Al Ahsa Intercontinental

... Nights. I am sure we were right in the middle of the desert - the milestone said 700 Km to Jeddah - and the desert was awesome! It seemed to me like some sort of a dream. The lay of the land here was basically little hills amidst sand with scattered shrubs. I was totally lost in the scenery, just looking out of my right and taking it all in. We kept going on further and I saw a town that we seemed to be passing by. I couldnt believe that Saudi had small towns like this ...

Not much - just waiting at the airport for the flight! Bahrain was both nicer and more boring than I thought, the weather is a lot more forgiving but it's not worth more than about 3 days exploration tops.. Unless you like to get really nittygritty :P

Apparently the Bahrain-Saudi border is on a little island [not sure if it has an official name], which hosts a rest point on either side of the border, complete with matching observation towers. The whole road, which is 45km long, is called the King Fahad Causeway on the Bahraini side, with a different Saudi name.. Interesting stuff! :) Due to it being Ramadan and us not being ...

Bahrain!

Got here yesterday, the flight in was only an hour and you got a really good view of all of Qatar from the air! [stupid wing blocked photo ops though]. No problems so far, immigration was a breeze, found the hotel OK and after relaxing some more [yes, we're lazy!] my mum and I hunted down a taxi to see the few sights in the built up north of the island

Firstly we drove through the big banking district, and I was reminded of a less-trafficy, shorter ...

... would have a false twin in the world. My Citibank credit card, which I applied for a month ago has yet to arrive. When I stopped in the bank they told me next month. That's a relief. Perhaps by September I can actually have a normal life.

After the Citibank fiasco, I opted for a local bank, which isn't much better. They have yet to set up my online banking and I still don't have my bank card. I'm forced to go back ...

Well, a few of the girls at work and I got together and decided to take a weekend trip away... Was originally planned for Beirut, but as we couldn't get a timely enough flight for us all to be back at 12 for our Saturday shift, plans were changed to BAHRAIN!

Bahrain is a little island just off Saudi, with a booming economy, literally expanding coastline (a lot of it being reclaimed land) and is rapidly becoming the next Dubai... Very tourist-oriented, very ...

... an announcement.  One of the other passengers said, "They can't afford to have another crash."  The southerner's response was "Hell, I can't afford for them to have one either!"

Thus began our Yemenia hell.  The southern guy and I hung together so we could make sure we don't get lost in the shuffle and so we'd have someone to talk to during what we suspected was going to be a long night (since I don't think Yemenia has a bunch of planes laying around).  We tried going up to the ...

... before I got picked up, but I got to straighten things out for my transport to the Bahrain airport later that day.

The guy that picked me up was a quiet Indian guy that worked in maintenance. I threw my bags in the bed of his truck and jumped in. The guy’s English was decent, but he wasn’t a natural conversationalist, and I didn’t force it much.

The shortened day ...

... gold (that’s less valuable, right?---question for Nan I guess). I wasn’t really interested in the first place, so we walked out and back to the mall/car. No way were we getting any decent deals with me there (blue eyes, Western business clothes, and little Arabic).

Rode home and dropped off around 9PM. Watched TV, unpacked the laundry I had had done during the day, and worked on the last 2 days’ entries until about 4AM.

... work and headed over to Erwin to see what he thought. He agreed and I offered to by all three (better safe than sorry on traveling start-ups). I wanted to look around a bit, but the store started closing for prayer, so we quickly bought the rollers and moved on.

Since it was going to be 30 minutes of shops closed for prayer, we decided to head over to our next stop Carrefour. On the drive over, you could hear the speakers blaring prayer outside the car ...