Sorry for the late post but I am still reveling from our day trip to Bahrain last week. R finally had a day off (the first full day off since I arrived in the Kingdom) and we decided we needed to take full advantage of it. In the Kingdom, we relinquish control of our passports to R's company. They say it's a safety measure to keep track of our travel and movement but I also think it's a way to have everything in one place in the event of an emergency. We had to request our passports and provide our travel plans a few days in advance but to be honest, I didn't really believe it was going to happen.
R has been on a brutal 7-day work week since we've arrived and every promised day off turned into a work day. It doesn't really bother me since I used to work a lot too and last-minute firedrills used to be my life. R put up with enough of my crap over the years so I am just grateful that we get to have dinner together everyday.
Back to the story...since I didn't believe we were actually going anywhere, I didn't do any planning so as to not get my hopes up. I am a little crazy (okay, a lot crazy) about planning. TripAdvisor, Yelp, Lonely Planet, and of course, Google are my BEST friends (no offense to my actual best friends, I like people too). I did no such planning for this day trip, much to my dismay but to R's excitement. R figured Bahrain is just an island that isn't even that big and there is only one bridge that leads to Saudi so it couldn't be that complicated. We went with another couple and their child so we had, at the very least, strength in numbers even if we had no clue where we were going.
The process to cross the King Fahd causeway (really big bridge that connects Saudi and Bahrain) is a multi-step process. We figured we needed sustenance, so we stopped at an amazing little pastry shop that made fresh cheese-zatar pastries that were AMAZING. I wish I had taken a picture but we all inhaled them so quickly there was no time before they were gone. We got to the causeway, fully clad in my abaya, and went through several checkpoints. Our friends speak Arabic so I'm not really sure what each checkpoint was about since they handled that part. But we paid a toll, got our passports stamped, and had our car searched, and maybe another stop or two in between. When we finally saw the Bahraini flag it was like a weight had been lifted.
Not 10 seconds into Bahrain, my abaya was stuffed on the floor of the car.
It felt liberating to be sitting in a car wearing jeans and a tshirt. Someone described it to me as being released from jail. I couldn't have described it better.
We saw women driving. We went to the mall. We had lunch. We bought DVDs and magazines. We saw a movie.
Okay yes, all these sound like normal things and they are normal but life in Saudi is abnormal. I take that back, it's not abnormal, it's just different (I'm a glass-half-full kind of gal). Life in Saudi makes you appreciate the little things about the rest of the world.
The only sounds we hear at the mall in Saudi are the call to prayers. There's no Virgin megastore to test out video games, buy CDs and movies. Most entertainment products are not even allowed to be sold here (or they are heavily censored by the muttawa). The men are all dressed in thobes and most women are fully-veiled with voices that are never heard. Us expats (especially women) stand out like sore thumbs because we are walking around trying not to fall down in our abayas. (Side note, I met a lady who tripped over her abaya and broke her finger!)
Walking about the mall in Bahrain there was music, people were laughing, and people were free to express themselves. There was still an element of conservatism because you can still hear the call to prayer and there are women who are veiled or covered. But all the shops remain open and there is not enforced dress code like the sign I found from my previous post. Even the covered women were wearing abayas with a little more flair and character than we see in Saudi.
And usually I am not a fan of going to the movies since I think my home theater is better but when something is deprived from you, you crave it more. This is when it really did feel like like I had been locked up for the past two months. I didn't know which movies were playing, I didn't know the latest hit songs. We looked like a group of lost puppies trying to pick a movie. We finally did and enjoyed the entertainment thoroughly.
I'm not even sure where the day went as I was slipping my abaya back on and heading back to Saudi. Back to our regular life on the compound. This one day of freedom was all we needed.
This must be what it's like to be a drug addict - we got our fix of freedom and now we're high on it. It makes the rules and regulations tolerable... well, at least until next time when we get our next hit. In the meantime, we are back in Saudi and its nuances.
One thing I still haven't gotten used to in Saudi is seeing men hold hands. I'm as socially liberal as they come, but living in a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, I was shocked the first few times. I quickly learned that men holding hands is a sign of friendship and nothing more. You be the judge.
Cheers!
M
R has been on a brutal 7-day work week since we've arrived and every promised day off turned into a work day. It doesn't really bother me since I used to work a lot too and last-minute firedrills used to be my life. R put up with enough of my crap over the years so I am just grateful that we get to have dinner together everyday.
Back to the story...since I didn't believe we were actually going anywhere, I didn't do any planning so as to not get my hopes up. I am a little crazy (okay, a lot crazy) about planning. TripAdvisor, Yelp, Lonely Planet, and of course, Google are my BEST friends (no offense to my actual best friends, I like people too). I did no such planning for this day trip, much to my dismay but to R's excitement. R figured Bahrain is just an island that isn't even that big and there is only one bridge that leads to Saudi so it couldn't be that complicated. We went with another couple and their child so we had, at the very least, strength in numbers even if we had no clue where we were going.
The process to cross the King Fahd causeway (really big bridge that connects Saudi and Bahrain) is a multi-step process. We figured we needed sustenance, so we stopped at an amazing little pastry shop that made fresh cheese-zatar pastries that were AMAZING. I wish I had taken a picture but we all inhaled them so quickly there was no time before they were gone. We got to the causeway, fully clad in my abaya, and went through several checkpoints. Our friends speak Arabic so I'm not really sure what each checkpoint was about since they handled that part. But we paid a toll, got our passports stamped, and had our car searched, and maybe another stop or two in between. When we finally saw the Bahraini flag it was like a weight had been lifted.
Not 10 seconds into Bahrain, my abaya was stuffed on the floor of the car.
It felt liberating to be sitting in a car wearing jeans and a tshirt. Someone described it to me as being released from jail. I couldn't have described it better.
We saw women driving. We went to the mall. We had lunch. We bought DVDs and magazines. We saw a movie.
Okay yes, all these sound like normal things and they are normal but life in Saudi is abnormal. I take that back, it's not abnormal, it's just different (I'm a glass-half-full kind of gal). Life in Saudi makes you appreciate the little things about the rest of the world.
The only sounds we hear at the mall in Saudi are the call to prayers. There's no Virgin megastore to test out video games, buy CDs and movies. Most entertainment products are not even allowed to be sold here (or they are heavily censored by the muttawa). The men are all dressed in thobes and most women are fully-veiled with voices that are never heard. Us expats (especially women) stand out like sore thumbs because we are walking around trying not to fall down in our abayas. (Side note, I met a lady who tripped over her abaya and broke her finger!)
Walking about the mall in Bahrain there was music, people were laughing, and people were free to express themselves. There was still an element of conservatism because you can still hear the call to prayer and there are women who are veiled or covered. But all the shops remain open and there is not enforced dress code like the sign I found from my previous post. Even the covered women were wearing abayas with a little more flair and character than we see in Saudi.
And usually I am not a fan of going to the movies since I think my home theater is better but when something is deprived from you, you crave it more. This is when it really did feel like like I had been locked up for the past two months. I didn't know which movies were playing, I didn't know the latest hit songs. We looked like a group of lost puppies trying to pick a movie. We finally did and enjoyed the entertainment thoroughly.
I'm not even sure where the day went as I was slipping my abaya back on and heading back to Saudi. Back to our regular life on the compound. This one day of freedom was all we needed.
This must be what it's like to be a drug addict - we got our fix of freedom and now we're high on it. It makes the rules and regulations tolerable... well, at least until next time when we get our next hit. In the meantime, we are back in Saudi and its nuances.
One thing I still haven't gotten used to in Saudi is seeing men hold hands. I'm as socially liberal as they come, but living in a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, I was shocked the first few times. I quickly learned that men holding hands is a sign of friendship and nothing more. You be the judge.
Cheers!
M
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ReplyDeleteLove reading your posts M! That pic reminds me of Randy and Chiles strolling through the overstreet mall. xo!
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