Al Khobar Getaway (continued) and Eid Mubarak

Did I mention that the sun is down now around 5:00pm? Its really psycho and messes with me pretty bad. I feel like its 10:00pm at about 6:00 these days. So to continue our little getaway to Al Khobar, we also visited some other cities. Below is a picture of the Aramco Exhibit in the city of Dhahran. The city is mostly industrial so this was the only site we visited. Its basically a museum dedicated to the largest oil company in the world, Aramco.
Believe it or not the museum was actually worth it, despite a few very corny self-aggrandizing videos. I learned a lot about the oil industry here in Saudi, which made the country what it is today. Oil changed everything here and without it there would probably still be far more bedouins and fewer modern cities that the people live in like Riyadh and Al Khobar. The grandparents of my students were still taking long trips by camel when they were children. This country is so rich because of oil that Forbes recently named the King of Saudi Arabia the 3rd most powerful person in the world.

We next went to Dammam. This is where our train trip ended a few days before and we wanted to at least see some of the city because this is where one of our company's schools is located. We went to a nice restaurant while we were there but the city seemed somewhat empty. We caught a taxi and had him take us to the cities Corniche along the sea but he dropped us off at a beach area that was kind of trashy. Along the sea here there were old broken down boats and a lot of litter. We passed fisherman along the way, but we were surprised that is wasn't nicer.

Here is me on an old broken down boat in the Persian Gulf, Dammam.

The funny thing was that we discovered about an hour after we left that we weren't at the Corniche at all. We looked on the internet and the real thing was really nice looking with paved stone walkways. Our taxi driver must been on something. So that will give us something to look forward to if we ever return. Our walk down this beach was still pretty interesting though.

That evening we went to the train station to return back to Riyadh. It was then we learned that all the tickets were sold out because of the holiday, Eid Adha, which is a feast to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael (Muslims believe that it was Ishmael and not Isaac who was the preferred son). Because of this we decided we would catch a cab to Hofuf, about a 2 hour drive away, and we would catch the train there the next day. It only cost us 150 riyals for the trip, which is about 37-39 dollars. I was somewhat annoyed we missed the train, but the cab ride made it worth it. It was nice to get another view of the country from a car. It was dark but you could see many lights shining in the distance beyond the immediate desert. Our taxi driver was really cool. About 20 minutes in he had to stop for the last prayer of the day, so he pulled off next to a mosque and we waited in the cab. When he returned he filled up the gas tank and bought us tons of orange juice, pepsi, and water (he would have gotten us candy as well but we told him he didn't have to). He didn't speak a lot of English but he would describe some things for us along the way.

We had heard good things about Hofuf. We got ourselves a room for the night and made plans for things to see the next day. Of course we weren't thinking and it turns out everthing was closed the next day. Why? Because of Eid Adha! All the families were getting together for a big feast so our plans were kind of a wash. We spent a lot of time walking around exploring the city, but didn't get to do much. By the way, Eid Mubarak (in the title of this post) means "blessed feast" which basically is like saying happy holidays. You say it to each other during this feast. Incidentally our President's name is Barak (blessed) Hussein (beautiful) Obama. Just thought you might want to know. Below are some things we saw but didn't do:

This is us finding out the doors to Ibrahim's Palace are locked during the holiday.

This is me in front of the empty palace wishing we could get in.

This is us at an empty souq (market place) that would have been really awesome if it would have been open. Still cool to see empty though.

Luckily not all restaurants were closed. We went to a restaurant and ordered kappsa (chicken and rice). But the way you eat it is by hand. You literally rip off pieces of chicken scoop up a ball of rice in your hand and eat. We do it sitting on the carpet. It was pretty weird just ripping off chunks of chicken while others are doing the same thing to the same chicken. But it was good.

Here is Chris with a handful of rice and chicken. Our hands were really greasy afterwards.

Here is a nice looking but mostly empty Hofuf. The streets would likely have been very busy had it not been for the holiday.

I don't know what it is with the people of Hofuf and Sponge Bob Square Pants, but we literally passed 4 cars completely covered in Sponge Bob stickers and had Spong Bob dolls hanging in the windows.

So that was our Hofuf adventure. We then caught a train back to Riyadh. It was nice to be back and relax from our vacation. While I'm at home I've just been reading tons of books. I finished reading the Qu'ran recently and I've also been reading an incredible book about the life of the Prophet Muhammed. I have to say that his life was pretty miraculous. The book I've been reading is quite amazing and I'm surprised I didn't know about the Prophets life until just now. Currently we still have another week left of our vacation so we hope to do a little more travelling before we return to our students.