Researching Yanbu

We have a new French lady, L.,  here and she is a "mover and a shaker".  When she and her husband lived in Singapore, she decided that the expat community needed a guide for the area in terms of where to find things.  It is a very nice book.  Then, a few months ago, she moved here and decided that the same thing needed to be done here.  To be honest, I thought that it was going to be a very short book.  But I have gone on several missions with her and am surprised at what we have found.  It turns out that Yanbu is more interesting than I thought.  If we could just get some more international restaurants, that would be nice.  :)

Anyway, some of the things that people have a hard time finding are ingredients for baking specialty breads, like flax seed, chia seeds, bran, etc.  A South African lady sent me directions to get to a shop that had some of these things.  There are no street directions, just landmarks.  So, we went on a mission to check it out.  This shop was so much fun!  It was a crazy assortment of things.  Also, there were many things that we had no idea what they were.  L's driver came into the shop with us and interpreted what some of the things were.  Here are some of the pictures.
There were lots of bins with who knows what.  Some things looked like rocks, some dried weeds, some shells.

There were oils in dispenser containers:

There was Virginity soap:

Interesting vinegars, like date vinegar and lavender vinegar:

Snake oil:

Ostrich fat oil:

I don't know what this is, looks like rocks:

These are ropes that you burn the end and put it on your fingernail if you are having fingernail problems:

You grind these and put it on your face (for women).  Maybe it is blush:

He ate this one.  I never understood what it was for:

He said this was for your blood.  Or maybe, he said it looked like blood:

Then they gave each of us a carob pod for free.  It does take like chocolate.

Our next stop was very different from the first.  It was an incredible bakery that could have been a French patisserie:

The last picture is a place where you go to get your flour that is freshly ground: white, wheat, etc.

It was quite a day of discovery!