blogs about saudi arabia

Beer, Bacon and Bargirls: Saudi-Bahraini Transport Company, Khobar to Manama

jani — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:56:35 -0700

Up at 10 AM the next morning, we demolished the complimentary fruit basket in lieu of breakfast and had the hotel drop us off at the SABTCO station. We were in luck: there are only six buses a day, but the very next one had free seats at SR50 a pop (~US$12) and was leaving in half an hour. Although it wasn't exactly a bus: the Khobar-Bahrain service uses little minibuses seating perhaps 20 and pulling along a dinky little trailer for luggage.

Beer, Bacon and Bargirls: Train 9, First Class, Riyadh-Dammam

jani — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:48:38 -0700

As a bit of a train buff, I tried my best to google up some info -- any info -- about the services of the Saudi Railways Organization before our trip, but virtually none was forthcoming, and eventually it was Trsqr who did the (considerable) legwork of reserving tickets. He rustled up the number of Dammam's train station from somewhere and got an Arabic speaker to proxy, and it turned out that even the SRO website's schedules are inaccurate.

Beer, Bacon and Bargirls: A Multimodal Escape to Bahrain

jani — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:29:51 -0700

One sunny day I found myself in Riyadh with a weekend to spare, and as luck would have it, fellow Wikitraveller and Flyertalker Trsqr was in exactly the same predicament. It was school holiday season in Saudi, so flights were packed tighter than the Jamarat Bridge on the 10th day of Dhu al-Hijjah, so fuelled by a champagne-and-cigar binge in a disco ball suspended 240 meters above Riyadh, we eventually settled on visiting that den of relative iniquity known as the Kingdom of Bahrain, taking the train out and the plane back in.

Wahhabalinese Adventures: Jeddah

jani — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:33:44 -0700

Jeddah's King Abdulaziz International Airport has a bad rep, and on landing I could see why. We were bused into the terminal and let loose in the baggage claim area, which is split in two and entirely devoid of signage of any sort (except to note that porters are SR 10 and luggage carts are free), but the solitary moving belt drew the crowd and soon enough bags from RUH, mine among the first, started plopping onto it.

Wahhabalinese Adventures: Riyadh

jani — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:24:20 -0800

CO-ORDINATES: (0,1) ALLEGIANCE: Independent TYPE: Isolationist Religious Enclave GOVERNMENT: Religious Dictatorship MAJOR IMPORTS: None MAJOR EXPORTS: None ILLEGAL GOODS: Animal Meat, Liquor, Narcotics, Animal Skins, Live Animals, Slaves, Luxury Goods, Hand Weapons, Battle Weapons, Nerve Gas, Robots, Radioactives

Wahhabalinese Adventures: Index

jani — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 06:39:09 -0800

Introduction

At a squeak over 10,000 miles, this trip is no great shakes when it comes to distance, but there can't be too many places on Earth with a greater level of contrast than its endpoints.