A L I R A: Saudi Arabia : Riyadh

So, finally my family went to Saudi (where else if its not Saudi?) for Umrah. After years of mom's promotion nazar and countless arguments about how we should arrange the trip.

The common Umrah trip is fully arranged by travel agent, right? You simply come to their office, fill in some docs, give a copy of the docs needed and pay some amount of money. They would take care the rest of the matters like visa thingy and such. But since Bapak's eldest brother currently work in Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, he wanted to pay a visit first.

In the end, we finally booked the flight first after we set the date, August 16-24. The only direct flight for Jakarta-Riyadh-Jakarta is operated by Saudi Arabian Airlines. Mom was a total drama queen about it. She didn't trust ANY airlines beside Garuda, SQ, MAS, and few more 'big' names and she even wanted to cancel the whole trip just few days before, because she hated to go with a 'strange' airlines. It changed after we arrived in Riyadh tho :P

our luggages

we have 2 persons named Dwipayana/A within the fam -_-

Our departure was in problem when we figured out that our visa is expired. It's only a day-gap tho. We didn't know a thing because everything was written in Arabic letters, without harakat. The airlines refused to carry us or something like that, I'm not too sure. But someone helped us to talk to the airlines manager because Bapak was a hundred percent sure that his bro would get clear of everything as long as we already arrive in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabian Airlines was a really nice airlines. I love the variety of movies and songs they offered on board. The skysales items was really nice too. The seat was very comfortable and Mom really loved it! She keep telling how cheap the tickets we got (it's not that cheap tho) and how nice the flights were. If only the male flight attendants could be more friendly, haha.

We finally arrived after the 9 hours flight. No jetlag, surprisingly. It was the longest flight that Ero and I ever had.
First impression of Riyadh International Airport was messy. I don't wanna write such a long paragraph about it tho. Suvarnabhumi and Changi is still much better. Well even Tan Son Nhat (is the spelling correct?) in Ho Chi Minh is a lot brighter and much convenient.

We weren't directly going to Diplomatic Quarters, a huge complex where most of the embassies and home office located, but having a quick city tour first. Ah yea, all women MUST wearing Abaya in Riyadh. Moeslem or not, love it or not. If you're not Moeslem, it's ok to not wear hijab. And for the locals, they MUST wear abaya + veil(cadar) and hijab. And everything must be all black :)

I hate it. Seriously.
I keep my short pants and T-shirt inside my abaya, sih :P

memorial photo from Kingdom level 99!

taken at Kingdom level 99

In Saudi, they even separate the queue for woman and man in every food court/food stall. Well they're so concerned about the religion's law. But they're so modern tho. Most or Arabians are rich so they could afford gadgets and going around the world easily. It's common for them to have a trip to Europe, United States or Malaysia instead of going to another city within the country or Arab Gulf.

The city tour ended on 1 AM. It was August 17 already and my family wanted to attend the August 17 annual ceremony, super limited chance of celebrating independence day outside the country, in Indonesia Embassy. The ceremony was held on 6 AM local time or 10 AM in Jakarta. The main reason to held ceremony that early was because it's already bright and super hot in 7 AM. The desert climate makes it all dry and cruel to our skin :(