Growing up, my father was a General Superintendent of Construction for Fluor which led us to lots of interesting places and we got to meet lots of interesting people.

In 1977 after my dad finished building the terminal berths at the end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, we moved from a double-wide trailer in Valdez, Alaska to a single-wide trailer in a British / French / American compound in Rahima, Eastern Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As a 7 year old, I had no idea what we were getting into. But as a kid, you just kind of go where your parents tell you to go (and watch out for Bears and Killer Whales obviously).

I still remember that first night arriving in Dhahran and asking my mom why all these people were dressed like they were in The Bible. And our two Korean drivers holding the sign for my dad Mr. Waco and driving us through the desert at night in a Chevrolet Suburban while I marvelled at the flares in the distance. Quite a change from Alaska and Puerto Rico where we had lived previously.

I have fond memories of the times when we would get to go to the Aramco compound at Ras Tanura to go to the movie theatre, or to attend Protestant services on Friday mornings with lunch afterwards at the beach side snack bar. Shopping in Rahima, or even bus trips to Jubail and my mom bringing me back a can of tamales. That was my favourite food at that point.

Going to "Cheap Charlies" in Rahima and having the Saudi ladies run their fingers through my blond mop of hair. Scared me at the time. The Gold Souks in Dammam, getting to drive a Caterpillar bulldozer at my dad's work. It wasn't as cool as getting to fly an airplane over a glacier in Alaska but not, bad.

Vacation in Europe - Amsterdam, West Germany, Paris, etc. It was quite a trip for a young kid.

Later we lived in the master planned community at Al-Jubail and finally left in 1985 after I graduated from 9th Grade.

There's a finality that I could never explain to anybody who didn't live there but, that final PanAm Flight 024 in a 747SP from Dhahran to JFK, knowing that you could never go back... it was devastating. Literally took years to recover from.

In September of 2019, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia finally opened up to tourism. I jumped on it and got a tourist visa right away. Then Covid hit, cancelling my plans to return "home".

A few weeks ago, I got a message from the Saudi Ministry of Tourism letting me know that they decided to extend my tourist visa until April 2022. i talked things over with my manager, I took a look at all my flight options and I'm going to be able to do it.

I plan to visit my childhood homes and many of the interesting Saudi cultural sites and then, my final stop will be the Inaugural Saudi Arabian Formula 1 race in Jeddah.

As an unvaxxed, Covid recovered person, I will have to quarantine for 5 days on arrival in Dammam and I'll have to take two PCR tests 5 days apart for them to release me.

I just booked my flights and I still can't believe this is going to happen. Time to go buy some F1 tix.

I'll attempt to update this thread with pix along the way.

Well that dream is put back on hold for now.
Tonight I cancelled my trip to Saudi Arabia.

It's funny about people's perceptions. My manager had already approved my time off and when I told him that I was cancelling my trip, his first question was if it was due to civil unrest "over there".

So, i had to come clean with him which was, after much research, it appears that I would be allowed to enter the country, forced to quarantine for 5 days but upon release from quarantine, I would not have the correct "immune" aka - vaccinated status to be able to do much of anything. I wouldn't even be allowed to enter a grocery store.

Reading online, it seems that some Saudi businesses are more lackadaisical than others about checking people's status in the Talwakkana App on your phone. I also read accounts from people who had everything in order but couldn't get a 4G signal, or couldn't get the app to respond and were forced to miss business meetings because the guard wouldn't let them into the hotel until he saw vax proof on the app.

Curiously this coincides with LA City going into further Covid restrictions where you will now have to show your vax status to enter a bar or restaurant. And it coincides with the release of the OSHA order regarding - vax or else they're coming for your livelihood.

As some on this site may remember, I have had Covd more than once. I got the OG Covid straight out of Wuhan on Jan. 31, 2020, got LA Covid which hit me hard for about 5 days in December 2020, got the Delta on June 17, 2021. Still testing positive for antibodies as of Sept. 1, 2021.

I'm optimistic that things will change in the future regarding vaccine mandates and their requirement for travel. We'll see.

My current KSA tourist visa is good until April 2022. i did see that Saudi Arabia is campaigning to host Expo 2030 in Riyadh. We'll see. There might be another opportunity in the future to go back.

With the latest OSHA mandate, we'll see how that plays out. I might wind up having to get the shot anyway. Just have to take a real hard look and decide whether I'm going to deny science and my conscience and sheep my way along.

Thanks to FlowCtrl and one of my childhood friends who is a helicopter pilot for Aramco. Both were instrumental in helping me arrive at this decision. I'm majorly disappointed but, I'm also a lifelong Astros fan so, I'm used to being disappointed.

Thanks for reading and I'm sorry to disappoint. Now for tonight's travel, redeye from LAX-IAH ahead of BTHO Auburn.

It's finally happening.

It's kind of funny because so many changes have happened during the past 4 years.

I've relocated to Galveston so I'm leaving from. iAH on Monday, May 12th.

I have a new manager who ironically, grew up in Riyadh but is a total dickweed when it comes to taking time off.

My father passed away 2 weeks ago in Waco which has frankly, sent me into a very reminiscent mindset.

I'm going to spend 4 days in the former West Germany on the way over. Dad was stationed in Stuttgart and took us there when I was a kid so I'm interested to re-visit it.

I'm going to hit a couple other stops in Germany including Baden-Baden where I got lost in December of 1977 which set the course of the rest of my life with respect to land navigation.

In KSA, goals are to see the projects my dad built and the school I attended in the early 1980s.

Then Guns and Roses concert in Riyadh on the 23rd of May.

On the 25th of May, I intend to spend the day on the slopes, snowboarding at the Dubai Mall.

On Monday the 26th, it's. A380 First Class on Emirates nonstop to Houston.

I'll add some pix when it's all said and done.

This is a lifelong dream and I'm so excited I can't even articulate it accurately.

Overnight from CLT to LHR connecting to FRA - now ...

Literally 40 years in the making
As they say, it's all happening.

Prior to 2019, Saudi Arabia did not allow tourism.

If you were Muslim, you could make the Pilgrimage and do an Umrah visit but that was the only way into The Kingdom unless you had a job there.

The Saudis didn't want their young people between the ages of 15-25 being influenced by foreigners. So, you had to be 25 y/o to get a work visa and they had the schools for foreigners stop at 9th Grade.

If your parents still were living in The Kingdom, you were allowed 3 return visits while you were a student and that was it.

So from 10th Grade through the end of College, you would only be permitted to visit your parents in country - 3 times.

If your parents left, as mine did when I graduated 9th Grade, you could never go back at all.

Now, funnily enough, I had two friends who enlisted in the Marine Corps who managed to make it back to our town and visit the school during Operation Desert Storm.

It's almost showtime.

I'm checked in for my flight tomorrow from Frankfurt to Dubai connecting to Dammam.

Received a lot of picture requests from friends. Mostly for pictures of their old houses.

I'll write it up. There's so much to cover.

Quick summary - it was amazing and I'm so glad I did it.

I've been back for about 6 weeks now and I've been trying to get my method of picture posting sorted out but so far I've failed. But... the good news is, I have Monday off work so I can finally catch up on posting this.

I'm going to go day-by-day for the two week trip so please bear with me as I get to the highlights.

Day 1 - Monday, May 12th 2025 - IAH to CLT to LHR using American Airlines points to fly First Class
It's the standard deal, decided to drive myself from my home in Galveston to IAH and park my beast (2014 BMW 760 Li) in the extra-wide spaces at The Parking Spot #2 on Will Clayton (Jetero when I was a kid and Houston was considered our home of record)

Boarded the A321 in First to Charlotte
Arrived at CLT with like a 6 hour layover so I headed for the AA Lounge which I knew wouldn't have any substantial food but, I needed WiFi to wrap up a couple work things.
In the lounge - because I was there for so long, I saw some turnover of people sitting by me.
The funniest thing was this 70+ y/o lady (who was probably a real firecracker in the 1970s) picked up on my Texas A&M shirt and started chatting me up about the Philadelphia Eagles - who... used to have a lot of Aggies on Defense. Anyway, it was nice being hit on by a 70+ y/o woman (she was at least 15 years older than me) because normally, it's only gay guys who hit on me.

Overnight to London Heathrow where I don't think I'd been since about 1978. 777, seat 2J in "Flagship First" which basically meant that I had a bigger seat and got some pajamas. Snapped some pictures flying over Nova Scotia at night and arrival over England the next morning. There's just something about the colour of green in England and the fields that is just fascinating.

Now, on arrival at LHR, the one thing I really screwed up because I had my head up my butt and forgot that I was in First Class was - I spent about 90 minutes in the airport trying to charge my phone before I figured out that I was entitled not only to Lounge Access, but to First Class Lounge Access.

Now as it turns out, the British Airways First Class Lounge was about equivalent to Qantas or Emirates Business Class. At least I was able to grab a few croissants and two beers before boarding my flight to Frankfurt.

I did have the specially brewed beer for BA - Speedbird OG

Day 3 - Wednesday, May 14th 2025 - Drive from Baden-Baden to Munich

After my epic casino performance this morning, I head downstairs to eat breakfast in the same restaurant where I ate dinner at last night. The breakfast was epic and I totally got my 5 pieces of bacon plus all kinds of other options.

Breakfast is my favorite meal so I ate it up - local honey and all. The 5 pieces of bacon refers to my grandfather who fought through the South Pacific against the "Dirty Nasty Japs". Long story but it has to do with them finally reaching a chow hall with bacon and a loudmouth New Yorker taking 5 bacon strips when they were supposed to only take 2 and my grandfather not getting any bacon. Honestly, I can't even imagine. I think I would have killed the guy. But hey, The Greatest Generation was way more chivalrous than we are.

So, I go for a morning walk around Baden-Baden and figure out the most important things to me:
1 - where we stayed in 1977-78 - I now believe it was - Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa
2 - the shop where I got separated from my parents almost 50 years ago - which I believe was - on Lichtentaler Str

During the walk around Baden-Baden, I was thirsty so I wandered into a grocery store that appeared to be Russian. Later I found out that after the Czars banned gambling, a lot of Russians moved to Baden-Baden.

Next, I needed to drive to Munich to make the BMW Museum Tour.

EDIT: I ran out of gas last night when I was typing this up so I hit Save and went to bed. Here's the other highlights of Day 3.

Got my Audi A6 from the Valet and headed out to take the A5 to the A8 through Stuttgart en route to the BMW Museum.

I figured I'd get a good 2-3 hours at the museum. They offered guided tours but the English ones were all sold out and I didn't think it would make sense to tag along on the German language tour.

Got up to about 180 kmh on the A5 following a guy in a VW Passat headed back to Dusseldorf. German license plates indicate which city they're from so that's how I knew where that guy was most likely headed. Also, people could see my Wiesbaden license plates and know that I'm not a local.

I was cruising along on the A8 figuring I'd arrive with 3 hours available to tour the BMW Welt and BMW Museum. Then just east of Stuttgart, I came upon a massive crash that closed the Autobahn for about 45 minutes. Once all the cars stopped, I was probably 500m from where the crash happened. I could see the emergency vehicles ahead.

There were two interesting things about the crash and the drivers responses.
1 - as the traffic was going to come to a complete stop, the drivers turned their hazard lights on as a way to "pass it back (Aggies)" that there was a wreck ahead and we would be slowing down
2 - when the cars stopped, they parted like the Red Sea and left a clear lane for Ambulances to get through. The leftmost lane went up against the barrier on the left and the two right lanes shifted to the right.

While we were sitting there, 4 ambulances (with those annoying Euro sirens) came through to head to the crash.

As I drove past the crash, I saw an older (probably 70) fit man in a Porsche Panamera that was crashed into the median barrier and what I think could have been a VW Passat or something like that which looked like it had rolled over at least once. It was smashed to hell. It looked like a couple other vehicles had already been hauled off.

So, I get to the BMW Welt and park with less than 90 minutes to hit the BMW Welt and the Museum. I ran through the Museum as quickly as I could and took lots of pictures.
https://www.bmw-welt.com/en/index.html

I'm somewhat of a BMW fanboy so I was interested to see as much as I could but, I didn't have enough time to really enjoy it. There's lots of history, technology, futures, cars, motorcycles and airplane engines. The other part that was very interesting was the WWII - mea culpa about using labor from Jews, POWs and Eastern Europeans.

I've toured the 9/11 museum in NYC and if you want to see the pictures of the Jumpers, etc., you have to go behind a curtain so to speak. BMW's WWII display was behind pictures of obvious Jewish concentration camp people. Once inside, there was a lot of interesting information plus a disclosure that if you wanted more information, they had records in their archives that you could search.

Of the 3 car manufacturer museums I toured, BMW was definitely the most guilty.

Afterwards, I checked into the Moxy hotel near the Ostbahnhof and took the S8 Train into Munich for dinner at a restaurant I discovered in Luxembourg a few years ago called Vapiano.
https://vapiano.com/

After that, I went to the Hofbrauhaus but got there too late for merchandise so I'd need to return the next day.

I wound up at some bar near the hotel that was full of Serbians and other Eastern Europeans.

I finished the night at the hotel bar around 3am (this lobby bar never closes) talking with some 30 y/o commercial real estate girl from Scotland who was working hard on closing a business deal with some 55-60 y/o balding British guy and I think she was probably giving away the shop if you know what I mean. They left in the same elevator and I waited until they were gone to make my exit. Fun times.

Day 4 - Thursday, May 15th 2025 - Munich to Berchtesgaden and back

The timing of my dates in different cities for the Germany portion of my trip was determined based on which days I was able to secure tickets for the car museums. I had also tried to get tickets with some sort of tour group to go to Hitler's Eagles Nest but that didn't work out.

I still wanted to see if there was any way to get to the Eagle's Nest so I headed out to Berchtesgaden.
Side note - the Eagle's Nest only opens in mid-May every year so this was the beginning of their season.

This was part of Germany I had not been to before so if there's anything to know about me and my personality it is that if there's a place to go or a sight to see and I've never been there before, I'm in. I figured even if I didn't make it to the Eagle's Nest, I'm sure that I'd see something worthwhile in the Bavarian Alps.

I had two side missions for souvenirs:
1 - A real German hat
2 - A real stein from a beer hall or gasthaus

I moved from Los Angeles to Galveston in 2023 in time to go to Oktoberfest and I saw a lot of guys wearing German hats with feathers and pins, etc. I have a major imposter/poser syndrome so some $40 hat from a vendor at the Galveston Oktoberfest wasn't going to do it for me. I had to have the real thing from Bavaria.

When my father was in West Germany from 1959-1962, his job was putting in missile sites and they would spend a lot of time out in the field and would frequent small German gasthauses. My father picked up a collection of steins from these places and I wanted to get one of my own.

It was only this year that I realized that my father had a Top Secret clearance because he knew where all the missile sites were but, if you were a Soviet spy who wanted to socially engineer where the missile sites were, probably all you'd need to do is look at my father's collection of steins because they all had the name of the gasthaus and the town they were in.

After the 3 am late night, I woke up late and didn't get going early enough. It was about a 2-3 hour drive to Berchtesgaden and there was a lot of construction along the way.

I finally needed to refuel the car so I stopped at one of the roadside gas stations on the A8. I paid about $10 USD per gallon. Later I figured out that gas in town was only about $8 per gallon (reasonable by comparison).

I enjoyed the travel through Southern Bavaria and when I got into the Alps, the towns genuinely had buildings that looked like the stereotypical Alpine buildings you might see at Disney or something.

I brought my new ski jacket and needed it. When I got to Berchtesgaden, it was less than 10C / 50F and raining.

I arrived about 15 minutes past 4pm and I had missed the last bus to the Eagle's Nest so I just walked around town. One of the first businesses I came across had what I was looking for - Lederhosen and an authentic Bavarian hat.

Turns out, you can spend $1,600 or more on Lederhosen if you want. The ladies Dirndl dresses were pretty reasonable - less than $150. My hat wound up costing about 130 Euro and I bought a belt for another 50 Euro so I was out of there for less than 200 Euro. Which, thanks to my poker winnings back in Baden-Baden, I gladly paid cash.

The place I bought it from was probably the Cadillac of Lederhosen - Aigner.
https://lederhosen-aigner.de/

I'll tell you what though, it was nice being waited on by 60 year old German women who knew what you wanted / needed and went the extra mile to make sure that everything was the right size so you'd be happy with your purchase. That is the kind of service that doesn't really exist in the USA anymore (at least not in my recent experience).

I'd definitely like to go back but, it is a journey to get there so it could be a while if I ever get back now that I'm in my mid-50s.

The last thing I did in Berchtesgaden was try to buy a stein from a bier haus. The guy was offended that I asked if I could purchase one of their steins and he directed me to the Lotto gift shop. I bought some stickers and a 0.5L Hofbrauhaus Berchtesgaden stein.

On the way back, I took the more direct route cutting through Austria to get to the A8.

There was absolutely no border security to get from Germany to Austria but on The A8 heading into Germany, they were stopping cars and inspecting them.

Since I had German plates on my Audi and my physical appearance looks German, they just waved me through. But the cars from Eastern Europe were all getting stopped.

I was marginally stressed because the Turkish rental car guys back in Frankfurt wanted me to pay more if I was going to take the car out of Germany. I blew it off and the only thing that might show up is the toll charges. So far - 2 months on, I haven't seen any additional charges or speed camera tickets (like they got me with back in 2017 in Hessen - it cost me more in wire transfer fees than the actual cost of the ticket).

I got back into Munich and headed to Hofbrauhaus for dinner where I had Goulash - a dish my father first introduced me to in West Germany in 1978. It was great.

I had a ticketed tour at Mercedes the next morning in Stuttgart so I hit the Hofbrauhaus gift shop and called it an early night because I needed to get on the road early.

Day 5 - Friday, May 16th 2025 - Munich to Stuttgart for the Mercedes Museum Tour

Got up early because my tour for the Mercedes Museum was at 10 am and I figured it might take 3 hours to get there. For breakfast, I grabbed a croissant from a little grocery store along with some orange juice and water and then got on the road.

One the way there, I got passed by a German Army G-Wagen that was doing about 95 mph on the Autobahn. I arrived at the Mercedes museum with just enough time to spare. Later, I'll try to post some pics on the Automotive board about the 3 museums.

The Mercedes one was the most elaborate and the most interesting. And because they rotate their exhibits regularly, you can take the tour every six months and see some different stuff. Their rotating exhibit this time was a 90s theme which highlighted interesting cars that they made during the 1990s. The crazy part for me is that the 90s is now 30 years ago.

The Mercedes Museum is on the grounds where they first started and they still have a test track there. We could see a big truck out on the test track during our tour.
https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/art-and-culture/museum/

There's no way I could possibly describe everything there is to see there but they've got everything there. They do mention that they built aircraft engines and heavy trucks during WWII but they kind of gloss over it.

The English language tour was great and I'd definitely do it again. The interesting thing is that I had to wait 47 years to take it because when we were there in 1978, the Mercedes factory was closed due to a bomb threat. In 1978, we went to the Porsche factory but arrived just as they were closing. But, the German workers at the end of the line gave us some Porsche stickers so that left a good memory with this kid.

At the end of the Mercedes tour, the tour guide said, if you're going to go over and take the Porsche Tour to mention his name and they might give you a discount. I was so wrapped up with everything else that I hadn't even thought about going to the Porsche Museum.

I ate lunch at the Swabian Cafe in the Mercedes Museum and then headed over to the Porsche Musuem. One great take away was the Swabish Potato Salad. It tasted good and wasn't gross like the Potato Salad I see in America so frequently.

The Porsche Museum in Zuffenhausen is in the same location that we went to in 1978 and frankly - other than the 3 Porsche cars in the roundabout, the facilities look much the same as they did back then.

I did the self-guided tour with the English headset and enjoyed it but I kind of got my limit on looking at the 356, 911, 917 and even the 959s they had on display. If you like Porsches at all, I highly recommend it.

I looked through their WWII section and it was very interesting. They had the Maus (model), the Schwimwagen, and of course what would become the VW Beetle.

The most interesting part was that Ferdinand Porsche and his son Ferry toured Ford in Detroit in 1936 and learned how to mass produce cars from Ford.

The interesting thing is that Porsche planned to make Volkswagen after the war but, that was essentially taken from him. Also, Porsche was bombed in Stuttgart and they relocated to Graz, Austria for the remainder of the war.

Afterwards, I checked into the Moxy Feuerbach and headed into the central part of Stuttgart for dinner. It's light until 9 pm so I had plenty of time.

One funny thing on the train into Konigsplatz was a French businessman asking me for directions - as if I was a local. He didn't speak any English (or German) but luckily, I did take enough French as a kid to remember basic greetings, numbers, etc. So I was able to communicate with the French guy enough to let him know how many more stops we had before we exited the train.

I walked around Konigsplatz which is one of the places my dad took us so that was nice to see in person for the first time since I was 8 years old.

Now after spending 3 years of Los Angeles Covid, the next part was incredible.

I had dinner at Vapiano Stuttgart and then walked across the street where a lot of people were gathered at an outdoor bar called Palast Republik. Honestly, it was so busy, it reminded me of Northgate in College Station in its heyday. The bar served some sort of local beer called Schwaben Brau.

The most impressive thing was that they only served two kinds of beer so when you walked up to the bar, they had it ready to go and you handed them 5 Euro and they handed you a beer. There were probably 400 people standing outside drinking at this place. After what happened to the bar scene in Los Angeles, it was wonderful to see young Germans out partying like Covid never happened.

I walked up 10 stories to the top of a parking garage to go to a bar called Sky Beach which unfortunately was closing. Keep in mind summer hadn't really hit yet. After that, I walked quite a ways to a bar called Mos Eisley. Then, I took a train back to the hotel and finished up there, getting ready for the next morning when I had to drive back to Frankfurt and ultimately fly to Saudi Arabia via Dubai.
https://skybeach.de/en/

One of the cool things I got to see at the Mercedes Museum was an Art Car by the local rapper named "Cro". My youngest daughter turned me onto Cro and I happen to really like his song "Traum"

Day 6 - Saturday, May 17th 2025 - Stuttgart to Frankfurt to Dubai

Woke up with a mix of excitement and apprehension as I prepared for the main event of this trip, my First Class Emirates A380 ride culminating in my arrival in Dammam for the first time in 40 years. The excitement due to it's finally happening, the apprehension because I can't believe it finally really is happening. One of those days I've literally spent 4 decades waiting for.

Grabbed another croissant, drink and petrol from a service station across from Bosch and headed out. One thing that was a little challenging with respect to navigation was the fact that my phone and my rental car sometimes showed different routes and different speed limits. Neither one was correct 100% of the time so I frequently had to compare them both and then choose a course of action.

I headed north on the A81 towards Heilbronn where I picked up the A6. I was seeing two parallel routes to the Frankfurt Flughaven - A6, or A5. The A5 went past Heidelberg and I had a little extra time so decided to do that.

I had been to the Heidelberg Castle as a kid and had fond memories of riding the streetcar trams in Heidelberg. So, I thought hey, I'll drive up to the castle and see what it looks like today. Maybe get out of the car and walk around a little bit.

The castle is quite a ways from the A5 so by the time I got there and couldn't really find any place to park, it was pretty much time to start heading to the airport - especially since I still had to clear the Turkish Rental Car Mafia turn-in process. I'll have to come back to Heidelberg another time.

At the airport, I walk past the masses of regular people waiting to check in at Emirates and I walk right up to the First Class counter and get my boarding pass that says 1A. The lounge wasn't very special but, I got fueled up enough to prepare for the flight.

The gate lounge had no AC and 300-400 people waiting around and it was getting sweaty. They finally called for First Class boarding and away we go.

The seat was elaborate. There were all kinds of snacks and a refrigerator with drinks. Gigantic screen, I think 3 windows in my little suite and - a door that I could close. I think the entertainment screen was maybe 30 inches or so, it was huge.

Then there was the service. Emirates hires all kinds of pretty girls from all over the world as cabin crew. And they usually make an announcement that of their 20ish flight attendants, they speak like 14 or so languages.

So much to my surprise, this young Vietnamese girl shows up and says - welcome Mr HollywoodBQ in a Sydney accent. I asked, oh, are you from Sydney? She says, yeah, is my accent that strong? I told her that I used to live in The Northern Beaches and she said that she was from out west and didn't really know where the Northern Beaches were.

Side note - when the Vietnamese refugees came to Australia, they were all settled in a Western Sydney town called Cabramatta.

Anyway, after that exchange, a new Flight Attendant showed up - a young man of Indian heritage from Mauritius. I never saw the young Aussie again until I exited the aircraft. I'm not sure what happened but, I hope that girl didn't think I was hitting on her or something. I wasn't even drunk (yet) LOL. I was genuinely excited to be flying on Emirates and genuinely excited to meet an Aussie out in the wild after 5 years of being away from Australia.

When you're in First Class, basically, the rules don't apply to you and there are many options that you have available like pajamas and in this case - the option to take a shower.

I booked my shower for 2 hours prior to landing in Dubai. Basically the way it works is that they have two showers at the front of the upstairs of the A380. The flight deck is downstairs from the First Class Cabin. You get 5 minutes worth of water and have the option to stop/start the water so you can conserve water while lathering up. And I'll tell you what. You take a shower just before you land and you feel like a million bucks.

During the flight, they serve you whatever food you want, whenever you want. The one thing the kid from Mauritius sold me on was the Caviar. It starts with - Mr. HollywoodBQ, what do you like with your Caviar, sir? (As if I've had Caviar all the time)

I didn't want to disappoint the guy with my trailer trash self so I asked him what his recommendation was. He told me that he would bring me a sample of everything so, I tried it all. Honestly, I wasn't too impressed with Caviar. It was OK but not something I would go out of my way to purchase.

In First Class, they kept the drinks flowing. Starting with the Dom Perignon 2015 as a pre-takeoff drink. And they refilled that glass many times. I did enjoy the Dom. After a few hours, the first bottle was finished so the attendant went to get another bottle which he later told me that he needed to have that bottle finished before we landed. I said - there's no way I can drink that much champagne by myself and he told me, don't worry, there is another passenger who is also drinking it. We did accomplish that mission of finishing off the second bottle of Dom.

Arrival in Dubai was interesting. I was met at the gate by a woman dressed in Emirates Flight Attendant garb holding a sign with my name on it. She escorted me to a golf cart and then we took a golf cart for what seemed like miles to get to a security line. At the security line, she walked right up to the front and had me cut the entire line.

She then escorted me to another golf cart and took me to the First Class Lounge which of course was opulent. I'd actually been to this lounge before on one of my previous flights between Australia and Europe. But I enjoyed it for the 90 minutes or so before my flight to Dammam.

After a few beers, it's time to leave for Saudi Arabia and I start walking because the gate is a ways away. I get there and I see the signs that say - Last Call, and there's nobody else in the waiting area at the gate.

I scan my boarding pass, show my passport and head downstairs because this is one of the situations where they bus you out to the 777. There is a waiting area for the buses to take you to the aircraft and I see a bunch of people get on the bus.

I walk up to the counter and show my First Class boarding pass and the gate agent tells me - this is not my bus. A few minutes later, she makes a call for Business Class and those people load up on that bus. I'm starting to panic a little bit because I don't want to miss my flight. I ask - can I get on this Business Class bus and she says, you can but... that's not your bus.

I'm really starting to freak out at this point. I'm thinking to myself - why can't I get on the bus to the plane? She must have a reason. I said, since this isn't my bus, where is my bus and she says, oh, it's just there (points outside) but, it's not ready to go yet and it's loud out there. I ask, can I go ahead and get on that bus? She says yes and escorts me out to what I figured out is the First Class bus.

Basically, think of it like a Las Vegas Bachelor Party bus. It's myself and about 10 Saudi men on board this custom bus in our plush leather seats spaced out with plenty of room for all of our luggage, etc.

We finally get to the plane, walk up the stairs and get to my private First Class Suite Cabin. At this point, my alcohol consumption is finished for the next 7 days. The flight attendant brings around some Arabic Coffee and I reflexively thank him in Arabic by saying "Shukran" and he replies with "Afwan". It was like the cobwebs were getting cleaned off of all those old Arabic phrases I used to use 40 years ago.

We taxi out for a relatively short 777 flight with a 2:30am arrival time in Dammam.

Day 7 - Sunday, May 18th 2025 - Dammam to Al-Khobar to Al-Jubail

Arrive at Dammam which is not the same airport I left from back in 1985. In those days it was Dhahran that had the nonstop to JFK. Dhahran was shared with the Saudi Air Force. Dammam is just a regular civilian airport.

Roll up to the immigration which is modern, light up glass door lanes. I guess one thing I forgot to mention is that you can do an on-arrival tourist visa now but I went ahead and secured my tourist visa a week or two before I left.

The lane I go to is staffed by a Saudi woman wearing a full Abaya and veil. Her eyes were visible but you have to understand, for me, it is weird to see a Saudi woman holding a job, much less a Saudi woman in a public facing job.

By this time of day - 3 am or whatever, my hands are dry and I can not get my fingerprints to read on the glass scanner. And the way the Saudis want your fingerprints is all 4 fingers together - at the same time. My Aggie ring and my dry fingers meant that this process took several minutes. She must have scanned my fingers at least 25 times even with the application of hand sanitizer.

I get into the country eventually and collect my luggage. Now I have to figure out the Uber to the Hotel at 3:30 am or whatever. Before I forget, one lesson I learned years ago in Japan is - don't leave the airport without local currency. So, I exchanged 200 Euro of my Baden-Baden poker winnings for Saudi Riyals.

So as I'm trying to get my phone on the network, I walk through the gauntlet of taxi scammers. My gameplan was to get my phone on the 5G network, or on the airport WiFi and order an Uber. The airport WiFi sucked and it took me at least 15 minutes to get my phone on the cellular network.

There was one Saudi guy (slang for friend in Arabic is "Sadik" or "Siddiqui") who just wouldn't leave me alone. He kept trying me to get into his taxi and he would take me to my hotel, etc. And I'm thinking it was hilarious because I've seen all these scams before - 40 years earlier. The absolute funniest thing was when I told the guy I was trying to order an Uber and he said - "I am Uber". I thought it was like Judge Dredd - "I am the Law".

Finally got the Uber ordered and a big Suburban took me through the desert to my hotel at Le Meridien in Al-Khobar. Which a Suburban in the middle of the night was exactly how I first arrived in Saudi Arabia from Alaska in 1977.

Get to the hotel and get to my room at 4:30 am. It's a French hotel so they have a nice bathroom with a bidet, plenty of bottled water and a balcony. As I'm getting ready for bed, the sun is starting to come up. Where the Eastern Province sits in the time zone, the sun comes up really early. The first prayer call is about an hour before sunrise so that had already happened.
https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/dhamd-le-meridien-al-khobar/experiences/

One observation I had on the way to the hotel is that my Uber driver was driving like crazy but once he got into Al-Khobar, he started driving very cautiously. I noticed they have speed cameras so I guess they must write some tickets.

Went to bed and woke up mid-morning. Headed downstairs for brunch because I was hungry by now.

The strangest thing to me was the Saudi woman with her face uncovered who directed me to my table. She was wearing blue contacts and had one of the standard I'm a Millenial wrist tattoos. It was shocking to me.

Had some Lebanese type food for lunch and then got ready to Uber back to the airport to get my rental car for the week.

I had booked via National and the local National affiliate appeared to be some sort of local franchisee. Back when I was a kid, it seemed like everything was owned by Al-Ghosabi Trading Company. I don't know who owned the rental car place but... the rental car guy didn't speak any English and I wound up having to log into his iPhone to complete the electronic rental contract. It was a much different experience than what I just finished at Frankfurt.

Get in the rental car and exiting the airport, there are two options - left to Al-Jubail, right/straight to Dammam.

Head out toward your modern super highway but to make the left turn to head north, there are no traffic control measures of any kind. So, I figure out that when I saw an opportunity, I just had to go for it.

Drove north towards my hometown and finally made it. Along the way, I could tell that there had been a tremendous amount of development since I left. A few things were exactly the same - like driving. But... it wasn't the wild west that it used to be. They have posted speed limits now, traffic signals and speed cameras.

I forgot to mention earlier that one of the strange things I saw in my Uber on the way to the airport was my first female Saudi driver. She was in a Mercedes GLE which... had been rear ended. So, the very first female Saudi driver I saw was in fact driving a car that had been wrecked.

As I got into my hometown, I drove past the petrochemical plant that my father built from 1981-1985 and then I exited off the freeway towards where I used to live.

When they first built out Jubail Industrial City in the late 1970s, they laid out some residential camps starting with numbers 1-5 for Asian workers, then Camps 6,7,8 which were all trailers. Camp 9 was more permanent types of housing but not real permanent and Camp 9A was the expat Mens Camp. Those were all gone now.

But what did remain was Camps 10 (Al-Lulu) and 11 (Al-Huwaylat) with their permanent housing and the newer Haii Al-Fanateer and a bunch of other growth beyond that. When I lived in Jubail, it was about 50,000 people. Nowdays, it's almost 500,000. The vision has been realized.

At this point, I didn't need Google Maps. I was home. For the first time in 40 years, I was home.

My first tourist act was to drive to the old Camp 9 ball fields where we used to play baseball and soccer. There were soccer goals on the field and the old chain link backstop and dugouts where still there.

I walked the old basepaths, stood at home plate for a minute and... I cried. I cried like a little baby because after 40 years, I was at the physical location where me and my friends spent numerous weekends playing baseball for several years. And just standing there, thinking about the fact that my friends could show up at any minute. And what we would do after practice or after a game. Me and a Dutch friend used to ride our bikes over to a French bakery in Camp 9 and buy croissants for 1 Saudi Riyal (about 33 cents). It felt kind of like old times.

Next, I drove over to my house. Remember - I'm not using navigation at this point, I'm just driving back to my house.

I roll up and see what has changed in the past 40 years. What I figured out is that these houses must have private ownership now because a lot of them are customized versus the plain concrete pre-fabricated houses that we lived in.

As I parked my car and started taking pictures of my house, there was a young Saudi guy named Abdullah who was getting out of his Ford Taurus with some Fried Chicken he brought home for dinner. I wound up talking to him - kid was about 30 and I told him that I used to live in that house right there, 40 years ago. His mind was kind of blown but as we got to talking, turns out he was in the Saudi Navy and he had spent some time in College in San Antonio so he knew about Texas.

Afterwards, I went over to my hotel - the Jubail Intercontinental Hotel and Resort. I checked in, it was nice and then I headed out to what used to be the Camp 11 Commissary to get some food to keep in the room. The Commissary is now a HyperPanda Supermarket. And the real one that blew me away - Camp 11 (Al-Huwaylat) now has an Applebees. Yes... an Applebees.
https://www.ihg.com/intercontinental/hotels/us/en/al-jubail/dhahc/hoteldetail

I ate dinner than night at the Tex-Mex restaurant in the hotel and then crashed with all that travel and emotion, I was ready for some rest.

Day 8 - Monday, May 19th 2025 - Rahima, Juaymah, Qatif and the Gold Souks in Dammam

When you make these jumps between countries that are a few time zones apart, if you're moving east, you're bringing an ability to stay up later and in this case, being kind of emotionally wound up too, I couldn't get to bed, thus slept in later than I wanted.

For the hometown portion of my trip, this is all completely unscripted. I had a few objectives I wanted to make sure that I did so I prioritized those first - such as the baseball field at Camp 9. Once several of my childhood friends who I keep in touch with on FB found out I was really there, many of them wanted pictures of their old houses. What was kind of funny is that almost all of us remembered exactly where our houses were, street names and addresses but, most of us weren't ready to see what the current residents had done with them - 40 years later.

My goals for this day were to hit Rahima, Juaymah, Qatif and the Gold Souks in Dammam, I figured I better get a good lunch and make sure I brought plenty of fluids with me on the trip for the day. So, I went over to the Applebees in Al Huwaylat.

I had a Smash Burger off the lunch special menu while seated at the Bar in Single Men's section. There was a separate entrance for Families. The bar area was decked out just like any other sports bar except that obviously they didn't have any alcohol. Most of their memorabilia was all soccer including some from the Saudi soccer league where Cristiano Ronaldo plays for the Al Nassr club. Of course they had Man U, Liverpool, etc.

One thing I'll say is that I was pretty cautious about taking pictures in public as historically that has been frowned upon. And I was especially cautious to not take any pictures with Saudi women in them. Point here is that I do have some pictures I can go back and reference but I didn't photograph everything on a trip the way I normally do.

After lunch, I got some drinks at a filling station where gas was about $2.20/gallon. One thing I figured out accidentally is this magic math:
The Saudi Riyal is pegged to the US Dollar at 3.75 SAR per USD. The conversion from liters to gallons is about 3.8 liters per gallon. Thus... the price per liter in Saudi Riyals is approximately the same as the price per gallon in US Dollars. Neat, huh?

Growing up in the desert, I have somewhat of a fear of getting lost in the desert and dying from dehydration. Kind of like how the EV crowd refers to those of us who fear running out of gas as having "range anxiety". Using those terms, I have "dying from dehydration after getting lost in the desert anxiety". Or, you could also say that there is a man vs. nature element of living in a desert so make sure you've protected yourself as much as you can.

I guess this would be a good time to mention the kind of heat we're talking about. The mornings were around 44 - 46 degrees Celsius by the time I got to my car. That's 111F to 115F by 10 am and it's only mid-May. Afternoons were usually 47C - 48C or 117F - 118F. The heat was not Texas style, it was more Arizona / California High Desert / Nevada type. It felt like you were in an oven.

So, back on the road, using Google Maps versus my memory. Google Maps was helpful with connecting main roads and things but some of the places I wanted to go weren't really on the map per se. I drive past the big desalination plant which supplies water via pipeline to Riyadh and then I turn off towards Ras Tanura.

It's funny because they have built a more direct highway to Rahima but, I stayed on the old road which is now more of a plant service road. That's the road where in the late 1970s, it was not uncommon to see Mercedes dump trucks driving 4 abreast in the same direction on a two lane road. These days, the driving was a little more civilized.

Rahima
I got to what used to be Rahima Family Camp where we lived in a single wide trailer during 1977-1978. All the trailers are long gone and the roads are slowly being reclaimed by the desert but, the chain link fence around the "compound" survives and the things they didn't get rid of are the foundation for the swimming pool and surprisingly, a tennis court. It's just sort of slowly rotting concrete. Faded green in the case of the tennis court.

That compound housed American, British and French workers and one of our fun activities was to go to the beach either at the Aramco Najmah compound if you could get in (it was nice) or, just drive along the dirt/sand road until we found a spot near the water where we could do beach stuff.

Juaymah
That area has all been developed now and you can use Google Maps to search for Ras Tanura Beach and there are even some pictures posted. It's a very long developed beach area / Corniche now. Runs for almost 3 miles, complete with restaurants and a mosque (or maybe 2).

Anyway, this is all still inside of the no photography zone around Aramco Ras Tanura. But, I drove to the end of the beach and I saw what I came to see at Al Juaymah. That is, the longest pier in the world.

My father was the General Superintendent on the project for Fluor. If you use the measuring tool on Google Maps, you can see that the Juaymah LPG Terminal is at the end of a 6 mile long trestle.
Here is Aramco's description of it which is not part of the realm of knowledge for Google, Grok, etc.
https://www.aramco.com/-/media/downloads/working-with-us/ports-and-terminals-july-2025/05--ras-tanura-port--juaymah-ngl-compressed.pdf

Now why did they need to build a terminal 6 miles out into the Gulf? The answer is that the Gulf between Iran and Saudi Arabia is very shallow - around 200 feet at its deepest point. So that's how far they had to go out to sea to draw enough water for those types of ships to dock.

Even when we used to take Dhow trips from Jubail out to Jurayd Island - 22 miles offshore, the water out there was only about 50 feet deep.

Finished up with the beach at Ras Tanura and headed south towards Qatif. At the beach, I saw a group of about 10 guys playing soccer and 1 or 2 families at the beach. The infrastructure is there but, there weren't any people on a hot afternoon in May.

Qatif and Tarout Island
Next objective is to visit the old Turkish Fort on Tarout Island and also to just kind of get a look at Qatif.

Qatif is the one town in Saudi Arabia where the Shi'ites are the majority and coincidentally it is the town where there were some protests in 2012 back during the tail end of the so-called "Arab Spring" which led to one of the protesters getting killed. A classic FAFO moment which the media jumped all over.

Driving there I figured out that attempting to drive in Saudi Arabia is not for the faint of heart. There were some places that had roundabouts or modern traffic signals and there were other intersections which had no control measures at all and people just kind of went for it.

I did learn how to drive initially in Saudi Arabia so I know it was going to be crazy but not India level insanity. I definitely learned the meaning of "Full Send, No Half Send". There were a number of times where I just had to go for it and hope that it all worked out. Especially when trying to make any left turns. Eventually, where possible, I would just keep making right turns until I got back to heading in the direction I wanted to but even this strategy didn't always work out.

Once I arrived at the Tarout Castle, I was massively disappointed because I found out that it was under renovations and would be re-opening later this year. I still managed to grab some pictures over the construction fencing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarout_Castle

Like I mentioned earlier, this portion of the trip was completely unscripted. Had I done some homework, I would have known about the renovations. But, I'll also say that it is difficult to find English language tourist type information but the Visit Saudi web site and app do help.

One really funny thing I saw at Tarout Castle was four teenage Saudi boys on 20" BMX bikes riding past the Fort. I thought, hey, 40 years ago, that was me and my friends on our Schwinn, Diamondback, Redline, GT, Hutch and Kuwahara bikes. Glad to see these kids were keeping it real and they also didn't care that the air temperature was still over 110F. Like always, I got a few stares in my direction. They were definitely not used to seeing tall blond headed guys rolling down their streets.

On the way towards Dammam, I saw one hilarious sight. There was a Dunkin Donuts right next to a Tim Hortons. For my money, those are essentially the same place.

Dammam
As I got into Dammam, it was approaching dusk and I heard the evening call to prayer right as I parked near the Gold Souks. The Gold Souks happen to be right next to the big King Fahd Mosque so of course everything was Closed for Prayer when I arrived.

There were signs posted indicating that you needed to pay to park via an App on your phone. I got as far as the QR Code and got hung up there. What was very interesting is that as I was obviously fooling around with trying figure out how to pay to park, I had 3 different Saudi men tell me to NOT pay. The third guy spoke English well enough to tell me that the other two guys had been telling me to not pay.

According to the sign we were still within the time period for paying to park so I couldn't decide if it was some sort of payment holiday I didn't know about, or, if the locals had all just collectively decided to NOT pay to park.

When the gold shops re-opened after prayer, I searched around for a 1 gram to 5 gram "biscuit" with the classic Saudi crossed swords and palm tree logo. I couldn't find one but I found a 2.5g one with a palm tree and decided that was close enough.

When I went to pay, I think it was about 900 Saudi Riyals but, I only had about 500 or so on me. I also had Euros and USD on me so I asked the Saudi shop owner if he would take Euro or USD. What struck me as funny was that he didn't want anything to do with Euro but he gladly took the USD. So I finished paying with a combination of Benjamin Franklins and some Riyals.

After that, I was on the prowl for a 2m long USB cable that I needed to run my GoPro camera because Toyota decided to put the cigarette lighter port inside the center console of my Toyota Corolla rental car.

I cruised the Souks which appeared to be selling lots of electronics, phone cases and luggage. Nearby there were souks selling the full thobe, ghuttra and iqal. I didn't realize how fashionable thobes and ghuttras have gotten. There were even designer labels on some of the ghuttras. The ghuttra is the red/white checked head covering for regular folks - rich banker types wear white.

One of the young men working in one of the shops asks me what I'm looking for and he assures me that his shop has just what I need if I'll follow him down the alley. Everything is pretty well lit and there are lots of shops open late at night so I follow the guy. Turns out he didn't have what I needed but... he left for about 10 minutes and returned with exactly what I needed for 40 SAR.

I was fumbling around in my wallet, trying to figure out how much money I had and he decided that my haggling brought the price down to 30 Riyals. I was kind of impressed that I had inadvertently haggled for price, something which we used to do all the time.

Dinner in Jubail and back to the hotel
At this point, I was ready to get some dinner and head home. I navigated my way out of Dammam and back to the main highway headed north. As I arrived in Jubail, I decided to go to the first fast food restaurant we ever had - Hardees.

I had a burger and fries for dinner at Hardees and then headed back to the hotel. I thought the dining room at Hardees was kind of small until I realized that I was in the Single Men's section. The Family section was much larger but I couldn't see in there from where I was so I don't know how big it was. Anyway, the burger and fries at Hardees weren't as special as I thought they were at age 14 when that was the only game in town.

Got back to the hotel just in time to see a flare upset that was massive buring at one of the Petrochemical plants. It was a really big flame.

I re-sent an Email to my old school requesting a tour.
And probably most importantly, I finally figured out how to get my tickets loaded on my phone for the Guns and Roses Concert on Friday in Riyadh.