A Trip to the Mall

I needed a thumb drive.  I had intended to bring one from home, but it somehow didn’t make it into my bags.  So, a couple of weeks after my arrival in the kingdom, I screwed up my courage, arranged for a taxi, and ventured out to the Mall of Dhahran!

I went early on a Saturday morning.  Not many people were there yet, so I had the opportunity to explore a bit.  What I found was a very interesting mix of the east and the west.

You can see from the photos that there is certainly a strong western influence upon the region.

They have an Ikea.

And an Apple shop.

And FroYo is coming!

They even have a “Women’s Secret.”  Victoria has been ousted, I suppose.  (Thankfully!)

It was very much like going to a mall in the US.  There are many westerners here.  Perhaps they designed it that way to appeal to them.  But I think it runs deeper than that.  But that’s the subject of another post…

There is a grocery store in the center.  Hyper Pando.  Or maybe Hyper Panda.  I can’t quite tell from the logo.  It has all the familiar trappings of a grocery store back home.  Except for the international flavor – where everything is bi-lingual, and some of the translations are funny.

“Potato chips anyone?  We have Tomato Ketchup flavor!  No?  Well, how about Salt?  No?  French Cheese it is then.”

Their rice selection is HUGE. 

They also have a department store, like Target, attached to the mall.  It’s called Saco World.  It’s pretty much the same, except for the stairless escalator…

… and the fact that they seem to have a wider variety of everything.  Some sections are much bigger than their counterparts in the states.  For instance, everything you see in this picture is part of the sporting goods section.

The Muslims pray five times every day.  The times when the prayers are said varies from day to day.  They have a prayer schedule that looks like a bus schedule.  When prayer time comes, the shop keepers will disappear, and there won’t be any service from them for the duration of the prayer.  The mall even has a mosque in the middle to which they can retreat.  The calls to prayer are played over outdoor speakers all over the place, and are even broadcast on television – even in the midst of Saco World.

This poor kid opted to stay outside while his mother was shopping in the Women’s Secret (which seems to be MUCH more modest than what we get in the states).  

The thing I find funny is that the sign on the window says “Family only.”  If I’m not mistaken, this designation means that a man cannot enter this store without a without at least one woman next to him.   (Sometimes you will see a man with multiple women in tow…)  It’s hilarious that this store gets the exact same designation as this one:

The abaya store.  In the Saudi culture, women cannot go into a public place without covering themselves with a black abaya.  There are varying degrees of covering that are practiced.  There are women with their faces exposed, as well as women with only their eyes exposed – or there are the cocky foreigners who have the abaya draped over their shoulders, but completely open in front, displaying whatever they are wearing.  But, in any case, Saudi women can wear whatever they like under the abaya.  Theoretically, they could all be wearing only stuff from Women’s Secret underneath, and NOBODY would know.

Anyway, I was successful in obtaining my thumb drive.  On my way back out to find my taxi, I found Captain Kirk – Arabian style!

… and several other people just arriving for another trip to the mall. 

What an amazing, diverse, and wonderful world we live in!

Peace.

The Palms of Saud

You may have heard Ottorino Respighi’s magnificent The Pines of Rome.  Somehow the title of this post doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.  But it’s the best we can do out here in the desert…

One of the multiple mosques on camp.

Before coming out here I had very few opportunities to see a palm tree, let alone be near one.  They simply don’t exist in my usual habitat.  But, since my arrival in the kingdom, I have had that opportunity in abundance!

School grounds

I have learned that palms are actually not trees at all.  They are plants – really big ones.  Because they are merely a plant, if you were to cut one down, you would find that they do not have annual tree rings.  Cool huh?

Sometimes they are short – nothing but the big bushy top sticking up out of the ground.  Other times they are very tall.  Just outside my window at the hotel was one that must have 100 feet tall (or more)!  And it grew straight up, with no branches or leaves till the top 15 feet or so!  (Unfortunately, I forgot to get a picture of it before I left the hotel.)

That's my building in the background.

Apparently there are around 2,600 varieties of palms all around the globe.  Most of them are somewhere around the equator.  I never realized that coconuts come from palms.  So do dates – they grow in great big bunches right under the canopy.

They put bags around the dates to collect them.  (This isn't my picture.)

Here in the camp they are frequently used in the landscaping.  We tend to have two main varieties.  (I don’t know what they are called.)  One of them is the date kind.  

The palm is a significant part of Saudi culture.  It is prominent on their coat of arms.  Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

"The swords represent the two kingdoms of Nejd and Hijaz, which were united under Ibn Saud in 1926.  The palm tree represents the Kingdom's assets, which are defined as its people, heritage, history, and resources - natural and non-natural.  Thus, the palm is shown to be guarded by the two swords, which represent the force to be used in defense of the nation."

But the thing that I find most remarkable is the bark.  On the one hand, within camp we have a fairly smooth bark, which looks like this:

But we also have a whole lot of this:

I walk past this to get to my building.

Apparently the locals can scurry up these really quickly.  Pretty cool.

And that’s all I have to say about that.  Tune in next time and I’ll take you to visit the Dhahran Mall…

Thanks for reading!