Miraculously Reunited in KSA for the Last Time

Despite the uncertainties of the world, I seem intent on making bold promises on what are probably my last few posts ever on saudi-season.blogspot.com. When I resurrected the blog in October, I made a strong assertion that, whatever else happens, May 1st, 2021 would be my final day in KSA. And now, in the title of this blog, I am confidently predicting that I won't ever be sitting in my Saudi apartment again waiting for the fulfilment of countless, burdensome processes just to bring my family to the Kingdom. You see, I might have just won a long battle to bring my family back to Kingdom, but I never want to go through it again. 

It all began with an innocuous visit to my company's government relations officer, who tried to key in a family visit request and promptly gave up citing system issues. He suggested waiting until January when, according to press reports at the time, Saudi would begin issuing tourist visas again. According to my senior teacher and a colleague who had just brought his wife in from Jordan, that wasn't correct and they tried to help me key in the application again. It failed over and over again and no one could offer much hope apart from God himself, so I prayed and prayed for a breakthrough. One fine morning, after saving all the necessary words in Arabic in a file (yes, unbelievably the application is all in Arabic), it went through for me on internet explorer. I went back to the government relations officer a few minutes later and told him next time he should persevere a bit more. He smiled and simply sent off my application to our Dammam campus, and the Saudi Ministry approved it within a couple of days. I thought my trials were over, but they had actually only just started.

In November I approached Scott's Visas to process the family visit visa application at Saudi's UK Embassy as they had done successfully for the past five years. Although the UK had entered its second lockdown, Scott's confirmed everything was operating as usual and I'd have the visas within a few days. Sadly, after a week, my wife and son's application was rejected due to technicality overlooked by the embassy in previous year. Scott's initially suggested getting revised paperwork from Manila, which sounded completely unviable and a total nightmare. I suggested the possibility of getting the Philippine paperwork legalised in the UK, which Scott's promptly looked into and executed for the princely sum of £400. By the beginning of December, the UK emerged from lockdown and my wife and son got their passports back stamped with fresh Saudi visas at an overall cost of £1360. Instead of flying them into the Kingdom straightaway, I decided to let my son enjoy Christmas with his cousins in Norfolk before flying them in on New Year's Day - that proved to be a terrible mistake!

Of course, Matt Hancock and the British government did not want anyone to celebrate Christmas. Coincidences don't exist in politics - London's Airports were the busiest in the world during December, so four days before Christmas Matt Hancock knew it was time to up the ante with project fear. Without any thoughts of the consequences, he announced a new "British" variant that was, according to him, "out of control". He started spouting figures of 70% increased transmissibility and the world, including Saudi Arabia, swiftly turned Britain into a pariah state. Saudi cancelled all flights for two weeks. When they reinstated inbound flights, it came with a rule that British passengers could not enter without spending two weeks outside of UK. My brother suggested waiting a week or so to see if the rules changed. For me, there was no time to wait. 48 hours later, my brother's wife kindly dropped my wife and son off at Heathrow Airport. Their adventure had only just begun! 

On the evening of January 5th, hours before Boris Johnson enthusiastically forced the British people into a third national lockdown, a Gulf Airlines passenger jet roared out of London with its sights firmly set upon the Middle East. I felt so grateful knowing my wife and son were on that plane. A flicker of hope turned into a full flame when I got the text to confirm they had landed, cleared immigration and taken the first of three virus tests. Yes, they had embarked on a risky adventure. They'd have to test negative three times in order to fly into Riyadh on January 22nd. And it's not like the PCR test is reliable either. Many people test positive when there's nothing wrong with them at all. Conveniently timed for President Trump's departure from office, the WHO issued revised guidelines on January 20th acknowledging that a positive PCR without any clinical signs of infection should be followed up with another test. Anyway, regardless of its reliability, three nasal swabs lied between my family and I finally reuniting in Riyadh. 

Ongoing stress symptoms plagued me throughout my wife and son's extended stay in Bahrain. While they were living through it, I was directing the whole operation via WhatsApp messages to their guest house, suggested daily itineraries to fill their days, ongoing flight bookings, and phone calls to hospitals to find the easiest and cheapest place for their final PCR. Thankfully, it all turned out magnificently in the end. After seventeen days in Bahrain, they flew into Saudi unhindered and a sense of peace returned to my life. Check our latest YouTube vlog "Escape to Bahrain" and subscribe to our channel if you'd like to see more of our ongoing journey in life. 

It's hard to say exactly what's next for the world. Either the virus will wane and governments will end the irrational lockdowns and hysteria, or something far more sinister is going on. Let's be honest, it's impossible to control a respiratory virus and it no longer feels like a conspiracy theory to suggest the wealthy elite are trying to reorder society under the guise of the pandemic. The New Normal is the best documentary I've seen predicting what might come next: UBI, AI advances, mandatory vaccines, more lockdowns, and total loss of freedom and privacy. 

This new order isn't the kind of world I want to live in, so wasting more time collecting riyals in Saudi remains an anathema. In fact, more than ever before, it feels right to fly back to our home on Siargao Island. While significant challenges remain ahead of us, I'd like to confidently predict that we'll be living the Philippine dream soon. Quite how that will unfold isn't entirely clear, but some answered prayers and a stack of cash will, hopefully, do the trick. Let's see!