Hi Jon,


Sorry for not getting back to you sooner

Sure go ahead and post it ... , I'll catch up to
you later-

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Dhahran is the site of the original oil well in Saudi Arabia 50 years ago.

It is also where the US military personnel housing was bombed.

It is a short drive from Bahrain, but Saudi exit visas are very expensive
and an annoyance to get and take up at least one page of the passport. Very
quickly the passport is filled if you have like I did friends in Bahrain.
If you like night life, everything you could ever want is Bahrain, or so my
Saudi students told me (I long ago gave up night life for nature
photography).

If you travel anywhere in Saudi Arabia, you need written authorization from
your employer, but Eastern Province is quite large so there are quite a few
very interesting places to go to.

In Saudi Arabia, very much unlike other Arab and Gulf countries, there are
no friendly locals to get to know. There is very little opportunity to get
to know the local popular social life and culture. Saudi Arabia is very
much a closed society, less in Dammam than elsewhere, but still very much
so. My own entree into social life was through my mutual friends from
Bahrain.

Saudi Arabia is very much unlike any other country I have ever experienced
or read about. In Dammam, for example, even though it is a very modern
city, there is one postal clerk on duty for the entire city to accept mail
and another to sell stamps, but there are at least 5 policemen and guards
in the post office lobby. Once I dropped a piece of trash paper, and a
sub-machine gun was pointed at me by a policeman who thought I had done it
deliberately. (Although I am and was sure that he never had any intention
of actually using it, it was still a very scary experience) Whenever I made
the mistake of going myself to the post office, I ended up on line for
hours before finally giving up. However, sometimes, since I was an
American, I was taken to the front of the line. After that, I just gave my
mail to the mail person at my work place. It is not a user-friendly
country. Americans get the best treatment.

There is no cinema, no theatre, no public libraries, no Internet, no night
life, no concerts, no really ***good*** restaurants, no cultural
organizations or museums, except for the ARAMCO museum which is actually
quite interesting.

There is satellite TV, unbelievably luxurious shopping malls, every kind of
major department store, clothing chain, furniture chain, hobby chain
(except that it is against the law to have motors on your model airplanes)
even BAGEL chains even LOX, MacDonalds, Burger King, Hardees, Kentucky
Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut (there is a Pizza Hut right across from the front
of the main entrance to the Holy Mosque in Mecca and people on pilgrimage
flock to it) Cheese cake chains, Haagen-Dasz, TGTBY (yogurt), Dairy Queen
(no International House of Pancakes anywhere I could find), JC Penney,  You
can shop yourself to death.

Khobar is very upscale and Dammam is very downscale. There is a traditional
souk in Dammam. There is a woman's souk in Dammam (closed to all men) a
camel souk, a used everything souk, a sheep souk, a gold souk, spice souk,
etc. NO PHOTOGRAPHS (don't even think about it- I took a lot of photographs
in Medina about 8 years ago, but this last time I went I didn't even try)
(do not get your photographs processed in Saudi Arabia: they have a special
man just trained to make scratches and gouges in the negatives)

The natural beauty of Saudi Arabia is indescribable and I highly recommend
camels as both photogenic and companionable (except never do one wrong- he
will never forget it it- not very forgiving). A short drive from Dhahran is
AlHassa, an ancient oasis where there are endless date farms as well as
famous caves. There are many kinds of dessert and they are very green in
the winter and very serene at night, but the sky at night over the Catskill
Mountains in New York is much much clearer than any sky I ever saw in Saudi
Arabia- there always seems to be a haze. You never get that sense that you
can reach out and touch the stars.


I had no Western friends in Saudi Arabia, so I can not comment on life on
the compound.

All educational institutions in Saudi Arabia are sexually segregated with
separate facilities and programs for men and women.