STEER Day 3: Jubail, KSA.

It's only Day 3?! Feels like its been a long time since we first landed in Dubai.. and we have really learnt a lot since then.

Today was truly an eye-opener for me. We were treated to the true wealth of the Saudis in Jubail, an industrial model city. Jubail was first decreed in 1975 to be a city built to develop the petrochemical industry in Saudi Arabia. Our first stop of he day was to the Royal Commission of Jubail to learn more about the city and how they planned it. If you thought Singapore's infrastructure was impressive, Jubail is even more so.

Jubail has the benefit of being built out of nothing at all. They took the opportunity to build a masterplan for a city that had industry, commerce and residential areas. The result is a city where all water, electricity, waste, fibre optics are built underground and where the streets look more like Australia than anywhere else in KSA. At the Royal Commission, we learmt how they built Jubail from ground up, and how the city functions now. Apparently every university graduate there gets an average of 5 job offers! The courses in their university are specially tailored to suit the demands of the job market, thereby creating a self-sustaining workforce.

We also had the opportunity to have lunch with some of the students from their university. Makmur especially interacted with them and found out how life really is in KSA. I also had a chance to chat with them a little and i realise that we are more similar than we thought initially. They play computer games too, they like hanging out with friends, going to the beach, etc. Kinda cool actually. The students are alot more approachable than the adults it seems.. maybe because of the smaller age gap?

Anyways, after lunch, we went on to SHARQ, which is a petrochemical company manufacturing plastics for Asian markets. The plant was huge, but we couldn't take any photos.. SHARQ is also an affiliate company of SABIC, KSA's second largest oil company. After the SHARQ visit, we went to Petrol Steel Co Ltd, a joint venture company between a Saudi firm and Singapore's Rotary Engineering. There, they shared a bit more about how KSA is diversifying into petrol-related products to decrease reliance on the oil industry. It was also that i realised how comforting it is to hear a Sinaporean accent when you are in foreign land. Ahh!! Missing home already!

That, by the way, is the end of the itinerary of the day. It seems really short, but we actually took a whole
day to finish the touring. Shagged!! More to come in the next few days. Hope it gets better!

STEER Day 2 in Saudi Arabia.

An entirely random photo that I took at the King Faud International Airport at Dammam, Saudi Arabia.  After flying off from Dubai Airport finally, we reached Dammam in 2 hours on board Malaysian Airlines MH154.  Not entirely friendly, I must say..  There is really a difference between SQ and the rest it seems.

The atmosphere in Saudi Arabia is a lot tenser than that in Dubai because of the stories we have heard about how strict their religious police were. When we landed, everyone was solemn and afraid to draw attention to ourselves.  The late hour of our arrival didn't exactly help matters, since we now feel like we are stowaways from another country... The customs didn't help matters either.  We had to scan in all ten fingerprints and our passport was detained.  I never felt the importance of a passport until then.. They were perfectly able to take it away and I would never able to go home again, I thought while waiting.

Eventually we did get our passports back, and we cleared the checkpoint without much problem thankfully!  And on we went to our hotel!

We are staying at the Crowne Plaza Al Khobar for the KSA leg of our trip. It's the same Crowne Plaza that we have at Changi Airport back at home.  5 stars!  By the time we reached the hotel, it was 6 am and had been 26 hours since I woke up.  Luckily, there was nothing much on the itinerary for the day, and I slept the day away...

To do the hotel some justice, it is only right to write a bit about how marvellous it is.  When we first entired the hotel, we were greeted by a waiter offering us Arabian coffee and dates.  our bags were left in the bus and carried for us into the hotel by the bell boy.  Check-in was incredibly quick and all we needed to do was to get our card keys and head to bed.  Before that though, we tried out the buffet breakfast at the mezzanine floor.  The spread was awesome.  Kind of reminiscent of the spread I got at Angsana Bintan.  I haven't seen it for myself yet, but some said that the pool at the top floor has an awesome view and great amenities such as a jacuzzi (yay!), sauna, turkish bath, etc.  The Saudis are truly very generous!

The next item on the itinerary was a shopping trip to the nearby Rashid Mall at around 5 pm.  It was smaller than Dubai Mall, but more than enough to make our legs ache.  The things there were more or less what we could find in Singapore though, so I didn't manage to get anything other than a scarf for my SEP.

One interesting thing we observed at the Mall was the call to prayer at sunset.  The PA system sounded the call, much like what I heard in the Bruneian jungle, and suddenly all the shops started closing or the shop owners to go pray.  Interestingly, there were some who chose not to pray but took the time instead to have a smoke and slack a bit.  Kinda new to me, since Singapore is a secular country, but really quite cool!

After shopping, we were shown the 30km long causeway that linked KSA to Bahrain.  Can you imagine a causeway that goes across the sea by 30km? It's totally insane!  Pity we couldn't see much because of the night.

And that was actually all that we did today. Not much, which I am actually glad for.  At least we got the time to replenish our energy!

We are going to Jubail tomorrow to visit the Royal Commision, SABIC and Rotary Engineering, a Singapore company based there.  It's gonna be great!