Thoughts While Jet-lagging

Just some post-reunion thoughts since I’m already up way too early...

Firstly, we’re definitely glad we made the trip.  Not only did we get to visit some of our old haunts, but we also saw some parts of Saudi Arabia that we never visited while living there.  We experienced Saudi Arabia as guests staying in an Al-Khobar hotel rather than as Expats living inside the shelter of a company compound.

While there have been drastic changes since we were last living there, it is comforting to see the Saudis take such pride in their heritage, wanting to preserve and share it...from the many cultural and natural history museums that are being developed to the wonderful Heritage Village Museum and Restaurant to the preservation projects in old Jeddah.  Too often, the old is thrown out or devalued in the movement toward modernization, and so much is lost before anyone realizes that it is, truly, a loss.  Houston is a prime example.

Saudi hospitality is the best in the world.  They invite you into their homes, feed you until you are full to the gills, and would give you the shirt off their backs if you asked.  So don’t!  Their generosity is grounded in centuries-old bedouin customs that were a necessity for survival in the harsh environment, and it hasn’t changed.

The reunion organizing committee took on a quite a project.  I shudder to think of the organizational and logistical nightmare it must have been for them.  Some things did not go so smoothly, and I am sure they put up with a lot of grief from the reunion attendees, but given the scope, they deserve a pat on the back and a few days rest!

Although many of the places in camp are still familiar and bring back fond memories, the landscape and cultural fabric have changed so much that we definitely felt like guests.  Very welcome guests who were treated like royalty, but guests nonetheless.  Dhahran no longer feels like home.  Many of the memories and inside jokes that we share as expats seem out of context there now.  But they are still at “home” in the context of the biennial Aramco Brat reunions.  The reunions are truly a virtual home town and the closest we will ever come to going “home.”

Saudi Aramco President and CEO Khalid Al-Falih put it very eloquently when he spoke of the individual experiences and accomplishments of  Aramcons as fibers in weaving a greater tapestry for the company and country (“Those Who Helped Build Company Honored”).  The same holds true for us as individuals: we were profoundly affected and shaped by our experiences in Saudi Arabia.  They make up part of the weft of our personal tapestries.

Day 12: Dubai

We spent an entire day in Dubai before flying back to Houston.  Tom Parker, a former colleague who now works for Polarcus in Dubai, was kind enough to give us a great driving tour of the different parts of Dubai.

We drove along Jumeira Beach and out to The Palm, the palm tree-shaped series of islands that is a huge real estate development.  The gold suq was closed for prayer, but we did manage to hit the old suq in the Bustakaiya area on the other side of Dubai Creek.  A lot of the smaller shops were open after prayer, but the rug shops remained closed, perhaps because it was a Friday.  We watched the water taxis and dhows moving along Dubai Creek.  We’ve never seen so many dhows stacked up alongside a quay like that before.

Dubai is a strange place.  Upon being processed through immigration and customs and checking into the hotel, we decided Dubai was the gig to get if you want to be stationed in the Middle East.  However, after a day of experiencing the place, we decided it had all the charm of some strange “transit lounge/duty-free world,” where everyone is just visiting on the way to somewhere else.

The development is impressive, but it left us wondering where all these people are going to come from to fill the office and apartment space, 50% of which appeared to be about 50% completed.  Looks like Dubai is in for an ugly meltdown in this economy.

Day 11: Hofuf

Our last road trip in Saudi Arabia was to Hofuf in Al Hasa, the world’s largest date palm oasis.  In addition to this natural resource, Al Hasa sits on top of the Ghawar field, the largest onshore field in the world.

(While fresh dates are a rarity in U.S. produce sections, they are standard fare in the Middle East and an essential offering with Arabic coffee and tea.  For an introduction to date varieties and cultivation, see this article in Saudi Aramco World: “Carrying Dates to Hajar.”)

Hofuf was a popular field trip when we were in elementary school.  It was like a walk back in time with a camel/livestock market and a centuries-old, palm thatch-covered suq.  On one such field trip, a couple of little boys in my class decided it would be a good idea to buy some baby goats at the market and bring them back to camp.  We rode back to Dhahran with two baby goats running around the bus.

We immediately noticed the development along the Abqaiq Road, leaving Dhahran.  It used to be nothing but low dunes and sandstone jebels.  There were still a surprising number of bedouin tent encampments in the area near Hofuf, so some things haven’t changed.

We went to the newer camel market first.  Most of the sales transactions and loading of camels by cranes into pickups had occurred before we got there, but the lull in activity gave us the opportunity to ride camels (SR5) and take photos.  Watching the Arabs leaning up against the livestock fences reminded us of Texas cowboys.  This was the Saudi version.  We briefly considered asking them to pose while making the “horns down” sign with their hands.

Next we headed over to the old Turkish fort, Qasr Ibrahim and Al Bai’a House in the old Al Kut district.  The turkish fort was captured from the Ottomans in the middle of the night without a fight. Al Bai’a House is where a treaty was signed uniting the local tribes under Abdul Aziz.  Sadly, the old Suq Al Qaisariyyah burned to the ground a few years ago, but we were happy to see that they are trying to construct a new one in its likeness.  Al Hasa is working hard to develop its own tourist industry, and the old suq was a valuable asset in that regard.

Lunch was in a national park, compliments of the Al Hasa Chamber of Commerce.  When we arrived, the doors to the park reception hall were locked, so a mad scramble ensued to find a park ranger with keys to let us in for lunch.  Our hosts were presented with a memento from the group to thank them for their hospitality.

Speaking of developments in Al Hasa, we need to take this opportunity to point out their campaign to be designated one of the 7 natural wonders of the word under the landscape category.  Al Hasa is currently in the lead!!!  Please visit the link below and vote for Al Hasa, and be sure to pass it along to all of your friends.  We told our hosts we wouldn’t let them down!

Day 10: Khobar and Lena’s

Wednesday was a much-needed down day.  We spent the morning doing our last-gasp Khobar shopping before we headed to meet Jan and Hania at the Reunion House in Dhahran and head over to Lena’s for lunch.

Lena is an interior decorator, so her home is absolutely beautiful!  We looked at photos of her family and tried to get caught up on everyone.  She had prepared a fabulous lunch of non-Middle Eastern dishes for us, thinking we were probably full to the gills with traditional foods.  So true!  She’s a great cook.  We need to remember to get her apple pie dessert recipe -- it had cream cheese in the middle of it and was outstanding.

After lunch, we lounged around the old Rec area while I tried to track down my repaired high-heeled, Saudi sandals before the evening dinner and fashion show started.  I had no luck -- there was too much going on in preparation for the show, so I will have to have someone bring them to me.

Finally found Al Zamil’s in Khobar open and bought some fabric.  Al Zamil’s is a sewing and craft store that I recall visiting nearly every time we made a trip to Khobar when I was a young girl.  I vividly remember looking through all the buttons and threads in the store which is now located in a multi-story building on the Corniche.  We had dinner at Latif Bakery again, then headed back to the hotel to pack up for our departure the next evening and get some sleep before getting up early again for one last trip...to Hofuf.

Day 9: Shaybah

Our trip to the Shaybah Field started before the crack of dawn with 5 am bus transport to Camp and then the Aramco hangar at Dammam Airport.

The Shaybah development is Saudi Aramco’s crown jewel located in the Empty Quarter, ‘Rub Al Khali,” near the UAE border.  Given the remoteness and harshness of the environment, Shaybah is truly an engineering and operational marvel.  The 3 (soon to be 4) GOSPs (Gas Oil Separation Plant) and residential camp are set on the subkha plains surrounded by red sand dunes, some as high as 1000 feet.  It is nearly impossible to describe in words how desolate and inhospitable a setting this is.  Photos barely do it justice.

It was a bit windy, so photography was a little difficult, and we were coated with fine sand by the time we left early afternoon.  I made the mistake of wearing flip-flops which would have been perfect for walking on the dunes had the sand not been so blistering hot by noon.  And it was only March!!! 

After returning to Dhahran, we accompanied the Manges to Ismail Nawab’s home in Ar Rabiyah for more tea, coffee, and Arabic sweets.  The Nawabs are close friends of the family, so we were glad to have had the opportunity to accept their invitation.  The company and food were both excellent.  Regrettably, we could not stay longer as we had to run back to the hotel and change in time for the Farewell Dinner.

The Farewell Dinner was hosted by local businessmen in Al-Khobar at the Seef on the Corniche.  The bus was supposed to transport us to the restaurant, but, after a full circuit of the Corniche, couldn’t find the place.  He made a phone call and circled around again before Tom spotted the restaurant...a mere 5-minute walk from our hotel, not the 30-minute bus ride we had been on.  Our driver thought it was absolutely hilarious when he saw how close it was to the bus stop.

Both of us were pretty stuffed at this point, but we went to enjoy the company and hospitality. In addition to spending a few minutes socializing with reunion attendees we had not had much time to talk to, we ran into an old classmate, Lena Jalbout!  What great surprise!  She hasn’t been able to attend any of the Aramco Brat reunions because of a conflicting, annual business trip to the U.S.  We made plans to join her for lunch at her house the next day, had one more cup of kawa with our sadeeg in the lobby of Le Meridien, then called it a day.  It was a long one!

Days 7 and 8: Jeddah

On Sunday morning both the Jeddah trippers and those going to the Asir flew out of the Aramco hangar on a 737-700 (the Shaybah).  We flew into Abha first to drop the Asir group off and got a spectacular view of the mountains and gorges of that area.

After stopping at the hotel for coffee and check-in, we headed into the older part of the city to see Naseef House.  Naseef House was built in 1872 by a wealthy merchant family and has been partially restored as part of a larger project to restore and preserve Jeddah’s distinctive, old architecture.  HRH Abdul Aziz purportedly ruled from this house for a year and a half before going to Riyadh.

Our host at Naseef House, Dr. Sami Nawar, the Director General of Jeddah’s Tourism and Culture Department, was something else!  He had a wonderful enthusiasm for his city, great sense of humor, and fun tales.  Several historic areas have been earmarked for preservation and restoration, and it was quite a relief to hear him speak about the importance of striking a balance between the two so as not to overdo the work and destroy the historic areas’ look and feel.  Renovations and new construction in these areas will maintain the old architectural styles.  The topic prompted us to ask him if he had ever been to New Orleans.  While much newer than Jeddah, mile after mile of historic neighborhoods have been fiercely protective of too much change, summed up in a t-shirt design that says “la beaute d’entropie” or “the beauty of decay.”  Our host had, indeed, been to New Orleans.  An impish grin spread across his face as he told us he “had a LOT of fun!”  Uh-oh!

He carefully timed our tour of Naseef House to have us up in the old wooden structure on top, enjoying the sea breeze, when the evening prayer call began.  We sat quietly and listened while the muezzin calls rang out from 37 different mosques simultaneously.  Beautiful!  We then enjoyed some mint tea with him before departing for dinner at a seafood restaurant on the Corniche, Al Wadaa, compliments of Saudi Aramco.    

Monday morning, we started out at a little suq recommended by Nancy, our Saudi Aramco tour leader who had lived in Jeddah for 6.5 years before moving to Dhahran.  Unfortunately, Jeddah is a little slower to wake up than Al-Khobar, so little was open before we had to leave for our appointment at the Emir of Mecca’s offices.  There were a couple of shops Nancy wanted to visit and managed to get them to open up a little early for her, but it was nothing the rest of the group was really interested in.  A pattern was emerging.

It’s a good thing we arrived a little early for our reception at the offices of HRH Khaled bin Faisal bin Abdul Aziz.  The drives were so narrow and sharply curved that we witnessed some pretty impressive bus maneuvering.  Seemed like it would have been easier to park the bus in the lot and have us walk up to the doors, but proper entrances are very important, especially when being filmed.  The driver almost made it under the portico without incident.  Almost.  On the 2nd to last cut, he took a chunk out of the wall near the entrance.  Oopsie!

There was much discussion with Saudi Aramco Government Relations officials on proper protocol for greeting the Emir.  The script didn’t play out quite as prescribed but close enough.  We all filed through to shake his hand and bid him “salaam alaikum.”  We were both struck by how much he resembled his late father, HRH King Faisal, who was ruling when we first moved to Saudi Arabia in 1972.  He was presented with a commemorative gift of the inscribed crystal-variety and a few words of thanks and appreciation from our group.  Saudi Aramco had a photographer present and is planning on sending the attendees a CD of the event which we will be sure to share as soon as it arrives.

Our Saudi Aramco tour leader took us a by a gift shop and another store prior to lunch at a Turkish restaurant.  The last store was the Saudi equivalent of Garden Ridge Pottery.  No one in the group had any business or interest in purchasing any large ceramic pots or patio furniture which prompted the question “what the hell are we doing here?”  This is the point at which it became plainly evident to all of us that our tour leader, Nancy, was using this tour as her own personal shopping trip to Jeddah!  She was buying items for her patio in Dhahran!  We were none too happy with her.  One of the attendees went so far as to loudly thank her for allowing us to accompany her on her shopping trip to Jeddah.  The last shopping stop delayed our lunch at Al Fairouz, a popular Turkish restaurant, which left us with little time to see the Corniche before heading to the airport!  The food was very good, but we can’t say as much for our tour leader.

Our last stop in Jeddah was a full 15 minutes on the Corniche, the famous 100-km, waterfront stretch along the Red Sea which is decorated with numerous sculptures and little mosques.  We didn’t even have time to walk over to the little mosque that jutted out into the water, but we had sufficient time for one of our group to step in something really nasty as we were getting back on the bus.  There were NO dogs running around the beach, so we’ll just leave it to the reader to figure out.  What followed was a about 10 minutes of hilarity as he tried to remove all traces from the bottom of his shoes.  In addition to the bus driver and a beach worker helping him with bottled water, paper towels,a piece of shell and a broom,  he had the encouragement of the entire bus as we watched (and video recorded) the process.

So much for the Corniche!  We headed back to Dhahran, getting to the hotel around midnight and caught about 3 hours of sleep before the early-morning Shaybah trip the next day.

Day 6: Museum Tours

Sorry for the delay in updates.  We’ve been on back-to-back, in-kingdom trips and have not had time (or internet) to post regular updates.

Saturday, we went on the “Museum Tour” which began with a visit to the Al Ashgar home in Ar Rabiyah, a development to promote Saudi home ownership that is located outside the original main camp.

The Ashgar’s home is absolutely beautiful.  Munirah Al Ashgar has a real talent for decorating and has incorporated Islamic motifs as well as old Saudi and Middle Eastern treasures she has collected over many years.  Saud Al Ashgar referred to it as overflow from her museum which occupies the top floor of a building off the pool patio.  We didn’t have much time to spend looking at everything - it would take many hours.

The Al Ashgar’s beautiful home is only outdone by their hospitality.  We were treated to Saudi gawa, mint tea and sweets in their majlis.  Everything was home made and absolutely delicious.  It was quite a treat!

After the Al Ashgar’s, we headed into Dammam to tour what turned out to be a different museum than originally planned.  We believe it was the Regional Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, although I don’t recall ever seeing the official name.  The museum was home to archaeological and anthropological artifacts dating from Stone Aged tools through the Islamic period and into the 20th century.  A number of important sites have been identified in the Eastern Province but have yet to be fully excavated.  Some of these sites may even predate those found in Mesopotamia.  The area around Qatif and Tarut appears to have been continuously occupied since 5000 BC.  A lot is still to be learned from the limestone rubble and sand in the Eastern Province.

Saturday evening we shopped for items for the upcoming ABI reunion then grabbed a quick bite at the Latif Bakery - khubs pizza-style with labneh, olives, goat cheese, and zatar.  The price of gold is sky high right now, so it’s a bit hard to get excited about buying any.  Hate to pass up the opportunity, but it’s ridiculous!

Day 5: Not in Mada’in Saleh

This is one of the days we were supposed to be in Mada’in Saleh and, therefore, had nothing else on the schedule.  Since that trip was canceled and other available activities were already fully booked, we just sort of did whatever came to mind today.

We headed into Camp just before lunch and decided to have cheeseburgers at the  Rolling Hills Country Club clubhouse then head out to The Hills to see the last house the family lived in.  Friday evening we spent wandering around Al Rashid Mall which is open until 11:00 pm on Fridays, the Moslem religious day.  Stores in Texas close at 6 pm on Sundays.  What’s up with that?

We were surprised at all the shops that are found in your average U.S. mall, but we were really taken aback by a couple of restaurants :  PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans and Popeye’s Fried Chicken!  We’re not kidding!  Make that BJ’s Coffee and Bobeye’s Chicken, since there is no “P” in the Arabic language.

Some photos from today:

Day 4: SAEA Desert Dinner

We started our day Thursday on King Khalid Street in Al Khobar, shopping for some ghutras and Arab sandals.  Most of the stores we frequented are no longer there, but we did recognize a few like Eve’s Jewelry, The Port Store and Gazzaz which has a larger, fancier storefront on the Corniche as well.

We eventually made our way over to Prince Bandar where there are tons of abaya stores.  Marie bought a fancy abaya with metallic green embroidery and little rhinestones in a fairly traditional design.  Yes, a bedazzled abaya!  Tom ordered himself a nice thobe.

We didn’t make it into any of the gold stores.  With gold being so expensive right now, there’s not much to motivate us other than nostalgia.

The Ad Diwan building in Camp was hosting a family “mall day” with local vendors, so we spent a while shewfing at what was available.  The Al Ashgars had a photo set and costumes available if you wanted a portrait taken in traditional clothes and setting from the different provinces of Saudi Arabia. Proceeds went to an orphanage in Dammam.  We didn’t have photos made but, Marie couldn’t pass up the ladies, wedge-heeled Arab sandals.  Munira Ashgar had them made somewhere in Khobar.

Thursday night was spent at the SAEA Dinner in the desert next to Lake Lanhardt in Dhahran Hills.  The SAEA put on quite a spread and show, complete with a mock Arab wedding, camels, and a traditional Ardha band for entertainment.  There were separate tents set up where you could hold a falcon, get a henna design painted on your hand or leg, watch bread making, or buy some traditional Saudi clothing.  

The quote of the night came from Bridget (that’s her arm in the above photo) when we noticed a toddler running around and smearing her own henna tattoo all over her clothes, including inside the back of her pants:  “That’s a poop stain that won’t go away any time soon.”

A bizarre moment:  sitting on a carpet in a tent in the desert while listening to an Ardha band and responding to an office email on a Blackberry.  That’s “messed up.”

We’ve posted some photos from the SAEA Dinner in the Desert, but check back soon -- we hope to post some video of the Ardha dancers.:

Day 3: Welcome Dinner

As expected, Saudi Aramco put on quite a show for the Welcome Dinner.  It was held at the Sunset Beach Resort in the Al Aziziyah Beach Area.  We were welcomed with steaming cups of kawa and a traditional Arab band.  The dinner tables were set on a carpeted beach by the fountain area and water park, so we had a beautiful backdrop.  Saudi Aramco President and CEO, Khalid Al-Falih, gave a nice speech welcoming all of the returning “family”and thanking Ali Baluchi and his committee for making the reunion trip a reality.  The food and company was excellent.  Quite an impressive outdoor affair!

Day 3: Views from Al Khobar

We thought we would share some sights and sounds from Le Meridien on the Corniche where we are staying.  The view from the hotel is quite nice.  We are less appreciative of the local wakeup call at 4:35 am, however.  It’s hard to make out an individual muezzin, so many are going at once:

Some more photos from Khobar:

Day 2: Dhahran Camp, Desert Designs & Heritage Village Dinner

This morning we toured Dhahran, starting with the old 3rd Street school which we both attended in elementary and junior high.  Not surprisingly, there were many changes.  The school is now surrounded by a high wall and imposing security gates.  The limestone and sand areas that were in the back of the school are now beautifully landscaped and green.  The same buildings made up the school complex, but the interior has been entirely redone.  Except for the mascot change from Bears/Bruins to Wildcats, the gym looks just the same.  In fact, stepping into the gym was really what felt most like “home.”

Much of the camp tour was by bus.  In addition to all of the lush, green landscaping, many of the old houses had new facades and were hardly recognizable.  The Rolling Hills Country Club “clubhouse” is still in the same building, and the grassless, old nines, no longer maintained, are still visible.

We had a nice tour of Dhahran Nurseries which neither of us had ever been to.  Originally started as an experiment in growing produce locally, the nurseries now grow all the plants used in landscaping the Aramco Communities.  They also support tree-planting projects in Kingdom.

After a quick lunch in the building that used to house the Snack Bar and some Recreation offices, we headed into Desert Designs in Khobar to do some shopping.  We both could have spent a lot more money but made out pretty well. Tom bought a nice camel bag that is now smelling up the hotel room.

Dinner was the highlight of the day. The sandstorm that hit Riyadh earlier in the afternoon made it to the Eastern Province just as our buses pulled out of Dhahran to take us to the Heritage Village Museum and dinner in Dammam.  We actually had to wait on the dinner guests who had gone to Shaybah and Hofuf for the day and were delayed by the poor visibility.

The Heritage Village was created by Abdullah Busbait to promote Saudi Arabia’s cultural heritage.  It is a replica of an old Saudi fort, and the interior is decorated to show off the typical style of the different regions of Saudi Arabia.  The 3rd floor houses a small museum with interesting artifacts and documents collected by the owner.

Dinner, a traditional “goat grab,” was held in a beautifully decorated tent set up out of doors and served by waiters in traditional Saudi garb.  The entire evening was compliments of our host, Mr. Busbait, to thank us for all that Aramcons had done for his country -- Saudi hospitality at its finest.  The evening, alone, made this trip worthwhile.  Shukran, Mr. Busbait. 

We hope to add some photo captions later, so everyone will know what they are looking at, but we need to run do some more shopping in Khobar!  You’ll note some of these photos were adversely affected by the sand storm.

And more fun with sand...

Day 1: Dammam #7

We got about 1.5 hours of sleep thanks to jet lag and the local wake up call from the mosques at 4:30 am. Sounded like hundreds of them going off simultaneously. 

We had to catch the bus and make it to the Reunion House in camp by 8:15 because a large number of attendees did not have IDs prepared.  There was a mad scramble to get everyone equipped with an ID in time to catch their buses to their selected morning activities.  Of course, none of the buses left on time.

Monday morning we spent touring the core area office buildings. In the EXPEC Center, we toured two theater-style collaboration rooms where cross-disciplinary teams work on projects: the Event Resolution and Geo-steering centers. The Geo-steering center allows visualization, integration and analysis of real-time well data to direct drilling activity.

Next was a trip to the Dammam #7 well, the well that almost wasn’t.  For the unwashed, read here: The Seven Wells of Dammam.  Growing up, our night sky was always a pinkish color from the flares on top of the Dammam Dome.  The flares were done away with long before Saudi Aramco finally shut in the well just a few years ago.  We also visited the nearby Saudi Aramco Oil Exhibit which has lots of interactive displays about everything from oil formation to refining and tankers.  Unfortunately, quite a few were not functioning properly, including the one demonstrating the seismic method (geophone stuck in a slab of stone and wired to an oscilloscope).  I beat the crap out of the rock and barely got a blip a couple of times.  Boo!  Hiss!

Last stop of the day was the Aramco Heritage Gallery, a local museum dedicated to the Aramco communities’ history.  It’s a lot of fun to see how the camps have changed over time.  The exhibit also included a structural map of the Dammam Dome and wells, including the triangulations that the field geologists had done.  Would love to have a print of that!

We both nearly passed out from lack of sleep and jet lag on the bus back to Khobar, so we made dinner a quick one -- Chili’s, if you can believe it.  We passed on the Firecracker Hammour and ordered cheeseburgers.

Click to view full size:

IAH to Dubai and Dammam

We’re sitting in Emirates Airline’s Marhaba Lounge in Dubai between flights.

Our flight from IAH to Dubai was long (14 hr) but nice.  The aircraft was state-of-the art, even in economy.  The ICE inflight entertainment system at each seat is awesome.  In addition to 1000 channels of movies/music, it also included USB and power hookups for your iPod or computer and forward and downward video from the aircraft, so you could watch take-off and landing. Another nice touch: cabin ceiling lighting that changed to simulate sunrise, sunset and a starry night sky to help you adjust to your destination’s time.

Immigration at Dammam, Saudi Arabia was an absolute farce.  After standing in line for 1.5 hours, not a single person had made it through the visitors’ line.  I finally had to go to the bathroom and ventured into the women’s room off the immigration hall.  To my surprise, it was full of men...peeing all over the place!  There was no place for me to use the restroom!  It took about 2 hours to get out of immigration.  We never did figure out the hold up. Some of us were being photographed and fingerprinted, others not.  ??? At one point, the official working our line, left for tea.  That accounted for about 15 minutes of the wait.  (We have since been told that, while it’s always bad, it is usually not THAT bad.  Many Aramcons fly into Bahrain and enter the country across the causeway to avoid the fiasco.)

We all piled onto a bus and were dropped off at our respective hotels.  Extra security measures are everywhere.  All of our bags had to be put through an x-ray machine in the lobby before we could take them up to our rooms.  Armed Saudi military are stationed at the security gate to the hotel, and a large, camouflaged carport in the drive hides a machine gun truck that has been backed in and is ready to go.  A little unnerving.  

Trip SNAFU #1:  Marie has her mother’s keys (house and car) in her carry on bag.  OOPS!

Trip SNAFU #2:  Khobar is not 110V, and neither of us brought an adapter.  That would have been a good detail to know before we packed.