Killing the day
I had spent yesterday entirely indoors on the computer and at the hotel gym, only stepping outside to get a meal. My only human interaction in spoken words was calling home to Kim and also a friend.
Tonight, I have a flight after midnight but realised that the 1200 check-out isn’t true. It’s common in the region to allow check-outs till much later, in my case 1600.
I spent the day catching up on admin and then went to the hotel gym to find that it was closed. Damn! There goes a good plan but to make it worse, the hotel then told me that I had to leave the room at 1500. While they gave me plenty of notice, I was still disappointed with both the gym and check-out timing.
After surrendering my room, I killed time pretty well in the lobby from 1500 to 1930 writing and editing photos, with a short break for a meal in between.
I ordered a car to get to the airport after checking out the pricing of the fast train from the station “across the road”. The savings would be insignificant and I would probably not find a driver to take me to the station as it was too near but too pedestrian-unfriendly to walk.
Getting to the airport around 2000, I was surprised to see Thai Airways’ counter attended with no queues. Awesome, I had expected to kill an hour before the counter opened at 3h prior to the flight (which is quite a common timing).
On standby, I was issued a boarding pass straight away and was told the flight was nearly empty! They didn’t check on my onward ticket outward from Thailand but I had prepared it in my hand.
I went through to airside taking my sweet time before exploring the airport a little. A train ride is required to get from check-in to the international departure area as closer gates are assigned to domestic flights.
I spent about 2h in the lounge enjoying a prawn kabsa along with limited snacks before going to the gate for boarding.
Thoughts on leaving Saudi
I had an awesome time in my three weeks in Saudi Arabia. The country has a rich history and culture. My experience was made richer more enjoyable by a knowledgeable and compatible companion who did the stressful portion of in-city driving.
It felt like a special experience seeing the country in transition:
- from being completely closed to tourists (no such thing as tourist visas, only business and pilgrims) to welcoming them and their money with open arms
- seeing how it is getting liberalised, eg. women rideshare drivers when less than five years ago they wouldn’t be able to leave the house unchaperoned, men not being able to wear shorts less than a year ago but now still a bit odd.
- the investment in tourism and its infrastructure, eg. hotels, airports, airlines, museums, waterfronts, events.
Interesting observation was that I didn’t see one single Tesla in the country nor any hybrid vehicles. I had expected to see plenty of large American cars but they were rare. More common were Japanese cars, plus European, Korean and even Chinese makes.
It was good to dispel the myth that Saudi is full of rich people. Apart from the poor foreign workers, there were plenty of poor Saudis especially in the countryside, living in basic conditions.