A Season in Saudi Arabia

Unbelievably, it’s been almost six years since I first arrived on the shores of Al Khafji, KSA. With suits and shirts in my case and a surfboard under my arm, I had a strong feeling surfing would be possible in this remote city on the Kuwaiti border. The teacher who had recommended me for the job mentioned seeing waves fit for body boarding and YouTube films showed small swell lines wrapping in. Also, I had spent a lot of time researching wind and swell movements in the Arabian Gulf on Google. However, I hadn’t expected to surf quite as much as I managed across the years and, even more so, to feature in famous magazines and blogs as the Kingdom’s only surfer.  Far more than for myself, Khafji offered a lot to a surfer as young and light as my son, Rafael. It enabled him to surf fairly frequently through the winter in a wetsuit and even offered some fun days in board shorts during the warmer spring months. While surf sessions often turned into a cat and mouse game with the police w...

At the beginning of March, I foolishly asked a rhetorical question on a soon to be published blog about whether anything could stop us returning to the Philippines in 60 days . You see, I had a flight and quarantine hotel booked and believed little or nothing could stop my family and I from leaving Saudi Arabia forever and restarting our life on Siargao Island . How wrong could I have been?  By the middle of March, the virus situation in the Philippines started getting darker at an alarming rate. Rather than changing quarantine protocols, the Philippine government slapped a travel ban on most foreigners entering the country and withdrew Balikbayan 1-year visa on arrival for spouses and children of Filipino citizens indefinitely. Although the new travel restrictions offered us a limited path to get to the country if we all travelled together, neither myself or my son had an existing Philippine visa so time looked tight to obtain a visa prior to travel in early May. In these newly ...

18 years ago, on March 8th, 2003, on now famous Siargao Island , I married my darling Mirasol. I can remember so many details from that time. The island hadn't yet been discovered by mass tourism, so my friends and family from England had the waves and epic scenery all to themselves. While the wedding ceremony itself went really well, the first part of the reception was somewhat chaotic, with a large number of hungry, largely uninvited, revelers sitting in seats allocated for the bridesmaids and close family. Anyway, after they ate or stole what they wanted of the one water buffalo, eight pigs and numerous other items on the menu, most of our invited guests got a fair share of food too, and the impromptu disco got everyone up off their seats to dance it all off.  Looking back at that time brings a mixture of sadness and happiness for me. Happy because I married the girl of my dreams after a romance in a place that can only be described as a tranquil paradise. That can't ever be...

At the beginning of February, the Saudi Health Ministry ordered the closure of cinemas, restaurants and coffeeshops due to a minor rise in confirmed coronavirus infections. Thankfully, unlike in neighbouring Oman, beaches weren't closed again in KSA, so every weekend since I was miraculously reunited with my family we've made the most of Khafji's wonderful white sand beaches and turquoise seas. Last month, we began a new vlog series on YouTube for posterity purposes, so if you'd like to watch some of our sandy escapades on film, click this link " On a Saudi Beach ". On one magical beach day in February, thousands of birds flew past us on their migratory travels north towards Kuwait. A reminder, if we needed one, of God's incredible creation. It added to a trio of fabulous natural wonder experiences we've had in the last few years. First of all, five years ago, we got to see a dolphin up close as he or she swam a few metres from us. Second, two years ...

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 over a year ago, I promised that "whatever happens" I had already written my final Saudi Season blog post and would never write another one. Perhaps promises are meant to be broken. Also, who could have ever predicted that the world would swerve in such a dramatic fashion in 2020 that life might never be quite the same again? I guess that's why I'm sitting here in Saudi Arabia resurrecting this blog. These are unprecedented times and it feels like the right season to put a few of my thoughts down online to look back on in years to come. If, of course, the world even has a few years to come. At the beginning of 2020, the world seemed relatively sane. President Trump was happily tweeting in his bed eating McDonalds. Boris Johnson, after winning a comfortable majority in the UK Parliament, claimed he was the man to deliver the will of the British people: Brexit. A few bushfires raged uncontrollably in Australia. And China innocently reported the first death from ...

Celebrating National Day 2019 in KSA.  I used to love writing this Saudi blog. It kept me sane putting down all my thoughts about a country so complex and multi-layered that it would take a lifetime to really understand it. Then, suddenly, I got paranoid that my honesty could be used against me during some particularly testing times at work. Within hours I’d taken down all the ESL advice pages and most of the blog posts - while my Saudi Season wasn’t over, the blog almost was. Although I promised quarterly updates, I didn’t deliver a single post last year. Instead, I continued to focus on my new family travel blog www.rafsworld.com and our family Instagram page. So, if anyone is still following this blog ...... yes, I’m still alive and well in Saudi Arabia. Savings continue to mount up - English housing dreams have turned into Philippine development dreams; as a result of Siargao Island ’s surging popularity it seems more sensible to develop our plot there rather than p...

Exactly three years ago, I landed in Dammam Airport, surfboard in hand, in the midst of a second mobilization to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. If you've followed my story up to now, you'll already know about my surfing, family, teaching and sand boarding exploits in Arabia. It all started in 2012 with a year in Sakakah with a dubious recruitment company. Then, after two years back in the Philippines, I began my current journey on the coastal road from Dammam Airport to the Kuwaiti border. Of course I’ll never forget the date of mobilisation: 9/11/2015. How can anyone moving to the Middle East forget that fateful day in New York? It’s shaped the region so much, especially America’s war on terror in Iraq and beyond. While this Saudi-Season blog is no longer updated as regularly as previously, I’ve decided to do quarterly updates just in case anyone is still reading. Of course my main blogging focus these days is www. rafsworld .com, a new project designed to encourage families...

No, my Saudi season is not over yet. Final exit might be days, months or even years away. But it feels right to archive all but the most popular articles on this blog and focus on my next project: Rafsworld . Why am I archiving? Simply not enough real readership out there. 147,000 all time page views, 3000 monthly page views but little or no interaction with anyone who regularly reads or just stumbles upon the blog. Actually, I’m not even sure anyone other than Russian bots and my Dad are even reading it. In contrast, our family  Instagram and blog seem to be attracting far more real readers, comments and interest. If there are any genuine, passive readers out there, you can follow my family's ongoing journey on IG or check Rafsworld .com for articles about Saudi lifestyle, family travel and Siargao, Philippines. While I intend to update this blog with real-time quarterly updates, saudi-season.blogspot.com is essentially over as a regularly updated, diary-style blog. And if ...