Hello Everybody,
I’ve made it two weeks so I guess I will stay.
The compound is pretty nice, the weather is great, 85 in the daytime, 65 at night with a constant light breeze. The Villa is a three bedroom apartment, about 1500-1600 square feet. It is older but has all new carpet, appliances and furniture. It was recently painted and is very clean. It has a concrete safe room with metal door, there are security bars on all doors and windows, there is ballistic film and curtains too. You feel pretty safe but not imprisoned. There are 3 checkpoints along the entrance manned by KSA National Guard. All the people are friendly, a lot of them speak English. The Company bought 30 new Toyota Land Cruisers for our transportation, they are driven by various nationalities, Pakistani, Saudi, Bangladeshi. Most speak enough English to get you where you want to go but sometimes it takes a while to get there.
Driving here is scary, there are absolutely no rules, they straddle the white line and go right or left to get ahead of the people in front. They run through red lights, not yellow, full red. At most intersections there are no stop signs for either side, you all approach and whoever has the most guts goes first and everybody else tries to avoid hitting them. The horn is a very popular car accessory and used often as well as emergency flashers. If they have to slow down quickly, they put on their flashers.
There is construction everywhere, roads, parks, refinerys, houses……..it is a real boom town, about 230,000 people, up from 80,000 in 1995. The roads that are finished are very pretty, palm trees line the streets, I have seen more palm trees here than exist in the whole of Florida.
I’m going to stop for now, I am going to go to dinner with some friends, keep in touch.
TJ in KSA
I’ve made it two weeks so I guess I will stay.
The compound is pretty nice, the weather is great, 85 in the daytime, 65 at night with a constant light breeze. The Villa is a three bedroom apartment, about 1500-1600 square feet. It is older but has all new carpet, appliances and furniture. It was recently painted and is very clean. It has a concrete safe room with metal door, there are security bars on all doors and windows, there is ballistic film and curtains too. You feel pretty safe but not imprisoned. There are 3 checkpoints along the entrance manned by KSA National Guard. All the people are friendly, a lot of them speak English. The Company bought 30 new Toyota Land Cruisers for our transportation, they are driven by various nationalities, Pakistani, Saudi, Bangladeshi. Most speak enough English to get you where you want to go but sometimes it takes a while to get there.
There is construction everywhere, roads, parks, refinerys, houses……..it is a real boom town, about 230,000 people, up from 80,000 in 1995. The roads that are finished are very pretty, palm trees line the streets, I have seen more palm trees here than exist in the whole of Florida.
TJ in KSA
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