A Season in Saudi Arabia

Nine months ago, when I was first diagnosed with nodular melanoma (January 2023), I immediately saw it as a death sentence. From the very beginning, I had googled obsessively and developed symptoms I’d read about soon after: everything from painful or possibly swollen lymph nodes to new, irregular black patches on my skin. Of course, I knew some or all these symptoms might be psychosomatic or benign, but I had utterly convinced myself I was already either stage 3 (nodal involvement) or stage 4 (distant skin metastasis) and likely to die soon. A month after diagnosis (February 2023), a melanoma surgeon in Davao took a large swathe of skin away from my shoulder and biopsied two other black patches and a lump (all confirmed as benign) and told me I was only stage 2A and everything would probably be okay - 95% sure he said - and I should just stay out of the sun (or use loads of sunscreen) and hope for the best. Out of extreme caution, he recommended a PET scan but nothing else (he was una...

While summer itself was a bit of a blur, there were definitely a few stand out moments. Within a few weeks in England, I quickly realised I had changed beyond all recognition - more fearful, more resentful and a little bit angry. I guess melanoma does that. So my standout moments weren’t exactly good ones. I spent much of July praying about whether to go ahead with the additional surgery recommended by the Spire melanoma surgeon. My mum’s advice about seeking God and him always replying when we need an answer just didn’t play out for me. Sadly, all I heard was deafening silence. Therefore, in August, I conformed with the medical establishment’s advice and had more skin was taken away for the princely sum of £750. The result came back 42 days later clear of any malignant cells. I guess God felt the private hospital needed the money more than I did.  In addition to private skin surgery, I’d tried to get back in the NHS system by re-registering with the local surgery and repeatedly ...

Before leaving the Philippines, I’d contacted my brother via WhatsApp and asked him to “give us a year” at his home. I’d carefully explained what had happened to us and the danger of melanoma. After some time, he said his wife had agreed “in principle” for us to stay one year, but it was likely they’d need a break from us during the year and suggested we move to my mother’s house later in the year. Overall, it was clear they wanted to offer us the exceptional help we needed, but it might unravel at any time given the general pressure of their family life.   On July 1, 2023, we arrived at their house in the back of a van driven by our old friend Tom, who had picked us up at the airport and was visiting us all in Norfolk for the first time in years. While he and his family got quickly reacquainted with my brother and his family, I unpacked our belongings in the room we’d been allotted. Inside the room, I immediately felt the gravity of the situation in front of me: I was surro...

Two years ago, my family and I left the Saudi Kingdom behind right in the middle of the Covid-pandemic. It was a highly-charged, truly epic departure, where we felt the presence of God himself as he worked a series of miracles to lift us out of Arabia against the odds and bring us back to our family house on Siargao Island, Philippines. Final deliverance itself was sweet enough, but once back on the isla we were able to build our dream house  (using funds saved from my second Saudi season), surf every day and look forward to a five-year residency on an island we truly loved. Far from the mask-wearing and app-showing conformity of pandemic Saudi, life suddenly felt free again and the freedom was sweeter than the ripest date in the world.  Quite frankly, the idea of returning to KSA for a third time was the furthest thing on my mind in those heady days. Indeed, I had written off ever seeing Saudi again for the rest of my days. Yet today, unexpectedly writing this blog from Engl...

It might seem like our final deliverance was easy and I'm somehow exaggerating the barriers which lied in our path in the days before exit. But I don't think I'm exaggerating them at all. In reality, we were hit with two completely unexpected blockages: my final exit visa wouldn't issue and Saudi banned all flights (including our flight from Dammam to Dubai, connecting to Cebu) to the UAE. In a country like Saudi Arabia, one challenge might be enough to scupper all your plans, but having two really made it feel like we had a large mountain to move away. As soon as HR confirmed they couldn't issue my final exit visa and had no solutions of their own apart from my wife and son leaving immediately, I felt very, very anxious about the prospect of a lengthy delay to us reaching the Philippines. It's not like I could just fly them to UAE because that would mean being red listed for Philippine entry. Therefore, I suggested they issue me a standard re-entry visa to enab...

After saying two goodbyes in Khafji (one to my polytechnic workplace and the other to the city), ejection came slightly early due Saudi’s unexpected and totally unjustified flight ban . My company transported my family and I to the city of Dammam, where we decided to stay for our final night in order to get a PCR test as a precaution for any unexpected demands during our journey to the Philippines. Alongside the test, we decided to throw caution to the wind and rent a two-bedroom suite at the Ramada Inn and eat at one of Dammam’s finest seafood restaurants.  First stop was at a travellers PCR test centre, where we all got a 6-hour covid test for the princely sum of 320 SAR each. Whatever you think about the pandemic, anyone can see that global pharma struck gold the moment the WHO declared it so. For the first time in human history, healthy asymptomatic people require expensive tests just to move around and narratives have been swiftly changed to ensure the money keeps flowing in....

Sometimes it seems like you’re up against the world itself. Two days ago, from out of nowhere, Saudi Arabia decided to ban all flights to UAE and three other nations. This unexpected flight ban, alongside my company’s indifference towards issuing me a re-entry visa, left my family and I in an extraordinarily precarious position. Our long standing booking on an Emirates flight from Dammam to Dubai to Cebu now looked potentially unviable even if my company decided to relent and issue the visa.  In normal times, a flight ban like this wouldn’t be a major problem. Nor would my final exit visa dilemma, which began 7 days ago. To circumvent the flight ban. we would normally just buy another ticket via Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Singapore, Doha, Hong Kong or Turkey. But Philippine covid policy has slowed down flights into Manila and Cebu to a dribble, pushing up one-way economy prices above £8,000 for the three of us using bucket shop agencies. More reliable bookings direct with airlines li...

As part of a YouTube series my family and I are doing on our YouTube channel, I filmed this short film " A Day in the Life of an ESL Teacher " about one of my last days teaching in Saudi Arabia. Right now, it feels too familiar and somewhat disturbing, but I hope it'll make me smile in the years ahead when I look back upon my time with less emotion and stress.  It's definitely worth watching this film if you want to know more about how it feels to teach in Saudi Arabia. While there isn't too much classroom action, you'll still get a feel of a typical day in a KSA school or polytechnic and learn a few tips about what to expect when you're actually in the class. Comment down below if you like the film and whether it would inspire you to take up an opportunity to work in Arabia or more likely turn it down.  As for me, I’d rather never go back, especially after my complicated and stressful last few days. When the time comes to work again, I'd really like t...

  What should have been a period of peaceful contemplation has, in typical Saudi style, been super stressful. Naively, I thought I’d just be checking CNN Philippines for travel updates and waiting for an EOSB bank transfer. Instead, a potential showstopper came out of nowhere: my final exit visa wouldn’t issue as it showed I had two visitors left in KSA. Suddenly, the fact my company hadn’t even bothered to pay me hardly mattered at all, especially when the local HR contact abruptly informed that me my wife and son would have to leave the Kingdom ahead of me and there were no alternatives.  In normal times, this issue would have proven only mildly inconvenient. I would have booked a flight to Dubai for my wife and son, and they would have waited for me there before flying in together to the Philippines. But these are far from normal times. First, any passenger coming from UAE is currently red listed for onward travel to the Philippines. Second, all flights into the Philippine...

Yesterday, a few of my colleagues kindly gave me a leaving present and my manager spoke for a few minutes about how I would be missed and how much impact I had had on my trainees across the years. It was delightfully low key and the perfect way to end my time at the polytechnic.  Today, on my very last day at work, I feel so relieved that’s it’s all over. Work conditions have deteriorated sharply in recent months (six hours a day in the classroom, hectic exam schedules, compulsory masks and distancing, mandatory vaccination from August onwards etc.), so I don't think I'll ever regret packing up at this particular time. Also, I'm not exactly getting any younger here in Arabia and a stressful life only does one thing to your health: ruins it!  A couple of days ago, HR sent me my end of service bonus ( EOSB ) calculation, which was a little higher than I had expected. I guess working two more months boosted it up, along with cash in lieu of a travel ticket and pro rata holiday...

After such a lengthy second season in Saudi, it's very difficult to believe that I'm now just 14 days away from final exit. Of course, my family and I can't take anything for granted given the volatility of travel protocols across the world and, in particular, in the Philippines. Indeed, two days ago, the Filipinos spotted a Pinoy traveller from Saudi positive with the Delta variant , but they haven't introduced any new flight bans yet. Overall, things are looking quite positive right now with a stable epidemiological situation across the Philippine Islands (5000-6000 "cases" per day) and a spat between the Cebu mayor and the Philippine President seemingly resolved. Cebu Airport has just reopened and our Emirates flight booked for July 7 should be a go if nothing unpredictable happens in the next two weeks.   Despite the general sense of optimism in the air, I've already been deprived of a glorious final exit. It's mostly my own fault since I've...

When I accepted a two-month bespoke contract extension a few weeks ago, I already knew it included a two-week religious holiday. While we could have hit the road on an expensive mission to check out Saudi's premier sights (like Mada'in Saleh and Umluj ), I decided on a destination a little closer to home. I guess the main reason for this was financial. I had already seen Saudi's Red Sea coastline and Mada'in Saleh during my first Saudi season based in Sakakah. The idea of a mammoth 20-hour taxi ride, with associated expenses, just to see the newly touristy Hegra just felt like too much, especially with a potential ordeal to reach our destination this year: Siargao. Therefore, we spent the first twelve days of the Eid vacation in Khafji enjoying beach, cafe and restaurant life before taking a taxi 250km south for a staycation in the city of Jubail on the last four days. The trip couldn't have started off any better. After a swift 2-hour ride, we checked into luxurio...

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...