Its my second day in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and before I came I found a few blogs about life in Saudi Arabia very useful. And so this blog is now going to be my contribution back to the internet community. I'll just be describing what I see and notice, and since I am going to keep describing stuff as when it happens, that is on a daily basis, (this is a blog and not a twitter feed), you should get a fairly good idea.
Day 1 - 07 - June - 2012
I hopped on an etihad flight from Chennai to Abu dabhi in the Chennai airport. The process there was uneventful, except for the fact that *I alone* was picked out for random questioning. Every. Single. Time. Two other friends on the same project who were traveling with me were not bothered with at all. Every other guy, well the security guard and emigration guy, both wanted to know where I was going and why, how long I would stay, and which institute was responsible there. I wasn't pulled out of the queue or anything but it still wasn't normal.
Well then coming to etihad airways, it sucked in India. The ground crew were very unprofessional. Even budget airlines are better than them. But, etihad in Abu Dabhi are totally different. They were very professional and excellent there.
Anyway the guy handling the check-in gave me a free 2kgs waiver, I carried 25 kgs, 2 more than the measly 23 kgs allowed for check in officially. I was also offered an upgrade to business class for 5000 rupees.
The flight was uneventful - the cabin crew were pleasant and nice. Landed in Abu Dabhi on time. The connecting flight was 2 hours later so we had some time there.
Then the flight to Riyadh... all the rumors were wrong. No the air hostesses didn't wear burkahs. Etihad airways was playing the Big bang theory with Penny uncensored! But, I suddenly noticed there were hardly any women passengers. From Abu Dabhi, women simply disappeared on the way to Riyadh.
Before we landed in Riyadh, the Air steward gave an entry form with a threatening message - death to drug traffickers! It had questions regarding one's religion, marital status etc. Then the flight landed. After we got into the airport, we found a place to fill out our forms. Before we knew, we were surrounded by a couple of illiterate pakistani's asking for help in filling the forms. We filled out one form, tried to make the rest do the same, couldn't convince them to fill out their own forms, ended up doing it for three other guys.
Entry Queues - Must read if you are on a first visit!
Here comes the dreaded Saudi entry process. Here every rumor was false again but the terrified process was worse than we thought. We saw three queues - one for first entry, one for re entry, one for business persons and diplomats. Being on a government visit visa, we decided to go to the last one - business/diplomats. Language became a huge problem from this point. Till I explicitly tell otherwise, every conversation that follows was one filled with a long back and forth of Arabic and English/hindi.Policemen didn't know English at all. They were smoking freely. Cracking jokes across the counters and were in general rude to everyone. One policeman came over to the end as soon as we got there and wanted to know why we were standing there and not in the first entry. We told him that we were on a gov. visit and handed the passports, he stared long and hard at the visa and then left us. Once we got to the checking guy, he saw the visa and asked us to go to the first entry queue. This policeman intervened and asked to us to go straight to another queue, bypassing others. The new policeman saw our visas and redirected us once again to another guy. The new guy was quite rude, and well he said there was a problem in the visa and asked us to go to the immigration office. One guy after a few minutes said he'll take care of the process and took us back to the counters, he got on a machine and processed quite quickly for me and one friend. The process for all involves scanning the finger prints and taking a photo. The fingerprinting process takes a lot of time since the policemen don't know that there is a green light indicating that the process is over and ask you to keep your fingers pressed for five damn minutes. For next friend, he stamped the passport but didn't hand it back. He instead took it to another counter and gave it to someone else. The new guy wouldn't tell what the problem was and just asked us to wait. The old guy who was Mr. Nice till then just told "not finish, not finish" and left us. We waited for around two hours without a clue. Stranded. In an alien land. Without a damn clue. Finally we were able to make them say "system problem". We were quite relieved that it was not any fault on our side. Anyway just before lunch another guy who was simply roaming around finally got to a computer and did something and returned our passports.
We went to collect our luggage, and unsurprisingly ours was the only ones not collected. We went for the exit, and surprise, surprise, our luggage was simply sent through the scanner and was not subject to any rigorous scanning as we heard. When we went out the person to collect us was waiting patiently and he took charge. I got a sim card from Zain network in the airport itself and off we went.
The city had wide, wide roads. And the buildings are very spaced. Coming from crowded India, it appears that there is no life here! I couldn't see people on the road. I mean in India, people walk on the road, drive two wheelers so one can see them easily. Since everyone is in a car here and no one walks - walks as in walking normally across the street, or like standing outside for a friendly chat, we couldn't see a single soul anywhere. Riyadh appears like a ghost town with cars roaring across the roads.
Got home to a big 2bhk furnished apartment with wifi access! The person in charge of the apartment block was a friendly Sri Lankan. The workers here also are very friendly. We made ourselves fresh and then went out to the supermarket across the road to get some basic stuff. The cashier knows Hindi, and so it means fewer language problems. A woman came shopping and one of my friends asked a simple question, "how much does curd cost?" since the number was in Arabic, and she ran away!!! We were baffled and learned an important lesson! Never talk to women here.
Cooked noodles and slept.
Day 2 - (McDonalds and television channels. I'll blog tomorrow.)
Day 1 - 07 - June - 2012
I hopped on an etihad flight from Chennai to Abu dabhi in the Chennai airport. The process there was uneventful, except for the fact that *I alone* was picked out for random questioning. Every. Single. Time. Two other friends on the same project who were traveling with me were not bothered with at all. Every other guy, well the security guard and emigration guy, both wanted to know where I was going and why, how long I would stay, and which institute was responsible there. I wasn't pulled out of the queue or anything but it still wasn't normal.
Well then coming to etihad airways, it sucked in India. The ground crew were very unprofessional. Even budget airlines are better than them. But, etihad in Abu Dabhi are totally different. They were very professional and excellent there.
Anyway the guy handling the check-in gave me a free 2kgs waiver, I carried 25 kgs, 2 more than the measly 23 kgs allowed for check in officially. I was also offered an upgrade to business class for 5000 rupees.
The flight was uneventful - the cabin crew were pleasant and nice. Landed in Abu Dabhi on time. The connecting flight was 2 hours later so we had some time there.
Then the flight to Riyadh... all the rumors were wrong. No the air hostesses didn't wear burkahs. Etihad airways was playing the Big bang theory with Penny uncensored! But, I suddenly noticed there were hardly any women passengers. From Abu Dabhi, women simply disappeared on the way to Riyadh.
Before we landed in Riyadh, the Air steward gave an entry form with a threatening message - death to drug traffickers! It had questions regarding one's religion, marital status etc. Then the flight landed. After we got into the airport, we found a place to fill out our forms. Before we knew, we were surrounded by a couple of illiterate pakistani's asking for help in filling the forms. We filled out one form, tried to make the rest do the same, couldn't convince them to fill out their own forms, ended up doing it for three other guys.
Entry Queues - Must read if you are on a first visit!
Here comes the dreaded Saudi entry process. Here every rumor was false again but the terrified process was worse than we thought. We saw three queues - one for first entry, one for re entry, one for business persons and diplomats. Being on a government visit visa, we decided to go to the last one - business/diplomats. Language became a huge problem from this point. Till I explicitly tell otherwise, every conversation that follows was one filled with a long back and forth of Arabic and English/hindi.Policemen didn't know English at all. They were smoking freely. Cracking jokes across the counters and were in general rude to everyone. One policeman came over to the end as soon as we got there and wanted to know why we were standing there and not in the first entry. We told him that we were on a gov. visit and handed the passports, he stared long and hard at the visa and then left us. Once we got to the checking guy, he saw the visa and asked us to go to the first entry queue. This policeman intervened and asked to us to go straight to another queue, bypassing others. The new policeman saw our visas and redirected us once again to another guy. The new guy was quite rude, and well he said there was a problem in the visa and asked us to go to the immigration office. One guy after a few minutes said he'll take care of the process and took us back to the counters, he got on a machine and processed quite quickly for me and one friend. The process for all involves scanning the finger prints and taking a photo. The fingerprinting process takes a lot of time since the policemen don't know that there is a green light indicating that the process is over and ask you to keep your fingers pressed for five damn minutes. For next friend, he stamped the passport but didn't hand it back. He instead took it to another counter and gave it to someone else. The new guy wouldn't tell what the problem was and just asked us to wait. The old guy who was Mr. Nice till then just told "not finish, not finish" and left us. We waited for around two hours without a clue. Stranded. In an alien land. Without a damn clue. Finally we were able to make them say "system problem". We were quite relieved that it was not any fault on our side. Anyway just before lunch another guy who was simply roaming around finally got to a computer and did something and returned our passports.
We went to collect our luggage, and unsurprisingly ours was the only ones not collected. We went for the exit, and surprise, surprise, our luggage was simply sent through the scanner and was not subject to any rigorous scanning as we heard. When we went out the person to collect us was waiting patiently and he took charge. I got a sim card from Zain network in the airport itself and off we went.
The city had wide, wide roads. And the buildings are very spaced. Coming from crowded India, it appears that there is no life here! I couldn't see people on the road. I mean in India, people walk on the road, drive two wheelers so one can see them easily. Since everyone is in a car here and no one walks - walks as in walking normally across the street, or like standing outside for a friendly chat, we couldn't see a single soul anywhere. Riyadh appears like a ghost town with cars roaring across the roads.
Got home to a big 2bhk furnished apartment with wifi access! The person in charge of the apartment block was a friendly Sri Lankan. The workers here also are very friendly. We made ourselves fresh and then went out to the supermarket across the road to get some basic stuff. The cashier knows Hindi, and so it means fewer language problems. A woman came shopping and one of my friends asked a simple question, "how much does curd cost?" since the number was in Arabic, and she ran away!!! We were baffled and learned an important lesson! Never talk to women here.
Cooked noodles and slept.
Day 2 - (McDonalds and television channels. I'll blog tomorrow.)
Haha.... quite a day boy :P
ReplyDeleteI guess it'll be interesting for the first week atleast!
DeleteHope You ll Adjust to everything in soon .....:P
ReplyDeleteyes, its just because we are starting out...
Delete