Saudi Arabia

Not many people ever get to visit Saudi Arabia since they do not issue travel visas so we tried our best to take advantage of living in the country.  Even so, it was difficult to do that with our companies travel restrictions.  But we still had some fun adventures.

After our amazing 16 day trip around Europe, Micah's parents followed us back to Saudi Arabia to spend 2 more weeks.   We spent most of our time lounging either at the beach or at the pool and working on our tans.  However, we did have a few fun outings together.

One of the days that we actually left our compound, we headed out to Khobar to sorta do my "normal" shopping outing.  First we stopped at a hole-in-the-wall bakery for some amazing cheese bread then we shopped at Silver Museum, Anteaq, and Desert Design.  Shelly and Marvetta loved Desert Design and walked out with some beautiful things.  Afterward we went to Chilis and were able to observe the Saudi "mall" culture and also the eating out culture with secluded booths and covered women.


Probably the most exciting outing we did was going to a camel farm.  I called and requested a certain driver who I had heard knew where to go and what to do.  We pulled into this little camel farm with two Bedouin tents and approximately 25 camels.  Our driver, Jinto, went to talk to the Bedouin man who takes care of the camels to make sure he was ok with us coming out.  Let the adventures begin...
At first we just walked around and looked at the camels.  A few were interested in us and came up to us so that we could pet them.  Then the camel farmer came out of his tent and saddled one up so that we could ride.  He was a very good host and invited us into his tent to have Sudanese tea, water out of a shared bowl, and later he milked the camels right in front of us and let us taste it.  Yum (not really, I don't like any milk including camel).  This was a fun experience in the desert we will never forget.

Tasting Camel milk