Our bizarre trip to Jeddah

We just got back from a trip to Jeddah and I felt like we were in a weird episode of the Twilight Zone, going in constant circles.  We had to go to Jeddah to try to get our visas to go to China for Devin and Shane's wedding celebration in China in September.  There is a Chinese Consulate in Jeddah.  I could not get in touch with them by phone or email.  But Jeddah is closer to us than Riyadh, where the Chinese Embassy is located.  So, we decided we had better get on the stick and get this done.

We got up on Sunday at 3 am and the driver picked us up at 5 am.  It is a 3 hour drive.  We had printed out lots of maps to everywhere we wanted to go.  We tried to go straight to the address on the Chinese consulate website.  Our driver had a hard time finding it and stopped to speak to two cab drivers to find out where it was.  They had no idea of where the Chinese consulate was or where the street listed on the website was located.  And I guess they don't have a dispatch to ask.  He finally found a cabdriver that led us to it and it was a decrepit old gate and the building had been destroyed on the compound.  That was very disappointing. 

So, then  we tried to go to the address that the service manager at Arabian Homes Sierra Compound gave us.  After driving all around and up and down the street, consulting many cabdrivers, there was no such address.  We drove up and down that street and around it. Strike two!

 Finally, we decided to try the Economic and Business Development office for China, another address we also got from the Arabian Homes manager.  We were in the general area and now had consulted 4 cabdrivers.  They were all standing in the street discussing this and pointing in all different directions for 5 minutes.  It was like a circus.  Ken and I just looked at each other in amazement, thinking where would we go next.  Finally, one driver phoned someone and he directed us to it and then Ken spotted the Chinese flag! 

 It is now 11 am and I have had to go to the bathroom for the last two hours! I thought "OK,  there will be a bathroom at the consulate." . We go in and get a number, number 19 and they are on number 10.  Ken asks if there is a bathroom for women and he says No Bathrooms.  I wait another 15 minutes and they are only on 12.  I decide that I have to go to the bathroom or I am going to burst.  So, I go back outside and tell our driver (and his wife who came for the trip) that I have to find a bathroom-maybe a McDonald's.  We start looking-nothing.  It is not as easy as it is at home to find a lady's restroom here.  Then I remember that I saw a mall during our wanderings.  His wife and I go in and it is absolutely deserted because everything is closed during the day for Ramadan.  But she asks a guard and he tells us upstairs.   We find it finally!  That is the best feeling in the world when you get to go to the bathroom after waiting for so long!  According to Ken, relief from a full bladder is on Maslow's Hierarchy of human needs.  :)

 

Then we hustle back to the consulate and they have just taken Ken.  The guy seems to find reasons to reject it:  we don't have an iqama, Ken explains we have 5 year multiple entry visas.  He doesn't understand why Ken's was for 1800 days and mine was for 1700.  Ken explains that he came before me.  He says we don't have 3 months of bank statements and pushed the paperwork back to Ken.  Ken calmly pushes the paperwork back and says that we do, just look at the next pages.  He says are you sure that you are just coming for 10 days.  Ken takes out a wedding picture of Shane and Devin and explains about the wedding celebration.  He says OK, he is going to go in the back, but turns and says Are you sure you are just going to be here for 10 days?  Ken says yes.  So he says come back on Tuesday morning.  Now, we had to find Arabian Homes, where we are staying in Jeddah. We had printed out several maps of where the Chinese consulate was supposed to be, where Arabian homes was, etc.  But it turns out, that I am not sure that our driver can read maps.  We finally found it.  They didn't want to check us in until 2 pm.  It was around 12:30.  Thank goodness that Patrick had given Ken a contact name.  We went upstairs and he took care of us and got us checked in.  Then we went to eat at their restaurant, which was nice.  I had wanted to go shopping for my dress for the wedding, but because of Ramadan, the malls don't open until after 9:30 pm.  So we scheduled the driver to pick us up at 9:30 pm and just crashed. 

When he picks us up that night and we get to the main intersection, it is major gridlock ALL THE WAY to the Red Sea Mall, in every direction.  We get there around 10:45 pm.  I was so disappointed with the dresses.  They were all mostly for younger people.  I did not want spaghetti straps, or plunging or laced backs or floor length.  One interesting thing about the Red Sea Mall is that they have an amusement area of moving dinosaurs that the kids can ride.  By midnight, it became so crowded, I said, "Let's leave and try tomorrow at another mall.".  Well, we found our driver and began trying to find the way back to AH again.  The back windows were blacked out, so it was hard for us to help out and look at signs etc.  We finally found it around 1:30 am. 

We told the driver that we wanted to go to Paul's Bakery and Restaurant and Mall of Arabia the next night.  He asked for the addresses and we texted it to them.  Thinking OK he will google them or look on a map.  (We had our maps to help out.)  The next night when we are leaving the AH, he asks the guard, "Where is Paul's restaurant?".  I thought OH, NO, he doesn't know.  Not again! He looked at our maps and started going in the wrong direction.   Even with being by the blacked out windows, I knew it was the wrong direction.  Ken used his phone to try to keep him on track. (He was trying to minimize it because of the roaming charges.)   He started asking cab drivers again.  Finally, he paid one to show us where it was.  It was traffic ALL THE WAY again.  (Because of the fasting during Ramadan, many people sleep during the day during the fast, and stay up all night.  So all the stores change their opening hours around.  They are not open much during the day, but are open all night.)  We found it.  It was by the Benihana's, Fuddrucker's, Subway and French LeNotre restaurants.

Paul's was wonderful!  It is a French restaurant that my friend, Tran, recommended.  I got the olive bread, vichyssoise soup, mushroom tartine.  It was beginning to be a very lovely evening.  I decided to go to the bathroom and as I got to the women's bathroom door, I started to slip on something. I thought that someone must have spilled water or something.  I looked down and didn't see anything.  When I get in, I see that there is a trail of poop that starts before the door and goes all the way into a stall where kids are.  I have poop all over the bottom of my shoes and am now tracking it.  The stench is awful in there.  There is a very young nanny in there with the kids that seems overwhelmed.  She is just kind of huddled in a corner.  When she sees what has happened to me, she comes over with paper towels and then starts cleaning up the floor etc.  One of the kids is in the stall with an intestinal problem.  These kids that are in there are the ones that were screaming and running around the restaurant, jumping on the bench chairs.  The moms were oblivious.  When I cleaned up and came outside, there is still poop outside the door.  I was so disgusted!  Thank goodness, that when I started sliding going into the bathroom, that I kept my balance and did not fall and be totally covered in poop!

Then we still had to go to the mall.  I think that we got there around midnight and it was a madhouse.  The Mall of Arabia has an amusement park in it and a ton of stores.  I did find one that was a possibility.  It was the wrong color-blue.  Shane suggested a dark red, because that is traditional.  But I thought that I might just go with blue.  It was somewhat of an A line with a matching jacket.  But without being able to try it on (there are no women's dressing rooms for trying on clothes) and it would have been around $500 with the jacket,  I thought that I wouldn't be able to return it if it didn't fit because we were heading back to Yanbu the next day.  I decided that I will look in Yanbu.  Also, I might look online and order something for Caitlin to bring to me in China.  And I will bring a dress that I have here as a backup.  It was so aggravating!  The kids in the mall were totally out of control running around with baskets and screaming, etc.    Our driver again took a roundabout route home.  Ken told him that he passed up our exit and he had to come around .  Again, we got home around 2 am. 

We arranged with him to pick us up at 8:30am so that we would be at the consulate at 9am when the visa pick up window opened. I told Ken this time he had to just tell the driver which way to go, because the visa window closed at noon.  The consulate was only 5 minutes from AH!  First hiccup...  The driver overslept and didn't get there until 10 am.  I had wanted to hire a different driver for this and let our Yanbu driver sleep longer so he would be fresh for the ride home.  But that didn't happen.  Anyway, by 10:30 am, we had the visas in our hands.  What a stress relief!  We came back and checked out.  Of course, Ken had to watch the driver to make sure that he wasn't sleepy.  He had to pull over twice. 

 

We are now back home from our Twilight Zone adventure to Jeddah, but at least we got our visas!!  Luckily, we weren't the episode of the couple continually searching and searching and never finding what they are looking for.  :)

 

There are no pictures because I could not take pictures out of my blacked out windows.  :)