I traveled to Dubai, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia during February over a roughly 10 day period. Half the time was in Saudi Arabia. I think that I am a chaos muppet; every country I visited on this trip was bombed by Iran roughly 2 weeks later, even Oman which is the last place you’d expect. At the time of departure, Trump was talking tough but I figured I still had time to make the trip because the US was still putting its military assets into position.
Today if all you have is a wallet, passport and phone, it’s all you need to travel the world!
It also means that if you lose your phone or it doesn’t work, you’re in big trouble.
I’ve taken a lot of trips over the past 30 years and this was definitely at the top of the pyramid. I had so much fun that when Karen would call, I would just say I’m too busy taking it all in right now and I will just tell you all about it when I get home. So hopefully you will get something interesting from these notes.
These days when you travel, there are no print newspapers around.
A few travel tips I’ve developed in a changing world when you are in a different hotel each night – unpack only what you need for that stay and put things back in the suitcase as you use them so that you can get out quickly. Put all the toiletries together in a big plastic bag with smaller bags that will isolate water damage if liquid spills out.
I’ve spent years trying to figure out how to enjoy my vacation while keeping the phone available for use. I don’t want to ignore everyone for a week or two and then come home to hundreds of emails. What I do is have a folder called “Current Reading Holdpile” which is where I move things to from the inbox that I want to deal with upon return. The other items I otherwise read and deal with immediately or when I have time such as in-flight or just delete. Even if I deal with something immediately, I might put the message in that folder so that I remember to make notes about it or follow-up further when I return. You don’t have to read every message or return every call immediately but I think it creates less stress when you know it’s there and that you have it filed away so that you can deal with it at a better time and not worry about forgetting it completely.
DUBAI STOPOVER
The United Polaris lounge at Newark is now open till 10:30pm. The new Airtrain for Newark serving Terminal A is still a few years away. The new TSA e-gates are cool; you don’t have to show ID to a person and just walk through to the x-ray machine area. United flies to Dubai and their service is fine. You can use points for tickets (it pays to book ahead) and Emirates has made it very hard to use points. It is about 12 hours flying time to Dubai. I stopped over here on the way to Qatar; that airline is very expensive and it paid to stop over. At the airport, if you pay $30 in advance online to TUI Marhaba services, you can have someone walk you past passport control. Uber works in Dubai and they use fancy cars to drive you around. Ask for a Comfort car and you’ll get a Lexus.
I stayed in the new Lana Hotel, part of the Dorchester collection. It has great views of a marina about a mile away from downtown and a 20 minute ride to the airport. At night the Burj Khalifa is all lit up and you can get nice photos from the rooftop infinity pool. I didn’t leave the property; I just had meetings here and then went straight to the airport the next afternoon. I met with a friend of 35 years and we have both gone through the married with kids and professional cycle of life and it’s nice to see where we wound up. He is a Russian who came here due to the war. Russians don’t have access to certain investments, even in Dubai banks. He doesn’t like that the Emirates has no rule of law and that one guy decides all. It’s not a good investment; it’s just a nice place to live. An Indian guy I met says the US doesn’t realize how far along India has come. It’s a nice property but away from the action. It is near a metro station as well.
DOHA QATAR
FlyDubai is the budget carrier for Emirates and they had flights into Doha, Qatar. They use Terminal 2 which is a smaller terminal. For business class, they have a separate seated check-in and beautiful lounge with a great buffet with connection to the flight by a bus that picks you up at the lounge; and it’s a 45 minute flight. No Wifi on their planes. You can arrive here without a visa. The airport is quieter and smaller than Dubai’s and you can pay about $20 for a visa upon arrival. You can get VIP welcome service here online. You may not need it but I wanted to avoid any trouble entering countries. Uber works in Doha. It’s about 30 minutes to the Four Seasons Doha, which is different from the hotel in the Pearl section of town (and which I walked into by mistake after someone sent me in an Uber he arranged to the wrong hotel). This is a great hotel with lots of facilities open till 11pm, beachfront access and lots of good food options. Prices in Qatar for hotels are cheaper than Dubai. I notice that gyms in this GCC area lack sit-up benches. One good thing about Four Seasons hotels is that the shaver outlets work to recharge your phone. In most other hotels, they don’t work and the current keeps going on and off making it impossible to charge the phone through those outlets. My breakfast waiter should be in the waiter Olympics – my avocado came to the table in about 30 seconds. You would think that petrol would be cheap all around the GCC; even in Saudi Arabia it is about $3 a gallon.
Dinner with a government official who is close to the prime minister and who deals with mediations among countries. Qatar does a lot of work behind the scenes with various countries and factions you never heard of. I had some questions and he had answers. He said Qatar wants to be indispensable to all sides in the world. They have to “manage” Trump, Israel, Iran (two “naughty countries”), the loonies on all sides of the Islamic debate (and not just back the Moslem Brotherhood). He feels the best bet in Yemen is to include the Houthis in the political process. Neither of us are optimistic that things will get better in the world, only that actors will change. At least here with monarchies there is stability among countries elsewhere in the world that are constantly changing policies with their elections. My host was very well informed and knew the players intimately. My host took me to a cool fish restaurant where you pick out your fish and then they cook it and serve it to you. We walked around the cultural district called Qatara. Doha has a lot to enjoy and you can pretty much cover it in a day. Most of what you want to see is in Doha but there is about 50 miles you can cover outside and there are other activities outside the city. 3 sides border water; one side borders Saudi Arabia. Generally nothing happens here and it is safe, except for the occasional bombing by Israel of a building just 2 miles from the city center. That pretty much shocked people here to the core. I wonder how they feel now that Iran just bombed them; play both sides and you get burned no matter what by both sides. That’s what I warned my host and I’ll take a point for this one.
ToursbyLocals has guides here and I had a 4 hour tour of Doha. We went back to that cultural center and saw the cooled sidewalks for summer use. There is a Galleries Lafayette store from Paris. Nice architecture everywhere. The Pearl community, some of it made to look Italian, is sorta like what you’d see at the Portofino resort in Orlando. There is a souk downtown with modern underground parking. I saw the national museum of Qatar. Then to a fish market at the port which was beautiful. The port is now an evening area. Visited the Islamic art museum in a building designed by I.M. Pei, the famous architect. They use golf carts here a lot in the Middle East to get you from a parking lot to the main entrance; no tipping is expected. After my tour, I went to the airport for a 4:30 flight to Muscat, Oman, which is a 55 minute flight. Again no Wifi on this Oman Airways flight. The airports here in the region all compete with their lounge buffets. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are 8 hours ahead of NYC; Oman and the Emirates are 9 hours ahead.
MUSCAT, OMAN
Oman’s airport is very efficient and my arrival was smooth. I had two nights in the capitol city and stayed at two different hotels to get different vibes of the area. Oman is pretty clean and orderly; it feels a bit like Amman, Jordan but it is wealthier. There is good signage and the internet is not blocked (certain sites were blocked in UAE and Saudi Arabia in Riyadh). People in the region all like Omanis; they say they are “chill” and nobody hates the country. It is well set up for tourism; they don’t get a lot of Americans due to lack of direct flights. Lots of Europeans. One of my Omani guides visited Iran and people were super nice to him and gave him lots of free stuff. Oman is next door to Iran separated by some water. I didn’t know that Oman threw out their Palestinians in the 1970’s for trying to overthrow their ruler. I have a better idea now why the various Arab states view Palestinians as a threat. The country became independent of the British about 50 years ago; they are proud of the systems the British left them. Challenge here is to find suitable employment for the young people and not just jobs. Lots of Omanis here actually work in service jobs, but Omanization like they have tried in places like Saudi Arabia doesn’t work very well here. The new sultan is pretty well liked; they like that he brought down the budget deficit and that he is not corrupt. He shut down his son for trying to spend too much money. He has some big yachts in the port and a nice palace but is generally private and not seen much.
I saw his palace from the outside which is colorful and unusually designed; on the city tour I also visited the souk, opera house and the grand mosque. Each mosque I see in this region is different from the others unlike the cathedrals of Europe that all look the same to me. Here you need to get to the mosque before 11 because afterward it is closed to non-Moslems. It takes about 3-4 hours to do the city tour. You definitely want to visit here at this time of the year (February) because it gets too hot in the summer even to keep the pools open. At this time of the year the pools are heated and the surf in the sea is a bit cool. Daytime is about 80-85 degrees and it’s in the low 70’s at night.
I don’t want this to come off the wrong way, but when you talk to people here expecting a bunch of dumb Arabs who don’t do anything because the expatriates do all the work, it’s not the case. People that I kept coming across in all these countries are educated and show initiative. The Saudi government pays to send people abroad for university degrees and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more educated women than men as a percentage of the whole; women have real positions including the ambassador to the US (and she’s excellent and I have no doubt that MBS wouldn’t tolerate it if she were not). The reality doesn’t fit the stereotype. In the UAE you don’t see any Emiratis so you can’t tell. Here you see Omanis everywhere and they are working. They have nice turbans and hats. They use a lot of incense inside buildings to set a tone.
The Chedi hotel in Muscat is a lovely hotel that has a chic vibe. It is located about half an hour from the airport close to the city center. I arrived at night and had trouble finding my way around but in the daytime it has lots of fountains and gardens and 3 big pools, One of them is the longest lap pool in the region and takes about 45-50 strokes to get across. The others about 20. Oman has plastic water bottles around. Like the other countries, there are portraits of the country’s rulers in public places such as hotel registration desks and at museum entrances. Alcohol is not restricted at least in tourist areas and local people can buy it.
My second night I stayed at the Ritz Carlton al-Bustan which was a former palace and where the royal family still has some rooms on a private floor. This is along the coast near to the actual palace. It is a very nice hotel with expansive outdoor garden areas and pretty views of the mountain and sea topography and I enjoyed it. The location is 20 minutes drive away from the city center. This hotel is more traditional and grand as a palace should be, but not old in any way.
My second night I was the guest of honor at a 4 hour dinner party at someone’s mansion overlooking the Sultan’s house who was a prominent businessman. Other guests included a general, a liaison to the royal court, a former ambassador to the UK, a former head of the chamber of commerce, a former legislator in their version of the Senate. It was an interesting evening of conversation. Many topics were discussed. Several of these people were Western educated and all friends from childhood. One had attended a boarding school in Switzerland.
Some broadly-supported ideas I heard during my visit to Oman: People tended to believe that Iran would not actually use the bomb; they were happy that Trump is not a hypocrite and is willing to say what he thinks and not lecture about human rights; Kamala Harris would have been a disaster. Biden did nothing to deliver Israel during the last 2 years of war. Pahlevi in Iran (son of the shah) is not a serious contender to take over the country. Omanis have a hard time believing the Israelis could be so stupid to allow the October 7 attack to happen and that they must have known about it in advance and allowed it to happen. I think that last thought is popular throughout the region.
JABAL AKHDAR, OMAN
Drove about 2 hours to Nizwa, the ancient capitol. Main attraction is a fort and a souk. It’s good for an hour on the way to the Green Mountains (Jabal Akhdar) where there are two resorts, Anantara and Alila. I had to choose between the two of them for the one night I had. I am happy with the Alila choice. Although Anantara had the better gym and they both were in beautiful settings, the Alila was about 20 minutes further away but a step above in terms of the property and the food there was magnificent. Also had a nice spa. Had the freshest yogurt there at breakfast. It had a well-heated infinity pool with views over a canyon. At the fort it was 90 degrees; at the hotel it was 60. The area looks like the Golan Heights. This was a great place to visit and people enjoy hiking in the area. The drive from here to the airport is 2.5 hours.
Oman is a good place to recruit Formula One racing talent; people drive fast here. Omanis are generally fit and like to work out. Omanis have lots of young unmarried guys in their 30’s due to a lack of money. Omanis can have more than one wife.
The Muscat airport of course has beautiful lounge facilities and is geared toward tourists. I flew to Riyadh on a 2 hour flight. I booked VIP arrival service in Riyadh but probably didn’t need it. The Saudis run a good show at the airport. Good idea to prebook your tourist visa online; you have to buy health insurance as part of the visa. You can get it at the airport but it’s easier if you do this before arrival. Not everything always works here; I wound up getting the same arrival service at twice the price through a reseller when it was impossible to book directly because the Hayakum welcome service website didn’t work and you couldn’t communicate with them by phone or email since nobody there spoke English.
I liked Oman and I’d go back there. It’s a great tourist destination and if anyone were throwing bombs around the region, the quietest place on the planet you could be is in Oman. It’s nice to be a country that nobody hates so it was surprising to me when Iran bombed their port as well since they have been mediating between Iran and the West.
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA
Saudi Arabia is next. I spent 4 full days here and visited Riyadh, Jeddah and a tourist site called Al Ula in the desert somewhere. It’s their version of Wadi Rum or Petra in Jordan. Saudi Arabia was a huge surprise, although I’ve been told that if you haven’t been here the past 5 years, you haven’t been here at all. I remember my last visit in 1999 feeling that this country was a cursed place and that it would never change. You can find my previous globalthoughts.com posting about that visit by typing in Saudi Arabia 1999 in the search bar. As you will see, the new Saudi Arabia is open for business and tourism, it’s freakin’ amazing and you have to look at some important things differently now after seeing it.
One important thing I noticed in all the countries I visited is that the rulers are genuinely popular. They are young and showing the people that they are investing in the country. They want to make things happen. People see the results and they are happy even if there has been some economic dislocation. There are also lots of winners. Osama bin Laden would not get people to rise up against today’s rulers like he might have 15-25 years ago. I don’t think that I drank cool-aid from my guides on this one. Obviously people are afraid to say something negative but I think I know from experience when people are reticent to say something. It’s just that there are many positive things to say and they are saying them.
Riyadh airport to downtown is about 35 minutes if you don’t get into traffic due to an accident. You usually do so build some more time into your ride. Uber works here and in Jeddah. Saudi Arabia has lots they want to show off on the road from the airport into town. The Four Seasons hotel is in a big skyscraper building that has a large shopping center in it (Kingdom Centre) and it has the largest hotel gym I’ve ever seen. Hotel is a block from a metro station (the metro just opened this year). This hotel is a very good one. The spa facilities are open till midnight. This is a country that is dead in the morning and alive at night. Saudi Arabia is still a very religious country; there is a ladies gym and in the men’s locker room, there is a prayer room attached. Everywhere in this country there is a place to pop in and pray at the appointed time, which is 5x a day. When I stepped off the plane, I heard the call to prayer and I noticed at some point that nobody was walking behind me as I ran toward passport control. When I got there, I was greeted by a female ninja. In Riyadh, most of the ladies dress like that. I asked how they can stand it, and the responses were often “At least I don’t have to worry about how I look when I go out.” Throwing on an all-black cloak is easy. The men most likely wear white or grey thobes which takes away the incentive to dress up during the day. They look really comfortable. Some of the women have very pretty gowns. At the local Sephora, there were lots of women shopping late at night and I guess they use this stuff at home or with other ladies around. There is a new line for Sephora designed in Saudi Arabia. There are wine lists in the hotel bar at $100 a bottle, but the wine is non-alcoholic. If you are an ultra-Orthodox or Hassidic Jew, you’d feel totally comfortable here because people are modestly dressed pretty much in uniform and act properly. It is a very well-behaved country. When you go out of Riyadh, you are more likely to see women dressed like my daughter would at college.
The mall has a skybridge attraction and offers a great view of the city. Lots of things are being constructed, even a city park. They need 30,000 hotel rooms by 2030 when a big expo is planned. I think I would want to go see that myself. The new metro is awesome; it is top of the line for cities around the world with driverless cars in tunnels that are lit up inside and with doors that close in front of other doors like the Elizabeth line in London. The metro has 3 classes: First class, family class for women and children, and a third class for single men which is pretty crowded but cheap. You can use a credit card at the turnstiles to pay and don’t even think about jumping the gates here. I went on several rides to see the stations, some of which are monumental works of art by great architects. The financial district is all lit up at night with huge skyscrapers and places to walk around; the local Pret closes at midnight and has 3x as many items as the ones in NYC. There are taxis and Uber. I never used cash once during my 5 days in the country. Weather here at this time in February is generally about 80 degrees during the day and 65 at night.
In the “Can you believe this” category – For dinner I went to the Rabbi’s house, who just moved in 2 weeks before in the diplomatic quarter of Riyadh. Foreigners living in Riyadh mostly live in the diplomatic section, which is a separate city within a city. (Otherwise, they live in hotels.) It’s very large with its own embassies, shopping centers, hotels and places to go. Lots of people who live in Saudi Arabia hardly ever leave there. People live in something like townhouses behind walls that are very secure. I only saw the area at night and didn’t get a full sense of what it was like but it is not a walkable area because it is very spread out and most of the year it’s hot as hell here and nobody wants to be outside. (On this trip I saw people wearing sweaters in 85 degrees because it’s cool to them.) The place has checkpoints at the entrances and police cars every 100 yards or so. Within those boundaries, there is some alcohol and people dressed up like Westerners and the normal strict rules of Saudi Arabia don ‘t get enforced. Embassies can have alcohol and they just opened up a special store for use by people who can register to buy from it (you have to be a foreigner and have income at a certain level). I don’t think there is anything around here to be afraid of, but people like the feeling that they are in a safe place. The rabbi wanted to be in the most chill of diplomatic compounds otherwise Friday night guests would have to be calling in from checkpoints and he’d have to be answering the phones on the sabbath. We had 5 men at the shabbat dinner table; the rabbi’s alibi for being in Saudi Arabia is that he is a kosher food inspector and there are various functions going on in the country that require kosher food to be served. That week there were 200 people from an organization known as the Israel Economic Forum (they operated under a different name that week) having a conference in Riyadh. The participants complained that they just had meetings and didn’t get to do any sightseeing. Kosher meat comes from the UAE and just about any kosher grocery you would want can be bought from the supermarkets in the diplomatic quarter which come stocked from America. At dinner was a city planner doing consulting work, a defense attache in the British embassy, a private equity fund manager doing a real estate fund in Saudi, myself, the rabbi and his French wife who was a rather good cook. We had salads, fish, matza ball soup, chicken and desert. The rabbi is a young guy from Brooklyn and he obviously thinks there is a future here with people coming through the city and needing a place to find Jewish religious services and food in the area. The last time I visited Saudi in 1999 I had to write down on the visa application form that I was Christian; a Jew would have been denied entry.
I had one full day in Riyadh and it was a challenge to cover it all. I did a 6 hour tour first visiting Deriya which was a very impressive attraction for locals and tourists featuring ancient ruins, museums and commercial areas such as restaurants. It has been widely advertised in Western publications but unless you go there you’d have no idea what it is. Then to the infamous Ritz Carlton hotel which was where MBS locked up all the princes a number of years ago and shook them down for money and let them know who was in charge. That was a former palace that cost too much to run and became a hotel. It has a beautiful lobby. Then to the national museum which was odd because all the history ends in 1932 when the country was unified. There’s nothing about what happened the last 100 years except for some possessions of a previous king. Then to a fort that was closed for maintenance, a walk around the city center and Justice square “chop chop square” where they used to behead people. Amazingly, I was in this exact same spot 25 years ago and I couldn’t recognize the place at all. There was the mosque next to the square but that was it. They were building a stage for some kind of festival in the square. Then to lunch at this cool place where you sit on rugs and cushions and eat local foods. I ate pancakes and vegetable samosas and some salad because I can’t have the meats and things that the locals eat. At least here I don’t feel out of place not drinking any alcohol. Then we drove around to see big avenues with all sorts of unusual buildings with great architecture (these places are really cool when they are lit up at night) and finally to the grand mosque which was strangely simple. The pleasant guide was from Mecca and wanted to sell me on Islam. I watched the video politely and asked pleasant questions.
Went to the skybridge attraction above the hotel at sunset and then to the metro to see a cool looking metro station near the city center. At many attractions they want you to buy your tickets using a QR code. Same thing with restaurant menus. That can be frustrating; if so, they will just sell you the ticket directly. I was lucky and got into the skybridge quickly (it’s not cheap) and you can get a photo taken of you for $10 at the top. Triangles in metro stations and in the city are everywhere; it is a local Islamic symbol. Then dinner at the hotel (there is a Boulud brasserie in the hotel) and a swim. Then another metro ride to the financial district (KAFD) with another monumental metro station designed by one of the world’s leading architects and a walk through courtyards that feel like narrow valleys beneath beautiful skyscrapers all lit up. If you can’t follow Google maps (because there are no signs with street names on them over here) then just follow the crowds. There are lovely places to walk around at night and eateries are open late at night, such as Pret open till midnight. If you want to pop off the street for a late night prayer, there is a mosque right off the sidewalk. Then another Uber to Boulevard City which is MBS’s answer to anyone who said Riyadh was boring and needed more nightlife. This district is about a mile long and is filled with attractions and places to go at night. Next to it is Boulevard World which is a paid admission attraction like Epcot World Showcase but you get to go to pavilions representing countries around the world and you get food and entertainment. I was happy enough at Boulevard City to enjoy the music, food courts and attractions such as Flyover Saudi Arabia, a “Soaring” Epcot-like ride which takes you on an aerial tour around the country. It was great and at 11pm I headed back to my hotel pretty bushed. I had a blister at this point. In the morning, the Sudanese hotel doctor very slowly wrapped it in gauze telling me I’d have to go to a hospital to get it cut off if that’s what I wanted. Then to the airport for a domestic flight. Security is fine. They have e-gates where you put your boarding passes in and then go through. Virtually every man tried to go past the e-gates without putting in his boarding pass. Israelis would fit right in here.
Let me pause here for a few thoughts. Saudi Arabia is a real test where technology meets religion. You are never more than few minutes walk from a prayer room. People like dressing native wearing the veil and covering their faces and the king is popular. People are not interested in human rights. The women can drive and everything pretty much works and there are tons of new things going up everywhere and it looks like top quality. They don’t feel the need to go to Dubai anymore and the scale of growth here in a city of 7 million and only 40% expatriate (as opposed to 90% expatriate in Dubai in a smaller city) means that the Gulf states cannot keep pace with this powerhouse of a country in comparison if they put the pedal to the medal. Dubai looks fake but this is very real. The 2030 expo is already under construction and they want 30,000 hotel rooms to get ready for it. I absolutely would want to attend. Everything in the city is fully bilingual (unlike what this place was like 25 years ago) and you hear English being used by Saudis when you are in an upscale place. The Internet is not fully free or fast with cellular but it does work with GPS and lots of public services can be handled over the internet such as parking tickets which I am told is very efficiently handled using an app. I offered people to trade MBS for Trump but nobody would take it – you can have your idiot president and we’ll keep our future king, thank you. When I heard someone tell me a year ago that MBS didn’t want to get involved with Gaza at this time because if Saudi gets involved, they want to do it big – I get the idea now.
The Saudis ought to encourage US lawmakers to visit the country and see what they are doing in order to encourage them to get off their asses here at home and get serious about facing the future. In my opinion, the Saudis are creaming our asses in terms of investment and development. Here you see Western-style bathrooms, English signs, every brand name you know, state of the art infrastructure such as roads, tunnels and transport (I mentioned the brand new state of the art metro system), and lots of fun places to go all over the country with lots of natural beauty, as I will describe in the next section of this travelogue. People will make money here, although I wonder if there are too many businesses set up here for the amount of people that can patronize them. I have the sense that some of these companies are not profitable and are here only because the prince wants them here or they are investing in their future. The Saudis are not great at paying bills; you have to wait at least 60-90 days to get paid if you consult here. My only disappointment in Riyadh was that I didn’t have a chance to be hosted by Saudis for a dinner but I was too busy anyway enjoying everything around me. If you have a question, I found people very approachable. Many people speak English and you can ask a person a question and they will answer you in a friendly way if they sense that you are curious and want to know something.
I find it exciting to visit this part of the world because stuff is happening, while at home nothing is happening except people are just arguing and claiming that investment is a dirty word that just means more taxes and governmental waste. I feel energized seeing that someplace in the world there is bold vision and that it is becoming reality. This is Ground Zero for Frontierland in today’s world. Hopefully I’ll get to visit China sooner than later and see what they are doing over there, but China is not Saudi Arabia. The animal spirits there are more restricted by a power-hungry leader and although the country is doing a lot, they could be doing so much more if the leaders of China put growth as Priority One instead of just maintaining party power.
For my next flight, my Flighty app (it costs $60 a year but it’s really good) told me in the various cities which terminal to go to; the local airlines didn’t. FlyNas is one of the budget airlines in the country. I had an extra seat that I bought since there was no business class and the gate agents had no idea what to do with me. The buy on board food was good. No Wifi. Nice airbus 320. It is 80 minutes flying time to Al Ula airport and the scenery on the descent was beautiful with a mix of canyons and desert landscapes. Of course the airport lounge was lovely with lots of food. You have to buy a day pass for this because the airline doesn’t have business class on this route. I didn’t have my Priority Pass card with me (they didn’t know what to do with an American Express platinum card) and so I just skipped the lounge and found food in the airport. There was a Maison Kaiser shop there but it had a long line. Airport Wifi did not work. As I said, sometimes the technology here just doesn’t work. This domestic flight sold over 50% of its seats the last 48 hours before the flight. That is normal in this country.
AL ULA, SAUDI ARABIA
My guide meeting me at the virtually brand-new airport here dresses like my daughter. So not all Saudi women look the same. This is a strange place in the middle of nowhere. There is a restaurant by Alain Ducasse here. All-new roads leading to the airport. A beautiful new hotel called Banyan Tree resort is about a half hour from the airport. The crown prince has earmarked this area as a priority for tourism development; he has said that he loves this place and it shows his love. There are several resorts here but that is the best. It is humongous; it takes about ten minutes by golf cart to get from the reception area to my villa. My villa comes with a plunge pool and killer desert views. It is very private with the next villa over being far enough away. The rock formations around here are all lit up at night. They had a whole lounge filled with munchies for me when I checked in. There is a small gym with essentials.
I spent 24 hours in this area, arriving and leaving during the afternoon. If you work strategically, you can do it. I came here because there are daily flights into the area and because all the sites are close to each other. If you drive 3 hours, you can reach the Red Sea and there are other resorts there. I didn’t know that you could drive there from here, but the best resorts are 4 hours by ferry even after you reach the airport and there are not daily flights in that area. So if you want to do that area, you need several days and I don’t have those.
What strikes me about this place is that beauty is all around you as you drive from one place to the other. It’s not like you see Taco Viva joints around and then enter a national park and then see pretty things. I first went to Dadan and Jabal Ikmah, two ancient monuments. This I did with a group tour which meant that it took 2 hours to see something you could do in an hour. The latter is really cool because it is a place of rocks and mountains filed with inscriptions and pictures from many years ago. I saw stuff like that in the Uluru / Red Rock area of Australia. Then to elephant rock which is what you would imagine it is; all nice and yellow toward the last hour of the day. Then we kicked butt and went to the Harat viewpoint to see the sunset and it is really nice to see overlooking the canyons. We got to the resort in the dark which was too bad because you can’t appreciate the place at night.
Even around here there are plenty of ATM’s and all the tourist facilities are fixed up to western standards. Fruits are good here; in the other cities in this country in the hotels I didn’t get really good fruits.
The next morning I got out by 9 and went to Hegra on a private tour. Hegra is the main thing to see here. It is the Saudi version of Petra; a big rock which was an ancient temple and place for tombs. There are 4 things to see when you come to Hegra. Every guide told me that I was their fastest tour of the year; I did Hegra in about an hour and a half. It’s not nearly as impressive as Petra but it’s a nice site. I got back to the hotel in time for some spa. They have a beautiful swimming pool among the giant rocks but it was closed due to falling rocks. After lunch I went to the Old Town and Oasis Park, two nice tourist developments in the central town of Al Ula. The government gave all new businesses free rent for 2 years to get them to open here. They are fixing things up very nicely. The Old Town is really a night spot. I didn’t realize that the fruit stand in the Oasis Park was free; I thought the guy there was trying to sell me fruit. He was showing off beautiful fruit and vegetables. Then to the airport which is a half hour from town; there was actually decent food to buy in the terminal. Saudi Airlines flew me an hour or so to Jeddah, another important city in Saudi Arabia, which is the gateway to Mecca. This flight there was Wifi.
JEDDAH
At the Jeddah airport, there was a huge aquarium in the arrivals area. I might have mentioned that it was prayer time when I stepped off the plane and I noticed at some point that nobody was behind me walking to the baggage claim. Nobody I approached spoke English except for “Taxi!” although lots of people said they did. From the terminal you can catch a speed train to Mecca that takes an hour or to Medina that gets there in 4 hours. Those are the two most important cities for Islam in Saudi Arabia, if not the world. People on pilgrimages tend to come via Jeddah and the airport is filled with signs directing them.
Driving into town you notice that they have royal names on many highway exit signs because they name every other thing for some royal person. You could cause an accident reading the names of the royals on the signs before you get to what the destination on the sign actually says, such as “His Royal Highness Mohammed Bin Salmon Hospital”, and that was one of the much shorter names. Fortunately, I’m not driving.
I stayed at the Rosewood hotel in Jeddah which was a decent hotel but probably not nearly as good as the new Four Seasons nearby will be when it soon opens. I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner at the hotel buffets. The first night of my two-night visit my friend took me to a fish restaurant and for some gelato afterward. The hotel is along a corniche along the Red Sea where you can walk at night. My hotel had a rooftop pool with nice city and sea views. You could also look down on one of the royal palace compounds which although enclosed by walls was viewable from above in the hotel. They have a bunch of these compounds for all the various princes in the country. I took a 3 hour city tour of Jeddah. We saw the yacht club, Formula One track, street art in roundabout intersections and the renewal of the old city which is a work in progress. It’s gonna be really nice when it’s done and it will establish the brand of the city. My guide was big on promoting Islam. The port of Jeddah is on the Red Sea and has been somewhat impacted by the Houthis who have been accosting shipping along the Red Sea. Across the sea an 8 hour boat ride away is Sudan. I went with my friend to see Team Lab Borderless Jeddah, a fun family attraction in the city that has rooms filled with lights and colors and you walk around and just enjoy the effects and the interactive exhibits. I had a great time there! It was built by a Japanese company that has a few of these installations around the world, mostly in Japan. Had dinner with a Chinese teenage guy I met in Al Ula on a vacation with his dad who had also made his way to Jeddah. He thought Saudi dress was very comfortable and took to wearing a white thobe. He was very ambitious and plans to be a business man someday. His biggest takeaway was to tell me that although there is a lot of censorship in China, I should know that young Chinese people use VPN’s and know that their government is lying to them about what is going on in the world. He said most people outside of China don’t realize that Chinese people don’t believe everything they’re being told.
On my last trip to Jeddah in 1999, the city was very sandy and pretty ugly. The roundabouts were especially tasteless. You couldn’t drink the water and phone calls didn’t go through. The city makes a much better impression now. But there is a bunch of empty land near the coast where the hotels are. I asked why and was told that some years ago they put a bunch of Patriot missile defense systems in those areas. They left empty plots of land behind and it’s now years later. I spoke with a German engineer who said that buildings in the UAE were better maintained than ones built in Saudi. They are using Chinese companies to do a lot of the building projects here and they are not holding up very well. In Jeddah, some of the websites that were blocked in Riyadh showed up here. On my last visit to Riyadh, there were only 2 radio stations: one was all koran all the time and the other was old style traditional Arab classical music. Now on the radio you can hear all kinds of things. Netflix is popular and you can hear 4-letter words and see nudity on Netflix. I guess they figure that if people want to pay for it, they can watch it. A lot of things here are tolerated even if they are not necessarily legal. Someone at the rabbi’s dinner told me that Riyadh is gayer than Paris, if you know where to look. People like using their phones. Beach swimming remains a taboo; you won’t see it in Jeddah, not even at a hotel, though there are private clubs.
Everything feels very safe, even at night walking around along the sea front even if there are no police watching. I didn’t see one homeless person or beggar for the whole 10 days I was in the Middle East. I think that people who live here find that the quality of life is pretty good. On the main streets in Jeddah they were stringing up lights for Ramadan which is starting about a week after I leave. A mood of festivity is in the air.
The next morning I was off to the airport; it’s about a 20 minute drive in the morning when most people are still in bed. People drive crazy and my driver says it’s because women are now driving. People just turn into highways and go or cut you off without looking. Many roads here go for long distances without any u-turns or intersections with traffic lights. There are lots of signs advertising the Saudi 2030 expo. I would advise the royals to worry less about some of these vanity projects such as a massive skyscraper which engineers are afraid will not stay up; there are tons of things to be done just building up the country. In Riyadh they are building a city park and I saw the construction area which seemed to be miles in circumference. This is a new thing and it’s going to be huge. The thing about Riyadh is that you will have to take a metro there or drive because the city is not a place you can walk around. There are a lot of things here that are “closed for maintenance” such as the King Fahd fountain in Jeddah (think of the fountain on Lake Geneva). Several museums and exhibits were closed when I came around. As I said, it’s a country that works except when it doesn’t. They are building new hospitals in cooperation with western institutions such as Kings Hospital in London and I’m told they are pretty good.
Saudia Airlines has a very nice business class entrance and fast track, and a beautiful lounge where they make fresh pizzas in a pizza oven. One thing missing in the airport was a place selling things to read on the plane. In the lounge, all the publications were in Arabic. But there was a lot of food to buy, such as Pret. I have eaten Pret’s mango sunshine bowls in 3 countries in 3 days. My 6 hour flight to London had no WiFi. They sort of skimped around which was surprising to me; they put one panna cotta desert on the plane for 7 passengers and I really thought they would have Wifi that worked; they charged $50 and it never worked and I just contested the charge when I came home. The flight was about half full. They never stamped my passport in Saudi so I have no souvenir stamp. Saudis don’t go crazy on daytime flights trying to close all the windows and sit in the dark and try to sleep. That was a welcome thing for me because I hate it when you have to sit in the dark during a daytime flight. When we arrived at Heathrow airport, the gate next door had a huge El Al jumbo jet parked. You might not see anything Israeli in Saudi Arabia, but London is a different place and I suppose the Saudis on the plane were not amused seeing that big blue Jewish star in front of their faces out the window. My guide in Jeddah said that Saudi Arabia doesn’t need anything from Israel and she might be right. I’m going to comment more on this later.
Here are my top takeaways from my visit to the Middle East:
- People are happier than we give them credit for. Westerners might think that Saudi women are not liberated and not happy, but that is not necessarily how they see themselves. They can pretty much dress as they like and can do many things they could not before. There are cultural norms here that are strong and people are proud of them. I offered to trade Trump for MBS and there were no takers.
- I used to think that Israel was this great country in a sea of shithole countries and that Arabs who had never seen Israel didn’t know what they were missing. That’s not true anymore and people here generally feel they can take or leave it when it comes to Israel. If they make good with the Palestinians then fine. But otherwise, the Israelis don’t have anything special to offer (other than AI and surveillance technology and I’m sure that really appeals to normal people) and they don’t feel the need to be friendly with them. They don’t need to be enemies or friends; they can simply be ignored. What I get out of this is that until Israel has different policies, they will just be an outcast nation in this part of the world. Top-level people might cooperate with them in areas of mutual interest, but people at the normal level will just prefer to ignore them. This is important because Jews look at everything through the lens of Israel and think that everything revolves around normalization with Israel. It’s just not true. Most people simply don’t care — if they are not hostile from 2 years of constantly watching people in Gaza suffer in a war. Turn on the TV and you’ll see it immediately. Whatever you think of Hamas, there is sympathy here for the people of Gaza, most of whom are poor and have no choice in the matter. They don’t think that Israel needed to kill 70,000 people over a 2 year period to try and get rid of Hamas and they don’t like that Biden and Trump allowed it to happen. (And meanwhile, Hamas is still in charge so what did all this accomplish, they say?) And as long as Israel bombs places 2 kilometers from the center of Doha Qatar in broad daylight, people are not going to see Israel as a player that brings stability to the region. People want quiet and to seek investment in a stable place. Arabs see plenty of TV with Israel on the screen. They don’t like what they see but increasingly they see things that are real. The situation when I talk to people in the elites is nuanced. For instance, I was told that Ron Dermer from Israel (at the time Bibi’s right-hand man) had a meeting with Syrians and wagged his finger at them and yelled curses in Arabic. I could just see that happening. The Syrians asked the mediator if they could end the meeting and they did. Iran and Israel are referred to as the “two naughty countries.” From the perspective of this region, they are the stable adults in the room surrounded by Trump, Israel, Iran… you get the idea. So I would say that Jews need to understand that this region is changing, and that how you look at the region through the lens of Israel needs to be updated to account for a more nuanced situation where people are more indifferent than hostile and that the value proposition is not what it was a generation ago.
- What to me is the biggest question is what Saudi Arabia will look like 10 years from now in terms of religion. The iPhone is its strongest challenge. Why stop and pray 5x a day when your phone is distracting you? Sabbath-observant Jews are having their own problems getting kids to shut it off when everyone is addicted to their phones.
LONDON STOPOVER
I was anxious to try using the Elizabeth line to get to my hotel instead of taking the Heathrow Express. It leaves from the airport every 15 minutes or so and takes you both to Paddington (where the Express goes) and one stop further away (just 2 minutes more) is Bond Street right at Oxford Street. From terminals 2 and 3 it is 30 minutes on the train. From terminals 4 and 5 add 5 minutes. The next morning when I had to return to Heathrow, service on the Elizabeth line was suspended for technical reasons so I just quickly hopped to Paddington and jumped on the Express which takes only about 13 minutes. (The walk from the Express station to Terminal 2 took another 10 minutes at a very brisk rate; the Elizabeth line station is closer to the terminal so at the end it is pretty even.) The Express costs twice as much as the Elizabeth line, which is fair. In my case, I walked off the plane at 3:00 and walked into my hotel at 4:10 which was 2 blocks from the Bond Street station. You can now use a credit card to pay for trains in London and tap as you go.
Marks and Spencer opens on weekday mornings at 9, even if Safari/Google says that it opens at 8. That is the food court only. Black cabs are the worst way to get around London because they refuse to use GPS. I was rushing to a show in the rain and got in a cab; the driver took me to a tube station and told me to get out. The Producers is a revival of a great musical that had the theater of British adults in stitches for 2 hours. One of the all-time funniest shows I’ve seen. Still on through at least September 2026.
Claridge’s is one of London’s best hotels but for my money I prefer the Langham. Once you get off at Bond Street station from the airport, you can transfer on the Central Line one stop over to Oxford Circus and then walk 3 blocks to the hotel. The Langham is also a 5-star hotel at roughly half the price and the rooms, facilities and food situation are better. Claridge’s is only a la carte at breakfast, for instance. The Langham has a lounge. Claridge’s did have one thing going for it this visit – an in-house poet in the lobby writing up personalized Valentine’s Day cards.
My take on this 21 hour visit to London is that even though the country is having problems, as a city it still works better than cities in the USA. Their metro system is better than NYC’s for getting to Heathrow airport.
On departure at Terminal 2, there is a giant Pret with some ready to eat meal trays that are better than what you get on the plane. The food at the airport here is so much better than what you buy at US airports. I flew home on JetBlue; the best reason to fly it is if you pay a bit extra to sit in the first row you get a studio suite which is comparable to first class on Emirates. JetBlue has decent WiFi and they don’t charge extra for it. I don’t like the food on that airline; it’s not good if you don’t eat meat or spicy food. They have a thing for dogs; they show dog videos on the screens for the duration of the flight. From London to JFK, that’s a lot of dog!
