Shopping – How Does it Work?

Ok, so let’s talk about shopping in a bit more detail. Compounds inhabited by western expats usually have plenty of women with not that much to do during daytime when husbands are at work and children at school, so most compounds arrange shopping buses. Shopping buses are minibuses that depart compounds in the morning, drop the ladies (and occasional men + children) to a shopping mall and then pick them up a few hours later and bring the ladies back to the compound. Shopping buses also get women around the problem of not being able to drive themselves. Yes, you read that right. Women are not allowed to drive in Saud Arabia. The reason? Well, because they are not men.

But anyways, back to the shopping arrangements. In the compound that we live in there are 3-4 shopping buses every day. Usually two in the morning, one in the afternoon and one late in the evening. Bus schedules are such that you don’t run into any prayer time closings. Shopping buses are also a bit of a social gathering place. Indeed, it’s the perfect place to start talking to fellow expats since you have about 20min each way to spare.

All shopping buses are unmarked for security reasons. So that means that there is no big text on the side of the bus saying “Compound X”. Rather, all buses are white and have darkened windows. The thing is, you need to be very careful about which shopping bus you get onto when done with shopping. There is one lady in our compound who wasn’t so careful and ended up in the wrong bus and as a result to the wrong compound. Not to worry, it wasn't the end of the world and she is fine. It's just annoying because then you need to arrange a taxi to take you back to your own compound, which might be far away and the driver might not know where it is. If you're new to Riyadh and the taxi driver doesn't speak English that well then it might turn into a bigger problem.

Abayas and Niqabs – Summer and da easy livin’

Ok, so let’s talk about abayas. As mentioned in an earlier post I (K) have not found an abaya unpleasant at all to wear. Now that it’s summer and the heat is on it is starting to get a bit unpleasantly warm to wear an abaya outside. Then on the other hand, you feel unpleasantly warm wearing a bikini outside in these temperatures. When it’s 40C+ outside it doesn’t really matter anymore what you wear or do not wear – you feel hot unless you happen to be submerged in an outdoor pool.

One of the questions that seem to baffle a lot of people is why abayas in Saudi are always black.  There’s actually no rule stating that it has to be black. It’s simply a cultural issue. A few weeks ago I saw some blue abayas on sale here in Riyadh. Quite liberal yes…. Here’s a picture:

I’ve once seen a red abaya in a shop as well, but I’ve never seen anyone using any another color than black, other than at the airport. Also, at the FourSeasons Friday brunch we saw a lady wearing an abaya with big colorful patterns all over the back. It didn’t really look black to us because it was so colorful. In any case, sleeves of a different color are acceptable, as are all types of glittery decorations on the back, sleeves or hem.

Now that it’s summer time I’ve noticed that fewer women cover their face with a niqab. One day at the supermarket we were doing our groceries as usual when I noticed something was different - I could see people’s faces. I don’t know if it has something to do with the summer or not, but I have a feeling that less women cover their faces now than during the spring.

Western Clothes in Riyadh

Most foreigners are surprised to hear that there is no lack of western clothes in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, you can buy just about anything you want here. It seems that Mango, Benetton, Zara, Desigual, TopShop, Etam, Lindex etc. have shops in just about every shopping mall. Debenhams department stores are all over the place and if in need, you will be able to buy Gucci, Prada and LV bags and shoes here as well. A lot of westerners have difficulties imagining why Saudi ladies would want to buy western clothes since in public they need to wear abayas to cover them anyways. Yes, true that in public they need to cover but at home they don’t need to. Among relatives they are free to dress as they please.

Although most things are available in Saudi, a lot of expats prefer to go to Dubai or back to their home countries for shopping because let’s face it, it’s just easier when you can try the things on in the shop without buying them first. As mentioned before in an earlier post, here you need to buy the things first, then go to the ladies bathroom to try them on, then return the items if you want to get another size, take it to the bathroom again and so and so forth.

But lo and behold, one day we went shopping in the evening and what did we see in the department store?

Yes, a fitting room for men. We were left wondering what would happen if a woman just went in and started trying on clothes. The world would probably not come to an end?

Crème de la Crème

As any large international city also Riyadh offers a wide range of restaurants and cuisines for everyone's tastes. Still, what comes to fine dining and real gourmet, there are not that many options available.

One of the experiences that we had decided to try out already quite some time ago is the famous Friday brunch (i.e. Sunday brunch in the other parts of the world) at Four Seasons hotel in Kingdom Centre. Everyone who has been there has highly recommended the brunch. And oh boy, it truly was a mouthwatering experience!

Except for a small mixup with our reservation everything worked as clockwork and you really felt pampered afterwards. Getting good service in Riyadh is more an exception than a norm so we really enjoyed every moment of our visit.

Although the brunch is a bit pricey it definitively is worth it. The selection and quality of food is just amazing. The only limiting factor is the capacity of one's stomach. This time we focused our efforts more on enjoying the food, next time we try to remember to take some photos, too. :-)

Privacy

One thing that constantly baffles us here in Saudi Arabia is how much the locals value privacy. Wherever you go, you will see walls. Families mostly live in one family houses surrounded by high walls and beautiful gates. It seems that most government buildings are also enclosed by walls. University campuses are no exception. Indeed, even our compound has a double wall. More about our compound later, but what we wanted to share with you today is a picture taken in Jeddah. You see, there was this guy who built a house and the house had the usual walls. But then someone decided to build an apartment building right next to his house. The apartment building was naturally a lot higher than this guy’s one family house, so the people in the apartment building could see over his walls right into his yard. This guy decided that something must be done in order to protect his family’s privacy. Check out the solution he came up with.

The apartment building on the left side. And behind the trees...

...you find this structure:

Localizations Saudi Style

I (K) have worked in marketing for the past few years. When you work for a corporation that produces marketing materials for countries around the world you are bound to bump into localization issues. For example, something that might work in France might not work as such in the USA. So you need to create a US version of the materials. Quite often localizing simply means translating material into another language and possibly changing a few words, tweaking the content a bit etc.  In Saudi they take it a bit further. Have a look at the pictures below and see if you can see how the product wrappings have been localized Saudi style.

Thinking of buying yourself a pair of push-up bars?

Nothing weird? Take a closer look.

Yes, now you see it. Fancy a pool perhaps?

Skipping rope Saudi style.

And our absolute winner of the day... the Disco Twister!!

Underwater Saudi Arabia

Below a few pictures from our recent dive trip to Jeddah. The reefs were amazingly healthy considering the proximity of the city.

Photos courtesy of I.T.

Saudia II

A few weeks ago we had a chance to use Saudia again, but this time we took a domestic flight to Jeddah, the commercial hub of Saudi Arabia. As before, this particular flight with Saudia was a rather interesting cultural experience for several reasons.

Firstly, the passengers. Since Jeddah is one of the closest cities to Mecca, there were quite a lot of hajj pilgrims on the flight. Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. All Moslems who have the physical and financial means to do so, should visit Mecca once in their lifetime. For the hajj men dress in white unsewn towels. We’ve been told this is so because during the pilgrimage all people are equal. Women dress modestly, but it was interesting to note that not all women were wearing black. Since a lot of the hajj pilgrims are from abroad you see a variety of colors at the airport compared to the ever-popular black elsewhere. We also saw several groups of women wearing bright colored headscarves, such as the mint green in the picture below. Our guess is that these are hajj tour groups and travelers are wearing the same color headscarves so that it would be easier for the guide to take care of them.

Secondly, holy water. There is a well in Mecca called Zamzam, whose water is holy for Moslems. At the airport you can see people carrying canister after canister of Zamzam water. We were told that the water is used for all sorts of purposes, such as bathing sick people with it, blessings babies, drinking etc. At Riyadh airport you frequently see laborers from Pakistan and India taking the water back home with them.

Thirdly, prayer areas. Now this is not something that you get on any airline. At the back of the jumbo jet there was an empty space dedicated for praying. A veteran expat told us that during longer flights men often congregate in the prayer area. Also, upon arrival at Jeddah airport, there was a prayer area right next to the terminal doors. So basically, if you don’t have a chance to visit the prayer area at the back of the plane during the flight, you can make up for possible missed prayers at the terminal already before you’ve collected your luggage.

Fly-In Fly-Out

Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport offers surprisingly large number of connections not only to all regional destinations in the Middle East but also to all major air transportation hubs in Europe, Asia and USA. That said, there are two things that continuously puzzle me (T):

First, when flying to/from Europe, almost all flights depart/arrive middle of the night. And with "middle of the night" I really mean "middle of the night". E.g. Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul arrives around 1am and leaves around 2am. Rare exception is British Airways daily flight to London that departs 8am in the morning. Yes, it might be that airlines just want to ensure as good onward connections as possible for their customers but there is probably something else behind this, too.

Second, with the exception of Dubai there barely is any regional destination that you could easily fly-in in the morning and fly-out in the evening - something which is a standard business procedure everywhere in Europe. Either you leave middle of the night (see above) and arrive to your destination around 3am or 4am (with at least 4-5 hours waiting before any morning meetings commence) or you can leave middle of the day (not very effective use of your time) and spend the night in a hotel (extra costs). Maybe it is so that whenever somebody has a chance to travel out from the Magic Kingdom, they want to spend at least one night in their destination.

Sunrise as seen from King Khalid International Airport.

Prayers – Part III

A while ago there was a question about prayer or “salat” times. Prayer times are determined by the position of the Sun. As the day lengthens or shortens the times gradually change. Times change only about 1 min/day, but in the time I've been in Riyadh now, which is roughly 30 days, the first prayer call has gradually shifted by 30 minutes. So now, instead of a 4.15AM wake up call, we get a free wake up call at around 3.45AM. That’s when the mosque right on the other side of the compound wall starts the call. Lately, the mosque has also started broadcasting the first prayer of the day to the entire neighborhood. Hubby tells me they’ve not done that before as long as he’s been here.

In case one of you is now feeling an urge to download a prayer application for the purpose of using it in Riyadh, I highly recommend iPray. Since the position of the Sun determines the prayer times, it naturally varies by your geographic location. iPray let’s you set your location as Riyadh, as opposed to some other apps that only recognize Mecca… Not very useful for someone in Riyadh if the prayer times are off by 15 minutes. Remember, all shops and restaurants close during the prayers and you don’t want to get to the cash register one minute after they’ve closed, but a few minutes before they close. Oh and by the way, uncle Steve at Apple still owes me 99 cents for that useless app that only gives Mecca prayer times.