A funny thing happened to me while I was waiting at King Khalid International Airport, in Riyadh, while I was waiting for the car to my hotel, Radisson Blu, in the Diplomatic Quarter. Firstly, it’s really busy, lots of people pushing carts willy-nilly.
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One woman, trying to balance children and baggage, pushed her trolley right into the back of my knees. Just as I was recovering from the knee buckle, a woman in flowing black robes brushed past me, pinched my cheeks, went “coo-chee-coo-chee-coo” and walked away, chuckling.
I suppose at my age I should be flattered to have anything pinched but that was completely unexpected. I haven’t had my cheeks pinched since I was a baby.
I asked my Saudi friends if this was a traditional form of greeting. One of them laughed. “I’ve never heard of it, but it could be a sign of admiration and affection.”
Whatever it is, let me tell you, my first trip to Saudi, covering Riyadh and Jeddah in four days, was full of the unexpected.
New Jeddah taking shape.
Yes, there are lots of expected – the masses of cranes; the construction going on everywhere you look; the traffic in Riyadh – but underneath all that, the unexpected open-ness, the overwhelming warmth of people, the unbridled pride of Saudis to share and show off their kingdom and the lack of guile in their conversations.
I’ve never had conversations that even before we have dipped our pita bread in the hummus, people are telling me about their siblings, their parents and mostly, about their mother. A university student, just graduated in events management, scrolled through her phone to show me pictures of her mother. “She’s my role model, my hero,” she said, and then pointed out her aunt, “my other mother, the one who breastfed me”.
Saeed A. Al-Aseeri, executive assistant manager of JW Marriott, who’s been in the industry 27 years and started in the front office, spoke about how proud his mother is of him, but how she’s upset with him because he won’t eat the food she cooks now. He’s watching his diet. “I have to, I’m trying to make her understand,” he smiles.
“Stay one more day,” said Fahd Hamidaddin, CEO of Saudi Tourism Authority, when I told him about these encounters at our meeting in his Riyadh office, “and you’ll be in their homes.”
Old Jeddah still being unearthed.
But this is a story that goes beyond the warmth and hospitality of its people. Something momentous is happening in Saudi and it goes beyond the numbers, the dollars, the targets – this is nation-building, social-transformation, call it what you will, with travel and tourism as its engine.
I’m old enough to have been to places when they had just opened and declared they wanted tourism to build their economies and lift their people. I went to Myanmar at the beginning, Cambodia when Angkor Wat was still filled with landmines and snakes, Laos, Vietnam … but while declarations were made from the top, I never felt an alignment and groundswell of support from the people.
And of course, they didn’t have the financial wherewithal of the Saudis. Money helps (a lot) but I’d like to believe that to effect real change, it takes more than throwing money around and building big, bigger, better, first, only – it takes a sense of nationhood.
And this is why I believe that this time it’s different. In Saudi, the forces are aligned – political will, financial power, clear vision, deliberate execution, people buy-in, rich tourism assets from culture and heritage to nature and environment, powered by “Hafawah”, the Saudi welcome.
From the driver from Karachi who moved here five years to seek a better life for his family, to the tour guides I met – Maan and Marwah, hotel staff, university students I spoke to, artists I met while on my tour through Al-Balad, Jeddah’s Historic City – everyone, without prompting, spoke of their pride to be part of Saudi Vision 2030.
It felt almost like a national service call-up but rather than a call to arms and defence, it’s a call to build an industry of peace.
As a journalist, I am trained to look for the downside. “Everything sounds great, but is there anything you are concerned about?” I asked over lunch in Jeddah, which by the way, can last up to four hours. Because it can get hot in the day, lunch typically starts at 2.30pm, then you saunter out towards dusk and meander through the streets, until dinner at around 10pm.
Lunch at Meez, Jeddah.
Inside Al-Balad, the UNESCO World Heritage Site, is being restored carefully and purposefully but meantime, cats roam freely and children play.
I love port cities and Jeddah, on the western shore of the Red Sea, is my kind of city. There’s something about port cities that conjures up freedom, freedom of movement of goods and people.
From the 7th century, Jeddah was a major port for Indian Ocean trade routes, channeling goods to Mecca, and was the gateway for Muslim pilgrims to Mecca, who arrived by sea. Tales are told of how the pilgrims would walk through Al-Balad, the historic city, carrying goods for barter, with local traders.
It used to take three days to get to Mecca, now it takes 45 minutes, said former schoolteacher-turned-tour-guide Marwah with matter-of-factness, as she guided us through the streets of Al-Balad, avoiding cats, children at play, traders opening their stores for the night and a handful of tourists, here and there – I spotted a few groups from China and South Korea.
But back to the lunch conversation. Maan, who got his university degree in Penang, Malaysia (how small is the world) couldn’t even answer as though he’d never thought of any downside. Another said, “I suppose if I had any concern, it would be the impact on our nature but so far the plans they’ve outlined are reassuring.” The youngest girl, a university student on an internship with Discover Saudi, looked at me with big, long-false-eyelash-fringed, eyes, and laughed, “What’s there to worry about? Everything is possible.”
That word “possible” comes out a lot in conversations. A young Saudi executive told me how she’s convinced her fiancée to move from Amsterdam to Riyadh “because I know that here, the only thing that stands between me and what I want to achieve is the effort I put in”. She was out in her car at 12.01am the day women were allowed to drive in Saudi.
Macrame artist, Noor, balances health care remote work with her passion.
In Al-Balad, there’s a Placemaking Zone, Zawiya 97 named to mark the “97 degree angle from Jeddah to Makkah creating a merging point of culture, heritage, art, crafts, entertainment and education”. It’s an incubator of sorts for young Saudi artists. Noor, who works with macrame, tells us her day job is with a health care company in Europe. She works remotely and pursues her passion in her own space and time in the creative cluster.
Every artist I spoke to has their own story – it’s almost like watching a kaleidoscope of butterflies taking off in unison.
And here’s the other thing, every Saudi you meet will ask you where you’ve been and then, in the next breath, will tell you where else you should go and what you should do and invariably, will pull out their mobile to show you photos of their hometown, and how different and distinct it is from anywhere else in Saudi.
“You should visit the Southern Highlands in summer.”
“You should visit AlUla in winter.”
“You should check out the luxury resorts in Red Sea. Have you heard of this private island reserve?”
“You should visit this turtle breeding site, it was meant to have been developed but when they found turtles there, they turned it into a reserve.”
It’s as though in opening travel, they’ve unleashed the world’s biggest human-powered sales force (37m of them).
On the day of departure, during my 6am pickup, I was literally taken round the world when my guide took out his phone to show me Boulevard, the largest entertainment capital in Riyadh, he said.
“You didn’t go? You should. They have this experience in there when you can see the whole world,” he said. “Here’s Japan”, swipe, “Here’s Jordan”, swipe, “Here’s Italy”, swipe …
“And look at this, I took two visitors to someone’s home yesterday. Look, here’s the hostess telling you about Saudi customs,” swipe, “here’s everyone cooking in the kitchen”, swipe, “here’s them wearing Saudi dress”, swipe …
I swear to you, even though I only managed to physically cover Riyadh and Jeddah (and only parts of both) in four days, I feel I’ve visited the whole country and even someone’s home, and I now wished I had stayed another day for that invitation. Who knows, I might have my cheeks pinched again.
But now I should stop before I miss my flight or the gate has changed. That happens when you’re busy building a nation on travel and tourism. Airports are busy, planes are full and people are on the move, all the time.
Till the next visit.
Dinner at Al-Basali, a 75-year-old seafood restaurant in Al-Balad. Next time, I should eat in someone’s home.