the line for men and the red sign on the right is the line for women.  But when I was watching, they did not pay any attention to that.  There was also a Caesar's Pizza (Pizza, Pizza!) with the same setup.  The Baskin and Robbins didn't.  Next time that I go, I want to get the Hamburger Arabia.  I don't know what that means, but I need to know.  :)  We ate at Tako hut and I got a chicken quesadilla, that was good, but was NOT Mexican.

The guys with the black markers were at it again.

I absolutely LOVE the decorative gates.

This one is for you, Devin!  Kimberly Clark Kleenex in KSA!

 

Visit to the Camel Farm

Yesterday, we went to a camel farm, which had both "regular" camels and racing camels.  One of the drivers' family owns a camel farm just outside of Yanbu.  So, we had a caravan of cars to travel to it.  It was off the road in the desert and turned out to be several camel pens, a chicken coop and several small "buildings" and a big tent.  The camels were so cute and eager to be fed and cuddled.  The driver placed grass on one lady's head for the camel to eat.  The camels were very gentle.

Also, as you can see in the picture below, there was a camel with a bag covering its private parts.  It turned out that it was a female camel that would be milked in the afternoon.  The family does not sell the milk, they just use it for themselves.

One of the racing camels had unusual markings on his face and leg.  One of the ladies, who has lived in Saudi Arabia for quite awhile, said that it was to mark the genealogy of the camel for breeding.

There was a chicken coop with a big rooster in it and then, there was the big tent on a platform.  A few of us went up to look in.  there were several young guys lounging around watching TV.  I guess they had a satellite.  I asked if I could take a picture.

 

Then, when we all got to the tent, our driver served dates and hot tea with cardamom. 

 

These young men were very hospitable to us.  They took pictures with us.

 

It was a very interesting morning!

 

 

 

Arab News editorial cartoons and misc

There is something interesting happening in Saudi Arabia right now.  They have instituted something called Saudization, to try to get more Saudis employed where expats (a person working or residing in a country that is not theirs) are now employed.  Private companies have been classified into various categories depending upon the percent of Saudis employed.  If the company is in an Excellent category, a high percentage of Saudis employed, there is no problem.  But if the company is in a red or yellow category, low percentage, there are big problems.  The iqamas (long term visa for a foreign national) for the red and yellow companies are not being renewed.  All of these expats (thousands) have to be gone by July 3rd.  Every day in the paper, businesses are complaining about what will they do without these expat workers (mostly Filipino, Indian and Bangladeshi, I think).  Many building projects will have to be delayed because most of these types of workers are affected.  Also, bus drivers, workers at date farms, etc, etc.  These people have been standing in line for hours in the hot sun every day outside of official offices to get this sorted out so that they can stay.  The airports are very congested because you have these expats having to leave in droves, you have the pilgrims coming to Mecca for Umrah and you have lots of Westerners leaving before Ramadan starts in mid-July. There is a countdown going on in the local paper, making it feel like Armageddon is coming. 

On another note, I am a newspaper junkie and am enjoying the editorial cartoons, some of which I thought that I would share.
The first one it took me a little while to get.  I knew who the character was, Ken knew the symbol on the ball and what he was doing.

It is President Assad pushing chemical weapons past multiple "red lines, Obama's term for unacceptable behavior.

 

The second one is obvious Obama wanting to reduce nuclear weapons stockpile, and Putin refusing.

This was after the Iranian election and suggesting that the ballot box let the genie out of the magic lamp.

 

This last one is what they think of the G8 (countries with the 8 largest economies) meeting last week.

I love editorial cartoons!  :)

Today's Outing

Today was an interesting day.  This was the first time that I went to the Fish Market.  It is on the Red Sea and the boats come in and bring their fish into this big, open building, where the vendors sell their fish.  The Red Sea is so pretty in the background-so BLUE!  :)

They were selling lots of strange fish.  There are big ones called, Hamour (which I did not get a picture of), that a lot of restaurants here serve, parrotfish, shark, what looked like a garfish to me, also octopus and shrimp. 

 

I bought shrimp.  Then you give it to a guy who will clean your shrimp or your fish and filet it.  Here are pictures of my guy cleaning my shrimp and another one cleaning a fish.  But there are a bunch of guys cleaning the fish on what looks like tree stumps to me.

 

 

 

After this, we went to the Produce market and I got a white melon, peaches, cherries, tomatoes and okra.  They looked very fresh.  That is one thing that I like about here is that I don't think that the produce is trucked very far.  The tomatoes are great, not like the tomatoes that the grocery store at home had-tasteless because they were picking them so early and trucking them from far away (unless you went to a farmers market).  But you don't have the diversity of vegetables  that you have at home. Then we went to the spice and nut market.  To get there, you have to go through a tiny restaurant and out the back door and it is in a strip center there.  It had a lot of spices that I had no idea what they were.  Next time, I will try some. 

 

  The driver brought us home to put our fish away and then we went to lunch.  It was very funny trying to explain to the waiter what we wanted.  I said that I wanted water with lemon in it and the other two ladies agreed to that also.  What we got was a green lemonade drink that had pulverized mint in it.  It was good, but not what we wanted.  A friend kept trying to tell the waiter that we wanted an assorted appetizer platter that we had before that didn't seem to be on the menu.  He didn't understand what we were talking about so we just ordered a few things.  Then, my friend reminded me that I had taken pictures of the food we had last time we came here.  So, I took my phone out and showed him the pictures.  He said, "Ah!" but didn't tell us what it was called.  :)  This is what we had ordered:  Hummus, spring rolls, and kibbeh.

 

 

 

 

And of course, we had to stop at Star Market, the grocery on the way home.  I took a few more pictures.  I am getting a little more comfortable asking if I can take pictures.  So far, everyone has been great!  Although I got shy about asking two older men sitting in the back of their pickup truck selling watermelons. Here is one of the bakers at Star Market:

Here is some produce:

Here is only a small part of the rice selection:

These last 2 pictures are from a different shopping trip to Star Market.  This guy had his animals in the back and they brought his groceries out to him.

 

 

Misc pictures

Today, on the shuttle bus to the mall and grocery store, I thought that I would try to take some pictures. None of them are very good because it is in a fast driving, bumpy shuttle bus, but it will give you a little idea of what it is like here.

The first is a picture I have been trying to take of these cute clamshell and pearl light fixtures. I would have liked to have a close up picture, but I am not sure that will ever happen.

 

 

The following two pictures are amusing.  They are the packages for pool floatables.  Obviously, they are from the west and must have a western woman in a bathing suit.  So, someone has used a black marker to cover up the woman with an abaya and hijab.  The whole stack of packages and all through the row, any picture of a lady is covered up with a "marker" abaya and hijab.  Someone obviously has the job to cover up the ladies.

 

The next pictures are from our favorite grocery store here, Star Market.

 

The next one is what about 1/3 of the drive looks like from the highway to the grocery-desert.  I tried to take pictures of the camels, but I missed them.

 

This is an interesting building.  I don't know what it is.

 

Finally, just to show you what I was talking about in an earlier blog about the many unfinished buildings.  There are tons of these.

That's all for now...