Impressions of Israel
Visiting Israel from Saudi Arabia was no easy feat. The two countries do not have formal diplomatic relations, and generally Israel (or Occupied Palestine as it is sometimes referred to) is a taboo subject. There are no direct flights between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and anyone with an Israeli stamp in their passport is not allowed to enter Saudi Arabia (or Syria). In fact, it is out of minor concern about client relations that I have waited to write this post. My visit to Jerusalem with four colleagues actually took place in October.
Therefore, in order to travel between the two countries, it was necessary to fly from Riyadh to Amman, Jordan, and hire a car to take us from Amman to the Border. There, we passed through a slow, if thorough, immigration process and security screening on foot to cross the border. On the other side, we hired another van to take us through the West Bank to Jerusalem.
General Impressions:
- Israel is the most developed country in the middle east. Many of the modern amenities that I would expect in Europe or the US, such as high quality organic foods, decent hotels, and a good nightlife are present in abundance
- Many cultural eccentricities are pleasant and truly unique to this country. One night we watched a crowd of traditionally dressed teenage Jewish boys dancing in a plaza to a rock-singing Yiddish-speaking Rabbi - all I could think was “this could only happen here”
- Old town Jerusalem is a fantastic and bustling maze of clothing shops, jewellers, butchers, churches, and temples
- Israeli girls are fun and beautiful; matched, perhaps only by their neighbours to the North, the Lebanese
A Feast in Old Town Jerusalem: The old city was a sea of life and commerce - streets crowded with shops and shoppers and a vibrant buzzing of activity. By the time we arrived, we were starving and sought nourishment at the first little cafe we passed, just inside the old city gates. We were not disappointed.
An old man with shaky hands and a warm smile set us down at his only two tables, and proceeded to feed us an incredibly memorable feast. It started with simple hummus and bread, then fattoush salad, then delicious chicken and peppers in a lemon and butter sauce, all served with fresh squeezed pomegranate juice. Our host was chef, waiter, and juicer, so the meal proceeded at a leisurely pace over a couple of hours, allowing us to fully take in the coming and going of hundreds of visitors to the markets.
Night Life: A visit to Ben Yehuda Street for dinner opened my eyes to the simultaneous fun and beauty of the city and its residents. We enjoyed a few cocktails at the hotel before we departed, and were already in a festive mood when we arrived on these streets crowded with young Israelis looking for a fun evening on the town. We found a good restaurant, and proceeded to finish a carafe or two of wine while hitting on our drop-dead gorgeous waitress (who, perhaps for the benefit of the tip, and perhaps due to our impaired perception skills, seemed to be enjoying this immensely).
After dinner we hit the street and enjoyed a bit of people watching as we searched for a promising bar. It seemed the average age on the street was about 23, and the number of attractive girls staggering (we were, remember, a group of five guys not used to seeing much more than a woman’s eyes in Saudi Arabia). Enter the singing rabbi I mentioned above, and it was a scene of beauty, culture, and festivity.
Bethlehem: On our second day, we made a trip back into the West Bank to see the birth place of Jesus. We arrived at the church of nativity just in time to catch the mid-morning prayer in the square outside, and got to enjoy the juxtaposition of hundreds of faithful Muslims honouring their faith immediately next to one of the holiest sites in Christianity.
Inside the church, a tour group of Spanish faithful had arranged a special ceremony and service with a Latin and Spanish speaking priest in the crypt where Jesus was born and where his manger lay. It was powerful to witness the passionate faith of the guests, and to see the markers representing these important landmarks to history and the child stories of many Christmas’ past.
Dead Sea: As we made our way back to Amman to return to Riyadh, we were forced to take a long detour to an alternate border crossing into Jordan. The delay cost us the opportunity to visit the Dead Sea during the daylight, but two of us braved the detour in our journey to the airport to spend 45 minutes floating in the intensely saline waters of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth’s rocky surface. The eery feeling of weightlessness in the water was a strange but exciting experience that epitomized the weekend. My visit to Israel would turn out to be my favourite part of my adventures in the Middle East.
Impressions of Tabuk
Tabuk (also “Tabouk”) is a province in the northwest of Saudi Arabia, separated by many hundreds of kilometers of desert and mountains from the largest cities in the kingdom, but bordering Jordan and the coastal city of Acaba. Tabuk City is closer to Damascus than it is to Jeddah.
Tabuk province enjoys the longest coastline in the KSA, along the Red Sea.
I arrived here on a business trip, and unfortunately much of my time was spent in business meetings and at a mediocre, but passable hotel. During the various meetings, and through two tours of city facilitated by our hosts, I was able to develop a reasonable picture of the place.
Based upon the research conducted prior to the trip, I expected to find something more closely resembling Egypt than Saudi Arabia. Its GDP per capita and education rates are significantly below the national average, for instance.
Instead, we encountered in the city of Tabuk the first real “oasis” I would visit in Saudi Arabia. The best analogy is to compare Tabuk to the Midwest of the United States. It is an agricultural area, with a pleasant climate, and a population that enjoys a quieter pace of life. Generally, the quality of life that we witnessed was good, and the people warm, hospitable, and occasionally, quite entrepreneurial.
Plants Rising from the Desert
One of the most shocking impressions that the region left upon me was how agriculture has been successful despite the negligible annual rainfall and sweeping desert sands. As we drove along the highway to visit a large commercial farm, watching the flat sands pass us by on either side of the car, we suddenly came upon life. Tall stalks, like corn (though probably not corn… it’s too water intensive), rose from the desert sand in a tight circle around the rotating irrigation equipment that gave it life.
As we explored the farm, we learned how high water intensity crops like wheat are being substituted for more resilient ones, like olives, and higher value crops, like fruits and vegetables. The water for the crops is drawn from a large aquifer which lies below the valley where Tabuk city is located. How sustainable this is in the long run, is a question to which few appear to have an answer.
Untouched Coastline
While meeting with different business and ministry leaders, we heard them describe the virgin coastline on the Red Sea as a paradise of sand, water, and endless potential. In many ways, they were right. The trick, however, is that a “virgin coastline” might in fact be covered in SUV tracks, littered with garbage and debris ranging from bottles and wrappers to car tires, and in many places completely without trees or other plant life. Nevertheless, sand and water are plentiful, and as far as I can tell, so is business opportunity.
Breathtaking Mountains and Desert
What actually impressed me most about Tabuk and its potential as a future tourist destination was not its coastline, but the desert and mountains which separate the city of Tabuk from the beaches an hour and a half to the west. What starts out looking like the deserts and mountains of Western Colorado and Eastern Utah turns into a terrain altogether unfamiliar. The area’s craggy peaks and jagged rock formations reminded me more of what I expect Tierra del Fuego looks like than anything I expected to find in Saudi Arabia.
Unfortunately, our short visit didn’t afford the opportunity to explore further. We read and heard about archeological sites ranging from castles to old temples similar to those found at Petra in Jordan to the North. Who knows - perhaps I will return one day.
Impressions of Dubai
Buildings and skyscrapers are sprouting in Dubai like the plants that could never thrive there. During my three day weekend trip to the city for corporate training, and despite everything I had heard and read before arriving, I was surprised by the scale of the construction. Dubai is going to be huge, and it isn’t a single city. Rather, it is at least two or three, and each is significant in its own right. The Marina, the Financial District, and the Creek are each booming and scrambling toward the sky.
Monitor’s Dubai office, and the Hilton hotel where I stayed, is in The Marina, next to the massive Jumeirah Beach Residence development, which alone incorporates 40 nearly-complete buildings. The Marina will soon include 200 high rise buildings, about 120 of which (by my naked eye estimate) are already well underway or finished.
To share a few of my first impressions of the city:
Floating, Skiing, then Partying - The fact that in a single day I managed to float in the gulf, attend an office meeting, go skiing for two hours, grab some dinner, get some shopping done, then go out to party at a ritzy night spot is just incredible. Ski Dubai, while not exactly the best ski experience in the world, was a fun and novel way to spend a couple of hours at the mall. The slope was actually pretty impressive, and a decent challenge, so I walked away happier than I expected to be.
My visit was during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, so the options to party were somewhat limited - essentially, we had to stick to hotel bars. Luckily, Dubai has a lot of high class hotels with equally impressive bars. Buddha Bar, at the Grosvenor House, was quite a scene, and fully on-par with many of the great night spots I have been to in San Francisco and London.
Dubai is not Las Vegas - I have frequently heard Dubai compared to Las Vegas, but feel the comparison is inaccurate because of the attitude of the two cities. Whereas in Las Vegas many resorts and developments are huge and ostentatious for their own sake, big projects to build the “biggest,” “tallest,” or “best” in Dubai are about garnering respect and prestige. This is a city that wants to be taken seriously, but also embraces the fact that novelty and innovation attract tourists, investment, and money. Let’s just say that I don’t expect a Hooters Casino to open here. In the near future, anyway.
Sleek, Modern, and Developed - Dubai is quite upscale, at least in the parts of the city that I saw. In fact, the degree to which there seemed to be very little in the way of “budget” accommodations, etc. was surprising compared to Bahrain, Riyadh, or Egypt. The beach was a line of hotels ranging from a Sheraton to a Hilton and on up the chain of prestigious hotel brands.
The Mall of the Emirates, another example, is also quite upscale. It’s actually nicer and larger than most that I’ve been to in the US or Europe. Not cheaper, however.
It’s in a Desert - This one shouldn’t have been any shock, but I found myself disappointed by how unattractive certain sections of the city were because they were un-landscaped, un-developed, and essentially swaths of dirt. Empty plots of land and things like highway medians simply don’t grow anything. No grass - no shrubs - nothing. Until confronted with this, I never realized how attractive undeveloped countryside is in most other countries.
Also related to its desert climate are the heat and humidity that come with the package. Every time you walk outside your sunglasses immediately fog up with condensation. It’s also impossible not to mention that the water temperature is almost disgustingly warm. While I am sure it’s great for arthritics, water that is 32 degrees C / 89 degrees F is simply not that refreshing. I am sure when I return in a month or two however, and have been living in a colder climate, I will probably change my tune.
Difficult Conditions for Foreign Labor - Dubai imports a lot of working class labor from places like India and the Philippines. From what I have seen, this is true across the region - it seems like half the coach class seats on any flight to Riyadh are full of migrant workers with little experience flying (the kind that hop out of their seats and rush for the doors while the plane is still taxy-ing).
In Dubia, the sad situation is that for all the novelty of seeing hundreds and hundreds of buildings rising into the air at the same time, the reality is that hundreds and thousands of poor foreign laborers are the ones who are toiling beneath the midday sun to get them built.
The businessman and economist in me feels that this is “okay” because these workers are employed voluntarily and are earning far better pay than they could in their home country. They’ve decided that it’s worth spending a year working in the harsh conditions to get themselves ahead in life, maybe to buy a car or put their kids through school when they return home.
The human inside me is nevertheless disturbed to look from the balcony of my luxury hotel room and see young men of my same age doing hard labor in the midday sun, only to be packed into an un-airconditioned minibus to be brought back to wherever it is they spend the rest of their day. One of the salesmen at the mall said it best: “They treat Indians like dogs here.”
Ultimately, it is the availability of this massive, cheap labor force that makes the miracle of Dubai possible. Love it or hate it, that’s how it’s happening.
Count Down to Riyadh
It’s Friday and on Monday morning, I am off to Riyadh for a three month assignment with work. It will be my first time in the region, but I am excited for what I am sure will prove to be a truly memorable experience.
I will be living on a compound with my fellow Monitor consultants, traveling frequently to different parts of the country, and enjoying the opportunity to see different cities in the region on the weekends (Thur and Fri… crazy).
Look here for updates on what it’s like living there.
- Welcome to The Intrepid Mr. Fox
Welcome to the personal weblog of Mitchell W. Fox, a management strategy consultant in Sydney, Australia.The Intrepid Mr. Fox is about my personal life and adventures. It focuses on three main topics: The Good Life (things I enjoy in my leisure time), Travel, and my thoughts and ideas about the world around us.