I had a four meetings packed into one day, trying to keep it as efficient as possible, from the moment I land then I would have enough time to eat and then head out back to the airport and take off again. That was a ridiculous mistake on my part, I have done a lot of day meetings and back in the same day, never have I done four long meetings in one day. By the time I was heading to the airport I was too tired to car and too dizzy to pay attention to anything, I just wanted to get home and pass out at the end of the trip. I was so tired I stretched out on the Wataniya flight back and passed out before take off and woke up as we were landing, why can’t we land with the backs reclined, it makes no difference at all. The one comfort is knowing that as soon as the plane arrives I exit the plane and get in my car and drive home in less then 5 minutes.
Going to Egypt I had about three meetings to take care of, two the day I arrive and one the next morning, its one of those compact trips, all in one shot. I took this trip because I had to have this one meeting, and then other two just piled on. I knew one thing when going to Cairo, to ask for the VIP service at the airprot which is $100 for arrival and departure, and your travel agent can arrange for it, you have to ask for the VIP terminal. You walk through and sit on a counch while you wait for your passport to be stamped and your bags to come out, but in my case I only had one carry on, so out the door I went, I was outside within 11 minutes from departing the plane which is fantastic.
I have a simple rule when in Egypt, I only stay at the Four Seasons Nile Plaza, this rule is there because I have suffered food poisoning every time I eat anything outside, but staying at this hotel I can order any food in mind and I’m sure its safe. Even when I had a dinner meeting I said that I’m not hungry and kept drinking water, as soon as I got back to the hotel I ordered room service, I have had too many bad experiences to take a risk. Too much work to do in Kuwait, so I flew back the next afternoon to get back in time to eat some food, and I passed out the whole flight back because I was so exhausted from this short trip and waking up early.
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Took the Wataniya Airlines flight to Bahrain at 7:50 am for an 11 am meeting, landed around 9 am and rented the Primo Limousine car service to take us around for the two meetings and then back to the airport but for a late night 10 pm flight back. Every time I go through the Bahrain Immigrations I enjoy how nice they are and they are always joking around, this is the one airport they are nice to everyone coming through.
We headed to the Ritz since our meetings were two minutes away from it by car. We had some tea and check our meeting point and presentations before heading in. Also the Ritz is a rip off, a 2 hour internet card is 10 BD which is ridiculous, plus the standard room with tax was for 200 BD which is insane. We headed to the meeting, then lunch at the Indian restaurant in the Ritz then the second meeting. Then off to the airport after some relaxing, we got there around 6:30 pm and I assumed it would be open by 7:30 pm but I was mistaken they only open the check in counter for Wataniya an hour and a half before the flight and so we were waiting with those going to Hajj until it opened. But by 8:30 pm we managed to check in and went to the Dulan lounge which is the first time I stay there and I have to say its amazing, probably one the best I have seen. One thing I do enjoy is that Sheikh Sa’ad Aiport is very easy to enter and leave from without any issues, and as soon I did I got my car out of the parking and heading home.
(I almost never drink coffee but I was only on a few hours of sleep so I had a tea cup filled it with Arabic coffee to wake me up)
Now this was an interesting trip, we had some meetings to take care off and we have postponed them for a while. We had to go to Sudan and so after some time we arranged it, three of us to go to the meeting. Only one of the three has been there before, I didn’t know what to expect and the funny part is that we were required to get a visa to go to Sudan, I honestly don’t know why.
Two options we had for flight were Emirates or Qatar Airways, and so we decided to go with Emirates since it was a shorter lay over. As we got to the connecting flight, the plane was one of the oldest I have seen from Emirates, an Airbus A330-200, even my seat rattled during take off and the guy next to me brought two bags of McDonalds to bring to his family as a gift. We landed after about four hours of flying, turns out the airport doesn’t have any tubes that connect to the plane, you take the stairs to microbuses that they pack full of people and herd them off. Immigrations looked like Friday market, people were piling up and some of these guys were pretty funny. As soon as we got in, we had our bags with us, and we walked out. We had dollars with us that we exchange for the Sudanese Pound, then we headed out, the parking lot is basically a dirt lot and nothing more, we drove to the hotel, took us about 10 minutes we saw nothing on the road. There were a lot of foreigners at the hotel, we decided to stay, eat and sleep because of the meeting the next morning.
We woke up, had breakfast, and went to the meeting. The first thing is that you can not find your way around Khartoum, the city has no main streets and traffic lights mean nothing, you have to take a crash course in tactical driving. We had our meeting, then met a friend from Kuwait who just got married, and one thing that we were amazed by is that Sudanese are some of very nice people. There aren’t a lot of towers in the city, one or two are being built and most buildings are one or two floor buildings, the streets are basic, the only paved one is in front of the government buildings over looking the Nile River. All I knew about the Nile was that its a very dirty river in Egypt, but in Sudan its a beautiful glimmering river, an amazing view with very nice people. When talking to a few Sudanese they were telling me that the reason people don’t seem to know how to drive with rules because cars have only been recently been made easy to purchase from the general public and they have made a truce in the south. An interesting people, they seem to be very nice, things have improved and they have learned to live with their embargo, it doesn’t help that their government has some issues but I’m not even jumping into that.
When we took off at the end of the day it was probably one of the worst experiences I have had in an airport in a while. They check you in, check in your bags, check that your on the flight, pretty much everything else manually, they manually do everything on paper, that took a while to do, I didn’t realize that it would take so long to check each person in, and you had to pay a fee to leave the country which I found to be pretty funny. After we were in, we waited in the Business/First Class lounge which wasn’t too bad, but when they called us it was like organizing a huge herd. When you have one security machine to go through and over 300 passengers to go through was a disaster, then they called another flight which also flood the security machine from the side and that turned into a shouting match. We got on the plane, I was thankful to be on the plane and heading back, it was an interesting trip and met some interesting people, if it wasn’t for the airport it would have been a pleasent trip. Khartoum is a very green city with beautiful natural views in all directions, but I was happy to be heading home.
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I had a one day trip to Jordan took the night flight, I had a choice of Jazeera, Wataniay or Royal Jordanian. I don’t like Jazeera, and Wataniya timing didn’t work for the meetings I had so I decided to take Royal Jordanian, their General Sales Agent in Kuwait is Al Sawan Co so I decided to book through them. Everything went smoothly, I got my tickets from the company and took off to Jordan. Spent the night at the Four Seasons, got really late check out from the same travel Agency, instead of a 12 pm check out they got me a 4 pm check out which was fantastic. And the hotel was very nice and clean, the staff was friendly. We even went to this restaurant called Reem Al Bawady and had mensef which is a dish which includes meat, rice, and yoghurt and its so good it puts you to sleep. It was a short trip and we flew back the same night as the meetings for work the next morning, landed in Kuwait around 1 am.
Overall, I really liked Royal Jordanian:
- The RJ staff are very friendly on the ground as well as the one on the plane
- They let you keep your brief case or hand bag next to you without having to shove it under the seat in front of you
- They know that an iPod or laptop won’t disrupt airplane electronics so they didn’t bother me during take off or landing, I kept watching my show forgetting that we were landing, she asked me just to put it away afraid that it will become a flying projectile upon landing which is a reasonable request but I kept playing Madden on my iPod
- The food was pretty good, not wow but not bad at all
- The price was reasonable, just a little cheaper then Wataniya since we booked it short notice 234 KD vs 217 for business class seats on those days
I had an early morning meeting in Jabal Ali Free Zone and I was told the permit takes some time. That was just the beginning of the whole shenanigans that was going to take place. We landed late last night, I pretty much wanted to crash but I didn’t seem to get much sleep for some reason. Instead we went early to the Free Zone and the took a lot longer then we thought, there were tons of lines for these trucks drivers and workers. After about an hour it was done and we went in, to say that Jabal Ali Free Zone is huge, is a complete understatement, its humongous, it took us 20 minutes to get to the warehouse inside and leaving took a little longer because of all the traffic. We managed to get a bite to eat at the hotel when the meeting was done and after that I snuck to go watch the G.I.Joe movie which I was looking forward to.
Something came up and we had to go to Bahrain for a meeting, checked on the flights and there wasn’t anything that fit our schedule so we decided to leave early in the morning. Took off to the border heading to Bahrain, the Khafji border didn’t take us 20 minutes and stereotypes are very true, we had nothing in the car and we wore dishdashas so at the border they stamped things quickly and at the Saudi Customs check they didn’t bother they just stamped and we went right through. We were on our way straight to Bahrain, we were discussing work, movies, and a ton of other things on the way there.
We go to Saudi/Bahrain border in under three hours which is pretty damn good but I also had a high average speed. This was pretty much a test for the Landcruiser crossing all the way to Bahrain, I wanted to see how the car handles and what it feels like. All I can say is that Toyota has created perfection with this machine, the drive was extremely smooth at speeds over 180kph, the brakes were fantastic and even with the heat we didn’t feel anything thanks to the excellent air conditioning and Huper Optik tint, the seats were very comfortable, great sound system, and the little fridge in the middle was very useful. We both had a spare dishdasha and chemaq ready for our meeting when we get there, it was that simple.
45 minutes from the border the gentlemen called us and delayed our meeting which worked to our benefit, called one of my friends and he gave me the address to Meat Co in Bahrain and we got to it, its in an Area called Aadliyah but they really changed it and it looks very nice. So many nice restaurants, I remember coming here back in November for GulfRun and it was all asphalt but now they made it even nicer with all the nice restaurants. Crossing the border in Bahrain took us about 45 minutes because of the traffic but we got in and had our lunch, we even had 45 minutes to spare which was perfect, we went into the meeting energized and ready. That went decently well to start with, but we need to have a few more meetings before we get into the project. We were done around 3:45 pm and we had some tea at a coffee shop and then headed to the border, we got there around 4:00 pm.
We got stuck at the Saudi/Bahrain Border for 1 hour and 36 minutes, I think snails were passing while we were stuck in that traffic and it wasn’t even a weekend. I was going nuts waiting, and we were getting tired from the wait, thats half the trip to Kuwait and I was hoping to be on the while there was sun light. We took off at around 5:40 pm, we just stopped at the gas station about 20 km from the border to pray, fill up gas, buy some candy and drinks to keep us energized the way back. Then I just took off, the lowest speed I was going at that point was 180 kph and tried keeping it at 200 kph. When in Bahrain and in Kuwait I drive around 120 to 140, but Saudi is like no man’s land, if you drive slow they run you off the road, so i just kept a high pace but you have to keep your eyes out for those changes in the road because of construction, there is always construction on that road, but its a straight line from Bahrain to Kuwait. We made great time, we go to the border at exactly 8:00 pm and it took us about 30 minutes to get through and even in Kuwait they didn’t bother checking the car which is funny because we could have snuck anything in. It was one hell of a trip but got a lot of work done and I got to test my car on a very long trip.
On the way back I had a two and half hour delay leading to four hours and half in a 20 year old Oman Air lounge. Those were probably the most uncomfortable couches I ever sat on, and sitting on it for several hours led to some pain in my neck and back. Even with all that I just couldn’t get mad at the people working there, they were very nice, polite and apologetic. The plane was an old Boeing 737-700, the Omani flight attendant was very nice, even when I fell asleep before the flight she asked me if I wanted to eat when there was 10 mins left before landing, and the plane was very quickly even though it was very old.
Oman has a natural mountainous and green areas, surrounded by the sea, especially Muscat. It has some very nice windy roads up the mountainous areas and some very nice coastal roads by the sea. All the roads are very smoothly paved, even though you can tell some areas need work, but the roads are extremely clean, and so are the side walks. You just get this feeling that every where is clean in Oman, and it feels so refreshing.
I managed to visit Sultan Qaboos Mosque which is an amazing piece of architecture, and a real work of art. It just has this heart warming and majestic feeling when you walk into it, and what I found to be amazing is that it is open to the general public during morning times for visits. The Omani curator and security were very friendly and asked if they could help me, and were willing to give me short private tour but I was on a schedule and unluckily for me I didn’t have the time but its worth it to come back and see it. Every Omani person that I met was more then friendly and helpful, they were genuinely nice and whenever they found out I was Kuwaiti they were extra nice, I don’t even know how to explain it.
For some people who were asking I was staying at the Grand Hyatt since it was closer to the location where I had my meetings and it was a very nice hotel, nothing special as others have mentioned of Shangri-La and Chedi but it was nice nonetheless. The one thing that I can’t stop repeating is how nice every once, even the expats who get used to this place love it. They do say that somethings are a bit slow but you can live with it, but what I would surprising is that Oman was only introduced to DSL about 3 to 4 years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to live like that, also there is a very sophisticated monitoring tool which makes our ISP blocking tools look like a cake walk. Oman is worth a visit again, I’m thinking about bringing my motorcycle for some nice rides and a good lunch. I didn’t have a enough time but I had a lot to take in. I always thought of Bahrainis as the nicest people in the Gulf, but I think the Omanis are even nicer, I don’t even know how to describe it, they are just extremely polite, nice, and kind people. Even during the meeting I felt embarrassed from one person who went out of his way, what an experience that I hope to repeat soon. I know I will be putting some mileage on my Landcruiser because I’m looking for a nice long drive and dragging my bike with me.
I came in late last night for a quick meeting that I have to attend and then back to Kuwait the next day. This is the first time I travel to Oman and surprisingly very few airlines fly to Oman. Oman Airways reminds me of Gulf Air back in the day, I refrained from having anything to eat on the plane even though I was hungry, I just had a gut feeling. Over the past year I have gotten used to planes having power plugs to run the laptop on so I didn’t charge my laptop this time around and so I only had about an hour of battery, but I passed out on my seat within 20 mins and slept the whole 2 hour flight to Muscat.
The airport looks like an old government building, but once you enter the people are very nice. Very nice is an understatement, they are extremely nice and the immigrations people were cracking jokes and asking why I don’t stay longer and next time to come in winter. The same case with the customs people, they were really nice, the driver we took from the airport was Omani as well and I just kept asking him questions. Their highway is very smooth and nice, and I asked about their speeding laws which seemed reasonable but everyone was driving in such a civil manner.
I don’t think there is much to do here, people were telling me about two specific hotels but they are resorts really and they said its mostly couples. What a very interesting country, but I should probably pass by when I’m not traveling for work.
So as we were heading to the airport we got swamped by a Mummy like Sandstorm or what was previously referred to as a Desert Fubuki. All flight were stopped coming in and out of Kuwait, this all took place over a matter of hours. We went and checked in, had dinner at Pizza Express, the crowds were huge and there was dust inside the Airport.
We decided to head in and wait in the lounge. As soon you walk in, Pearl lounge was so packed that people were standing by the door. The only few seats left was in the smoking lounge, I really think that Pearl lounge needs to be refurbished and some new life brought into it.
Originally our flight was supposed to take off at 9:30 pm to arrive at 12:00 am for a 3:00am connection. Instead we were delayed about 4 hours and we didn’t take off until 1:30 am Kuwait time, so missing our connection and we were rescheduled for a 9:35 am flight from Dubai to Singapore. We were messed up, not the right amount of sleep, a lot of annoyed people, and its not really the airlines fault but we still went to complain. Luckily we were the first to complain at the Dubai transfer desk and so they gave us a room at the Meridian Hotel right next door and we only slept about two hours but thats something at least before heading to the airport which was a 2 minute drive. We head breakfast in the lounge, lunch on the plane, and as soon as it was off I watched 1.5 movies and passed out. All this huge adventure just to get to Singapore and all the meetings, we were supposed to land at 2:55 pm but instead we landed at 9:20 pm so we lost most of the first day, but to say that Singapore is amazing is a complete understatement.
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