Category Archives: Culture

The awe of Al Wahba Crater

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I was sent these pictures by a great Saudi photographer and friend Thamer Ossra. The location is Wahba or Al Wa’aba Crater, one of the largest craters in the Middle East. The crater is 2.5km wide and the cliffs on the crater’s side drop vertically by 270 meters to the crater’s base. In the center of the crater is an amazing salt field.

Wahba crater is 250 kilometers east of Taif just off the Makkah-Riyadh highway. It’s a remarkable place to visit. If you have the chance, just go!

A full view of Wahba crater from the top
Looking down Wahba crater’s wall
Enjoy the shade while you can!
This is what you will see when you approach the crater
The walk down to the crater is stunning
There’s a good deal of greenery around the crater itself
It’s best to visit the crater in a group
The sunlight on the salt plane can be blinding.
Walking on the salt plane!
Have a look at the crater’s walls from the bottom
On the ground at Wahba crater!
Al Wahba crater in all its glory

Bahrain’s hidden pearl – Zaafaran Cafe

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Bahrain is a wonderful place; it’s a country that is always full of pleasant surprises. My wife and her family told me about a restaurant called Zaafaran, a small place in the heart of Souq Muharraq that is known for its traditional Bahraini dishes. We headed down to Muharraq on a Friday morning and I had to keep my eyes open when looking for the place (Zaafaran is just after Souq Al Qaiseriya a right hand turn after all of the sweet shops on the main road for those who know Muharraq).

After spotting the place and finding a parking spot, which is no mean feat in Muharraq, we headed to Zaafaran. The restaurant itself is tiny, with seating for no more than 30 people. The decor is traditional, and the staff are also dressed to match in traditional Bahraini attire. The setting is almost as impressive as the food, with (comfy) wooden benches to plump yourself down on.

The breakfast menu is set, with a selection of small dishes that include balaleet or sweetened vermicelli with egg, nakhi which is a Bahraini twist on chick peas, mahiawa bread or bread cooked in fish sauce, fuul, spicy tomato beans, and Bahraini kebab sandwiches (which are vegetarian for anyone who’s interested). It’s most fun to eat with your hands and the bread basket which comes as standard.

I wouldn’t be doing justice to Zaafaran by saying that this place is remarkable both for the food and the setting. If you’re looking for both a wonderful eat as well as an amazing time out then head down to Zaafaran. It’s right next to Souq Al Qaiseriya which is one of the oldest markets in Bahrain and an amazing spectacle in itself. And as for the cost? It’s a whole lot cheaper than Dubai’s Biker Cafe’s breakfast for the best local breakfast in the Arabian Gulf and costs about 50 to 60 Dirhams a person including all the chai kerak tea you can woof down. Just down measure your cholesterol levels for a good few days after!

Enjoy the pictures and get down to Zaafaran while there’s still space left at this remarkable restaurant-cafe.

Zaafaran is an Instagrammer’s delight! But I did put my phone down long enough to eat!
Everything about Zaafaran is authentic, including the decor
The before picture!
What could be better for breakfast?
Bahraini kebab sandwiches are just delicious but they’re not meat.
I just love this stuff. Chai kerak or cardamon tea. Much better than Red Bull!
The whole ambiance reflects a past generation
I can’t just keep my eyes off the food!
Bread cooked in fish sauce? It tastes much, much better than it sounds and is a real treat
Zaafaran isn’t easy to spot but there is an Arabic sign on the outside. Just keep your eyes open and ask around.
One of Muharraq’s oldest markets, Souq Al Qaiseriyah, is just next door. Go for a walk and burn off some calories.
Spices anyone? Doesn’t this beat supermarket shopping?
Don’t even ask me what all of this stuff is!

Is Saudi in love with or scared @*#$less by Twitter?

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Does this make sense? To anyone? (credit: Arab News)

Someone tell me, what is going on in the Magic Kingdom. Today we have a wonderful piece of editorial quality in Saudi Arabia’s English-language newspaper Arab News. The piece, titled Twitter may be linked to IDs, suggests that the country’s government is studying how to link Twitter accounts to identification cards, presumably to better monitor what all those naughty people are doing on the social media site. Here’s a link to the article and a quote from the piece below (as a journalist in Saudi I’ve never heard of the IT expert, but I’d probably disagree with his comments).

Twitter users beware. The Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) is currently studying the possibility of linking the access to microblogging site with the personal identification of social media users, according to sources.

The move is likely to create ripples in the social media circles.

A source at the CITC described the move as a natural result of the successful implementation of CITC’s decision to add a user’s identification numbers while topping up mobile phone credit.

Twitter has changed Saudi, period. And it’s not just me saying that either. There was a wonderful piece on Twitter and Saudi Arabia by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour about how the social media site has transformed how Saudis communicate.

Even the Saudi government has got in on the Twitter act. Public figures including culture and information minister Dr. Abdul Aziz Khoja, labor minister Adel Al-Faqih, and commerce minister Dr. Tawfiq Al-Rabiah all use Twitter, as do religious figures. A number of Saudi royals are also on Twitter and merrily tweeting away. And then there’s Al-Waleed. At the end of 2011 the Rainbow Prince and number XX on Forbes’ billionaire list Prince Alwaleed bin Talal announced a $300 million investment in the website. He said at the time that: “the move demonstrates our ability to identify promising investment opportunities with high potential for global impact.”

The above article follows on from a piece earlier this year in Arab News, which I’m going to quote in its entirety and which you can read yourself here.

It is very difficult to monitor Twitter, one of the most popular social networking sites in Saudi Arabia which at the moment has more than 3 million active users, according to Abdulaziz Khoja, Saudi Minister of culture and information.

“The ministry cannot monitor everything published on Twitter,” Khoja said in a statement.

He stressed the difficulty of monitoring what everybody writes, relying on the need to raise awareness among society members regarding what they write and publish on Twitter, a local paper reported.

Nonetheless Khoja declared that the ministry is following up what is happening on Twitter with a number of government agencies.
The minister highlighted the need to raise the consciousness of the active users of social networking sites and to assist the Ministry of Culture and Information in the monitoring process.

However, Khoja refused to compare the situation of social sites with online newspapers, which have been streamlined following a recent regulation.

Khoja stressed that the control on Twitter should originate from individual values and community culture. “With time, individuals will learn to express their opinions and to deal with the events in a more understanding, knowledgeable and accommodating approach,” Khoja said.

So what’s next? Monitoring what people say/think? Good people in positions of authority, Twitter is a channel and not the source. Someone tell me, what is going on. All I hear is tweet, tweet, flip, flop, flip, flop.

How communities are turning to social media when traditional media fails them: #Thx_Tom_Collins and Bahrain

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Professor Tom Collins was the subject of a public campaign on the social media site Twitter. Supporters thanked him via the hashtag #Thx_Tom_Collins for his political stance and decision to resign (credit: Irish Times)

As the Middle East’s media channels have become polarized over the past 24 to 30 months, communities who find that they have little if any representation in these traditional media channels have made social media their medium of choice when spreading and disseminating their viewpoints and opinions.

A great example from Bahrain this week was a campaign organized to thank the Professor Tom Collins, the president of the Bahrain campus of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), for his decision to resign from his post after the cancellation of a major conference on medical ethics in island. The RCSI had hoped to facilitate the event at its Bahrain campus but the key organizer Médecins Sans Frontières cancelled the event shortly before it was to be held.

Professor Collins resigned after the news of the conference’s cancellation broke. He has been roundly condemned in Bahrain’s national media for his decision which he said was done “in protest over the cancellation of the two-day event which was to examine “medical ethics and dilemmas in situations of political discord or violence.” The conference’s themes were sensitive in Bahrain following widespread arrests of medics in early 2011 at the country’s main hospital and their subsequent trials, a number of which are still ongoing.

The Twitter-based campaign was launched on Thursday 28th March at 8pm Bahrain time and was organized primarily by many of the medical community in Bahrain who were arrested over the course of the two years.Their message was clear and I’ll post some of the most popular tweets below.

What I find fascinating about the above is the role of the media during a time of crisis. For me, media such as newspapers can have a viewpoint but journalists should (theoretically) report the facts. When you’re disenfranchising such a large proportion of the population what happens to that newspaper not only during a crisis but after the crisis has passed, when agreements are made and a compromise is drawn up. With traditional media suffering globally due to a loss of public trust should editors be fighting the demand to be so overtly biased? What are your thoughts?

The biggest, flashiest and most expensive… Dubai’s obsession with superlatives

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When it comes to Dubai you just can’t keep a good thing down…

It was a satirical website that got me onto this topic. I was on one of my favourite web sites in Dubai, the Pan-Arabia Enquirer, enjoying a parody of the stereotypical superlative press release that used to be all the rage in Dubai before the financial crisis (I’ll admit to having written a couple of those releases in my time pre-2008). If you enjoy your Middle Eastern satire served piping hot and creamy have a read at the parody here and check out the site.

Well, back to the subject of the post and it seems that the superlative is making a comeback in the part of the world in the only way possible… the biggest, flashiest, and most expensive is back with the world’s most expensive abaya (only costing 65 million Dirhams) which made an appearance in Dubai to the most lucrative photography competition in the world (with prize money totaling 300,000 Euros in case you’re wondering), and then there’s the most prestigious and richest horse race in the world.

The list of the biggest and the best is endless. There’s so many world records over here that Guinness opened up an office here just to keep up and reduce their costs (it’s cheaper to have someone over here permanently than keep flying them over I’m guessing).

What’s the reason behind the drive to constantly go above and beyond and splash the cash? Is it for the publicity, the attention or recognition? There’s no end to the next big thing in this remarkable city, but I’m hoping that the concept of less is more one day catches on in Dubai (and if it does you can be sure Dubai will do it better than anyone else and go more Spartan than the Greeks).

A Bikers Cafe with no bikers – an Emirati breakfast and local modeling hotspot

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If you're after a taste of local cuisine come on down to Bikers Cafe. And no, you don't need to be a biker

If you’re after a taste of local cuisine come on down to Bikers Cafe. And no, you don’t need to be a biker

Imagine your typical biker. Most likely a he, about 120 kilos plus and built like a reinforced brick wall. Add in the long hair, and the leather gear (at the least the leather jacket). And then there’s the bike, a roaring Harley Davidson or a feast-your-eyes chopper. Who doesn’t love bikers?

And so imagine my delight when my wife declared one weekend morning, “we are heading to the Bikers Cafe!” While I’m not a biker, I was looking forward to the breakfast menu. Bikers Cafe is the only place I’ve come across where there’s a full local Emirati breakfast on offer. Me and the wife arrived at the Bikers Cafe which is within walking distance of Mercato Mall on Jumeirah Road fairly late in the morning at 10.30am. While the place itself wasn’t too hard to spot (look for a motorbike on the pavement), the first surprise was the lack of bikers at the cafe. We were greeted by a sea of white and black and I’d found where the local community comes on a weekend for their breakfast and Chai Kerak.

After grabbing a table (warning – on the weekend be prepared to wait for a seat) we poured over the menu and plumped for a Royal Breakfast which is apparently called so after a local VIP ordered the dish. While the price, at 180 Dirhams for the two of us without drinks, was excessive the dish featured all the local favourites which I love from Bahrain. Khameer, traditional bread which is often spiced with saffron and cardamon, was on the plate, as was Chebab, a small pancake I always associate with Scotch pancakes.

And then there was Balaleet, which simply put is a vermicelli and egg omelet which is a favourite (no one does this better than my mother-in-law), and Nakhee or spiced chickpeas and fuul beans. I also spotted raqaq, a paper-thin unleavened bread, and Emirati crepes also known as Mahalla. We sampled a date flour mixture which I know well from Saudi.

The cherry on top for both of us was the Chai Kerak – a mixture of sugar, tea, milk and cardamon – which was exquisite. However, we are both used to drinking Kerak from a paper cup rather than crockery. And again, the prices weren’t cheap at about 20 Dirhams a serving (I always pay a couple of Dirhams in Bahrain for the privilege).

While the food was undoubtedly worth a trip to Jumeirah, I think that most of the crowd were there to do a spot of modeling. If you’re looking to people watch and understand more about the local community then the Bikers Cafe is the place for you (you can check out the website and the menu here). As for me I’m looking forward to heading back to Bahrain to enjoy a local Bahraini breakfast at a fraction of the price.

How much variety and discrimination is there in the Gulf?

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The GCC is as diverse and complicated as any other part of the globe (credit: rasheedsworld.com)


Looking on in from the outside, most expatriates see the Arabian Peninsula as one monotonous geography. The women wear black (unless they’re Kuwaiti) and the mean wear white. The language is the same, and everyone is a Muslim. And that’s the Gulf.

Well, hardly. Each country is unique, and offers a wealth of diversity in terms of culture, history and opinions. The range of accents in Bahrain is so prominent that a local will be able to tell where a compatriot may be from how the greeting alone.

Saudi is the most diverse country in the region. Its twenty million nationals come from all four corners of the world, and don’t be surprised to meet a Saudi whose roots trace back to Indonesia, China, or Western Africa. The Kingdom’s Western Region is the richest melting pot you’ll come across, thanks to hundreds of years of pilgrimage to the two holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. Often foreigners think that Dubai or Doha are the two cities that offer the greatest contrast of cultures and groups, but they don’t come close to what Jeddah has to offer.

And Christians in Kuwait and Bahrain? And a Jewish community in Manama? Yes, they’re locals (but there’s not many of them).

And of course, with variety comes discrimination. There’s a good deal of nepotism across the Gulf mainly due to the tribal, bedouin nature. It’s not uncommon to find a certain group dominating in one company – it’s not so much where a person is from as often as what their tribal name is. Many Saudis don’t use their tribal names any more. And there’s also discrimination based on region (Jeddah versus Riyadh, Dubai versus Abu Dhabi etc), on the history behind the family name (in other words how far back can the family’s genealogy be traced), and on religion (which mathab or religious affiliation a person adheres to).

While this isn’t unique to the Gulf (tell me a place where there isn’t any discrimination) what I do find interesting is the institutionalized discrimination in certain parts of the GCC. Some states, most notably Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman count GCC nationals as locals when it comes to hiring and nationalization quotas. The UAE and Qatar do not – when they say local they mean local. For a European the difference in policy between the two groups is hard to fathom (especially when considering the relatively small populations of both Qatar and the UAE when compared to Saudi Arabia).

So, the next time you’re sitting in the coffee ship and sipping on your coffee do remember to ask yourself where the gentleman in white is from. You may be surprised at how much you can learn about a region that is full of culture and contrast.

Saudi Bubblers and women’s scuba diving in the Kingdom

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Here’s something you may not know about the Kingdom – Saudi has some of the best diving spots in the world. The Hijaz coast which borders the Red Sea offers a richness of marine wildlife that is unparallelled (the islands around Farasan are replete with dolphins, turtles and sharks). Saudi can rival or even beat neighbors like Egypt when it comes to a diving experience. But, as always, the secret is in the marketing.

I had the pleasure of talking to one person who is doing his utmost to tell everyone he meets about the beauty of Saudi Arabia’s Hijaz Coast and the wonders of diving for both expats and the country’s nationals. Nawaf Al Otaibi is one of the founders of Bubblers, a Saudi-based group that aims to give as many people as possible the chance to fall in love with diving off Saudi’s coast.

“We set up Bubblers to offer people new to the sport a simply way to get certified and also give divers the chance to get back into the water once they’ve completed their certifications. We wanted to help people dive in an organized fashion, and we focus on arranging group trips that range from one to five days in length. We also offer snorkeling to people who want to dip their toes into the water but aren’t yet sure about taking up diving. Our aim is to show to as many people as possible what the Red Sea has to offer and we’ve found that eight percent of our snorkelers sign up for a full diving course as soon as they’re out of the water and back on the boat.”

Bubblers is the first Saudi-based scuba diving community that bills itself as multinational – the group has a Facebook presence and just under two hundred members to date. And Bubblers aims to please all. “We have a diverse group of divers, including Saudis. We’re finding that more and more Saudis are joining us on our trips. Over the past two months, Bubblers has arranged four trips, each with a maximum of twenty people. The ages have ranged from 11 up to 72 years. We take care of everything, from A to Z, even including flights from Riyadh, food and other transportation needs. We’re also finding that women are taking up the sport. They can dive fully hooded and covered, and we welcome then on board our trips.”

No matter how good you are, if you’re a newbie or you already have fish gills, Bubblers can take care of you through a host of diving courses and training, including the basic open water diver developed by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, as well as the advanced open water diver, master scuba diver and dive master certification.

And on the issue of women diving in the Kingdom, you may be surprised. Scuba diving can be done in my favorite piece of clothing, the burkini, and a recent article in English-language newspaper Arab News focused on demands from Saudi women for female-only diving areas. I’ve pull a quick quote from the article, which highlights the obstacles women face when diving in the Kingdom.

An increasing number of women scuba divers want designated areas to dive in the Red Sea to avoid the obstacles they face when trying to obtain a permit for a diving trip.

Just to whet your appetite have a look at these pictures from Bubblers divers, including the talented photographer Mr. Vincent Al Hawary.

If your interest has been piqued then call Nawaf on and start planning for an unforgettable experience. His details and details for the rest of the group’s founders can be found in this handy pdf brochure made by the team at Bubblers (please do click on the link below). Of course, you won’t need me to tell you that you will need Adobe Acrobat or a pdf viewer to open.

Bubblers Profile

Mission Impossible? Rehabilitating the image of the UAE’s expat education system…

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The question used to be who’d be a teacher. Today it’s more likely be to who’d be a school owner in the UAE? The country’s private education system has been under attack recently for the cost of educating (mainly) expatriate children. There was a wonderful article written by Arabian Business Editor Courtney Trenwith about the issue of high school fees in the UAE, and an apt comparison was made between secondary education in the UAE and tertiary education back in the United Kingdom.

An Arabian Business investigation last month revealed the startling fact that it costs more to send a child to some Dubai schools than a British university.

Fees for a three-year old are as high as AED55,000 (US$15,000) per year, while they escalate to AED69,283 for a typical child aged six to nine, to AED79,733 for many ten to 13-year olds and as much as AED96,140 for the most expensive secondary schools.

Meanwhile, a year’s tuition at universities such as Cambridge and Oxford is less than AED53,000. Until recently, UK university fees were even cheaper.

One of the largest private education firms is GEMS, which claims to educate over 110,000 children and be the leading Kindergarten to Grade 12 private education operator in the world. In December of 2012 GEMS announced that it would close Westminster School in Dubai, which caters to 4,800 pupils from ages five to 18-years old.

The issue which has been covered extensively by the online portal and business publication Arabian Business has caused an uproar with parents who are naturally concerned about the disruption to their children’s education. In a letter sent to parents which was published by Arabian Business, GEMS said the Westminster School would shut in June 2014 with students being given priority placement in other GEMS institutions.

“In recent times our ability to invest the resources required to produce the improvements needed, both educationally and in infrastructure, have been severely restricted because of the current fee structure… We simply cannot offer a high quality education at this level that we see as our duty to provide. Indeed, salary increases during the same period have been at a level higher than any fee awards,” wrote GEMS executive director Dino Varkey to parents.

And now we come to the issue of communications. There are few subjects as sensitive as education, especially when it is for your own children. As the largest company in the industry and one which seems to be making the most headlines, GEMS should realize it needs to do more in terms of its messaging. The company is currently looking to hire a PR and communications manager in Dubai through LinkedIn (if you’re interested in Mission Impossible do click through here).

The question I’d pose to GEMS is how can anyone justify charging more for a year in high school than for a year in university? As there’s little to no public schooling system here for expatriates (in theory an expatriate child can go to a government school but fees will still apply) what are parents to do apart from swallow the bitter pill? But will that help GEMS and the other companies in the long-run? Isn’t the issue more than simply looking at how to spin the company line on high educational costs and school closures? Isn’t this more about the fundamentals of the business, which need reassessing?

The very same Dino Varkey told Arabian Business editor Anil Bhoyrul in an interview in March 2011 that:

“The ambition that we work towards is five million students by 2024. If we got to the five million number as a conservative [estimate] we would be a $60bn company; we would be employing 450,000 teachers, 55,000 senior leaders – that’s the size of organisation that we are trying to build. ”

In the meantime I spotted this recently in a book store in Dubai. As always, if you don’t keep the customer happy someone else will muscle in and try to offer a better service at the same or a lower cost regardless of your communications strategy.

There's always an alternative but would your child be happier and better off boarding in the UK than going to school in Dubai? And would it be cheaper?

There’s always an alternative but would your child be happier and better off boarding in the UK than going to school in Dubai? And would it be cheaper?

Fre! It’s wine, it’s in Saudi Arabia, and it’s legal (for now…)

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No, it’s not how you say good morning in Swedish or Norwegian (although it’s fairly close I’ve been told). Instead, Fre is a modern miracle of science. Fre is wine without the alcohol. Don’t ask me how it’s done, or if the company thought of Saudi Arabia when they conceptualized Chardonnay without the 14.5 percent on the bottle. But Fre is magical. And it is available in Saudi Arabia.

Now, I know there will be skeptics out there. You will say, it’s only apple juice with a fancy name. No, Fre is different. We’ve tried Fre on numerous foreign friends, and presumably some wine connoisseurs, who’ve come to visit us in the Magic Kingdom. Once we had a group of executives from a very well-known IT brand visit the compound and they thought we were running the biggest alcohol racket in all of Jeddah once they’d opened the cupboards. We weren’t. It was Fre.

Our savior on many an occasion we had foreign guests! And it tastes like the real thing too!

Our savior on many an occasion we had foreign guests! And it tastes like the real thing too!

We first discovered Fre in a popular Chinese restaurant in Jeddah opposite Takhasusi hospital. After that we were hooked, though my wife always swore that the stuff has alcohol in. We always used to find Fre in Jeddah, in Sawary supermarkets or sometimes Danube. There’d be the occasional shipment to Riyadh, to Tamimi Safeway, but Tamimi usually stocked the cheaper and less fancy Vinola. I once took a bottle with me from Jeddah to Riyadh on an internal flight. The x-ray machinist didn’t know what to do with me, bless him.

Fre isn’t cheap at around 50 or 60 Riyals a bottle, but there’s lots of variety (Brut, Merlot, Chardonnay, Moscato, and White Zinfandel) but it’s cheaper than the other stuff one may find in Saudi Arabia and it’s certainly more enjoyable than a stay in a prison cell. Now go and buy some! And if you don’t believe me then look at this video. I just wish I had the distribution rights for this stuff!