Sitting in Riyadh, smelling like an expensive Saudi hoor...

It's 10h30pm, I've just come in from shopping and having a relatively cheap meal (compared to the hotel anyway). For less than the price of an Iftar meal (more on this shortly), SR155 - about ZAR310 - I've had fish and chips and a pepsi, coffee and a date-filled bagel (yum), bought two bags of Guatemalan coffee and paid for taxi to and from Al-Faisaliyya Mall. Actually, all that came to SR105, so I've scored the equivalent of ZAR100...nice...

Right, from the beginning...I left Shit Towne on Thursday evening, rain pissing down on the runway making it look more like a very long swimming pool than somewhere an aircraft would be launched from, on the 19h30 flight to Riyadh via Dubai. The flight left an hour late due to the rain but the pilot assured us he would make up some time in the air. I cared not, cos I had a 12hr stopover in Dubai again, but this time I had a complimentary hotel room lined up for the day. If you want service, fly Emirates.

We get to Dubai at around 05h30am local time, just after the sun came up over the horizon. It's humid already and the temperature is in the upper twenties. It's gonna be a scorcher. Through the passport control without much delay, I went through to the pick-up for the Millenium Hotel, as my luggage had been sent straight through to Riyadh (perhaps never to be seen again). A short five minute wait and the crowd of about ten of us get shepherded into a cool air-conditioned minibus, the like of which go careening around Shit Towne streets at 200km/hr, except this one is in good condition and has brakes. The driver, as are the rest of the drivers on the road, is very considerate toward other road users and it's evident that I'm not in Kansas any more.

No hassle at the hotel check-in..."Goo Monnin Meesta Duckless" whined the Filipino receptionist, "yoo enchoy yo fly? Whelcum Toobye". "Thank you", I reply, not wanting to go off about being tired and cranky as I'm sure she can see it in my face anyway. "Yoo loom numma too thlee wun wun, thir flo. We call yoo fo pee-em fo bus, che cow fo thirry pee-em". "Thank you", I reply, my eyes already searching for the lift to the third floor, which I spy to my right. No mess, no fuss...Emirates is just pure organisation. They even own the hotel due to the large numbers of transit passengers they have at all times. There's a constant trail of minibuses to and from the airport, as if they're on rails.

In my sparsely furnished room (what did I care, all I wanted was a shower and a bed) where I found a shower and a bed (and a couch and a TV), I had soon showered, sent Steph a quick SMS to say I had arrived and set my phone alarm to give me four hours sleep. Just after 11am, I was woken by the alarm, turned on the TV to see what was on the news (nothing interesting which is about par for the course wherever you go), got up and showered again, dressed and went down for lunch just before noon. I was going to have a bite to eat (freebie buffet lunch sponsored by Emirates, and quite a spread) and see if I could organise a tour of Dubai. As it happens, a four hour tour of the city started as I'd woken up, but the tour operator said she could organise me a two-hour tour for USD50 (about ZAR350). "What the fuck", I thought and signed up. The tour would leave at 1pm, giving me time to enjoy a leisurely meal, which as I mentioned, was really quite good.

I happened to be the only one on the tour so it really was a personalised trip, my driver Kush from Pakistan taking me to all the familiar sights one sees of Dubai on the TV. He was a bundle of insight, very knowledgable about his adopted city. I found out that he has a family somewhere in Pakistan (he told me, but I can't remember where) that he goes home to visit once a year. It's too expensive to bring his family over to Dubai to live, so he works and sends money home monthly for them to survive. The tour group, under Islamic law, is obliged to pay his flight home once a year, so at least that doesn't come out of his pocket.

One very interesting piece of information Kush had was that Dubai is populated by only 20% Arabs at any one time, and the other 80% is made up of ex-pat workers and tourists. Of a city of 1.4million people, that means that only 280,000 are true residents, everyone else is on some form of visa.

You'll have to wait for the photos (cos I left my USB cable at home), but we went to all the familiar tourist traps, but also to a fantastic Souk (market) where one could spend many hours shopping, as well as something you would not expect to find in the notoriously hot middle east, a mall called "Ski Dubai". I shit you not, a fuckin' snow ski slope in the middle of the city!! The building stands out like a sore thumb, unmistakeable when you get told what the building is. There's a shopping mall built around it, and the slope is the centrepiece. While the air temperature outside is around 35degC, the mall is cooled to about 20degC to prevent condensation misting up the windows. The temperature inside the ski arena is minus 6degC!! There are whole families in the arena, bundled up in parka jackets and beanies, sliding down ice slides on mats or skiing down snow slopes, every one of them with a smile on their face.

We spend only a couple of minutes in the mall for me to take some pictures and Kush to show off his knowledge of the mall, and then it's back into the minibus to tour some more. We drive down the road that will eventually lead onto the World Islands, where may famous people have "bought" a piece of sand they can call their own for 99 years, not being able to go too far as the rest is for construction vehicles. We drive down onto the beach road that leads us to the Burj al-Arab, the famous hotel that takes the shape of a yacht sail (the white piece on the curved side of the building is actually a piece of cloth, designed to keep most of the wind-blown sand out and let cooling air through). We drive past the edge of the new part of the city, its skyline criss-crossed with cranes. It's easy to see why the city is the fastest-frowing place on eart at the moment. They're even busy building the highest tower in the world, the Burj al-Dubai, a tower that (if memory serves me correctly) will be over 700m in height when completed, supposedly by 2010.

All too quickly, my two hours is up, and Kush leaves me in the hotel lobby almost exactly on 3pm. I make my way up to my room for a short rest before heading down for the bus back to the airport. A few minutes before 4pm, the room phone rings and the voice says "Arro, che cow remida call, thak yoo"...click. Leaving me no chance to say thanks back, the voice obviously has a few reminder calls to make and I hang up the phone, get my stuff together and make my way down to the lobby again. Hand the room key to the bell-hop, get shown to the airconditioned minibus and it takes us about ten minutes to get back to the airport. Again, no mess, no fuss...pure organisation.

Passport control and check-in is relatively painless, apart from having to pass through three sets of x-ray machines and searches. Fuck knows why though, one should be enough seeing as you do one before passport control and there's no way in between to be handed anything you're not supposed to have on you. Anyway...through to Retail La La Land (also known as Dubai Duty Free) and I pick up a couple (ok, three) CD's, a double album "The Essential Johnny Cash", "Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight" (that got stolen in my hijacked car) and "Marilyn Manson - Eat Me, Drink Me".

I notice that the gate for the Riyadh flight is already open and decide I better move through, just in case my seat gets given away by some over-zealous ticketer. No chance, this is Emirates. There's a screaming Arabian rugrat going off a few seats down from me, so I plug the MP3 headphones into my ears and crank up Blue Monday by New Order, a classic 1983 track and just the thing to drown out screaming Arabian rugrats. A half hour or so later and the entire Pakistani contingent getting on the plane stands up in unison and races off toward the boarding gate. I sit still to avoid being trampled into the marble floor. Fifteen minutes later and there's a bit of a gap so I make my way to the gate too, elbowing my way in in front of a couple of yakking Filipinos. Between them and the Pakis, they're a rude lot, so I have no guilty feelings about using my elbows to move forward in the queue. They do the same, except they just about hit me on the knees with their elbows due to their diminutive size.

The flight to Riyadh is also painless, with the Muslim passengers being given what I call a Ramadan Carry-out, a small box of eats and drinks for them to audibly consume when Iftar comes along. Iftar is the official time that the sun goes down behind Makkah (Mecca) and the official end of daylight, which means that during the month of Ramadan the Muslims can eat and drink again. There is absolutely no eating or drinking (even water) during daylight hours during Ramadan and even westerners are officially expected to obey this religious custom. Most westerners, however, take a lunch to work which they eat or drink behind closed doors, and to which Muslims turn a blind eye. Some Saudis don't like the infidels to be seen observing their customs but are hypocritically quite happy to point fingers when they see a westerner eating or drinking something.

Even going through passport control in Riyadh is painless, taking only seconds, unlike the first time I came here a few weeks ago. Same as last time, however, I wait for almost 20mins for my suitcase to appear on the merry-go-round. Through yet another x-ray machine (just to make sure I hadn't bought any booze in Retail La La Land) and I move through to where my driver is waiting for me, impatient bastard that he is. I acknowledge the board he is holding that has my name on and he takes off for the parking lot, barely saying hello, me dragging my suitcase along in his wake. Immediately I can feel that the temperature for this time of night has dropped at least ten degrees since I was last here, and it's almost pleasant at 35degC...not bad for 8pm.

A speedy drive along the highway, zipping in and out of traffic with the Chrysler's warning system beeping when the driver goes over 120km/hr, and he drops me at the hotel. After opening the boot and having me lift my own suitcase and rucksack out of the boot, he slams it shut and zooms off again. Maybe he hadn't had his Ramadan Carry-out yet...

The concierge in the hotel remembers me from my last visit, enquires as to my health, and uses the Intercontinental Loyalty card to check me in. No mess, no fuss...gotta love it.

I let Steph know that I'm in the hotel by SMS and unpack my case, then settle down for the night having had a pleasantly edible meal on the plane. It appears that Ramadan is a time for travel to this part of the world and the airline food improves with the festivities.

On Saturday morning, I'm up for work, showered and dressed and out the door to the taxi by just after 8am. I shouldn't have bothered though, as work doesn't officially start until 10am at the client. I didn't know this though and after a quick call to my host to ask what the fuck is going on, I walk up to the Marriott hotel and sit in the airconditioned lobby to read the newspaper for an hour or so. I can't even get a cup of coffee cos of the Ramadan fast that's in effect. Hell, I'm not even allowed to take a sip from the bottle of water I have in my rucksack.

Work goes off uneventfully, boring actually and I decide to leave the office early, around 3pm so that I can do some work and check my email from the comfort of my hotel room, and where I can have a cup of coffee and a banana (complimentary fruit basket in my room) to fend off the hunger pains.

At ten to six, pm, I move down to the banquet hall in the hotel complex. I was advised that the hotel holds its own Iftar banquet every evening of Ramadan and I decided to give it a bash. The banquet hall is decked out magnificently (no photos allowed) in strung fairy lights hanging from the centre of the room, the walls are painted in patterns resembling Turkish carpets and one side of the room is closed off by means of a translucent cloth hanging from ceiling to floor where the traditionalist Muslims have their meals. There are two large screens on the walls on opposing sides of the room, on which is shown footage of pilgrims at Makkah doing their rounds. There's even a sponsored raffle, each diner being given a free ticket, prizes in the form of SR250 shopping vouchers from the sponsors. I was told that this is normal for Ramadan, and some banquets (obviously where the elite hang out) have brand new cars given away as prizes in their raffles!

And what a spread! There's more food and drink in this room than there is at a White House election banquet. There's curries, chinese food, "samboosas" (yes, same as our samoosas), lamb stews, beef stews, calamari, fish, roast potatos, seasonal veggies, three types of rice, gravy, sauces, cold meats, salads, roti's for the curry, bread rolls, cold soups, houmous, green and black olives, at least ten different types of cake, orange-flavoured jelly, cream, ice cream, cheesecake, biscuits, cheeses,... you name it, it was on the serving tables (well, everything except good old pork products).

On the dining tables, there was a pot of tea, a pot of Arabian coffee (actually tastes nothing like coffee and is an acquired taste - not too bad) that tastes of cardamom, flagons of cranberry and date juice, and a rather weak, almost sour, tasteless, drinking yoghurt that I thought was either thick milk or cream when I first poured it. Needless to say, I tried the whole fuckin' lot of them. The date juice was surprisingly tasty and I had a couple of glasses of it. I also had some dessert that reminded me of a good old "koeksuster" except that it was shaped like a tiny rugby ball.

Comfortably full, I paid my bill (gladly, this time) and headed back to my room for the evening and some light work before retiring to watch some TV. I nodded off sometime around midnight and woke up only long enough to switch the box off.

On Sunday morning, I got up around 7h45am, knowing the work routine, showered, shaved and dressed, checked and sent some email, then took a taxi (good old Khalid, who remembered me from last visit) to the office just after 10am. Traffic was chaotic and what normally takes only 10mins, took almost a half hour. I was told that it's always like this at this time of year. Work, as usual, was boring and I finished off a presentation that I'm giving on Monday, had a meeting with the project sponsor and did a bit more work before heading back to the hotel just after 5pm, again in the chaotic traffic.

I'd decided earlier today to take a taxi into Al-Faisaliyya Mall to have a cheap meal and perhaps do some shopping for a gift to take back to Steph on Thursday which is when I leave here. A decent fish and chip supper from London Fish, a Pepsi (Saudi champagne) and I took a walk around the mall, which by now had opened after evening prayer time. Shopping goes on until the early hours due to all the prayer time one has to endure.

Going back to the beginning of this post, I'm stinking like an expensive Saudi hoor thanks to the over-eager salesman in the perfume shop. I had waked past the perfume shop earlier, seen the fancy bottles on display and decided to investigate further. I found what turns out to be a rather strong oil-based Ajmal perfume for Steph, which the salesman just had to dab on my forearm and get me to rub into my other forearm. Needless to say, once the perfume warmed up, it became quite powerful and I'm sure I got a few furtive glances from passing black robes (mind you, that was probably due to my dashing good looks rather than smelling like a tart). Even three hours later, after getting back to the hotel and scrubbing my arms with soap the perfume smell is as strong as ever and will probably be on me tomorrow morning too. Fuck knows what the guys in the office are going to say...

Right...it's almost 1am and I better get some sleep before the alarm goes off at 7h30am for work...

Stay well, y'all...I'll keep you posted on further happenings...