How to buy a car in Saudi Arabia

1. Start by going in to your local dealership, wander around for half an hour trying to get someone to help you, decide to take it upon yourself to go ask for help, hear the call to prayer, decide it’s hopeless and decide to try again another day
2. Begin working on having your money wired from Canada.  Hopefully you have enough cash to buy a car or you’re going to have to wait until you pass your 3 month probation before you can get approved for a loan.
3. Open a bank account (sounds simple but it’s not)
4. Get driver’s license. Go to Driving School after work, find out that they close at 2pm, awesome, get your Canadian license translated into Arabic (easier than step #3, surprisingly), take a whole pile of paperwork down to driving school with some random dude you met at the HR office, stand there like the token white person that you are, elbows up while in line (these people are feisty and cut in lines…happens in traffic too…big surprise there), attempt to understand the exchange between random HR dude and the traffic officer, Khalas! and you’re done.  Wipe that look of bewilderment off your face when the HR dude tells you that your license will be back at his office sometime next week, inshallah.
5. Go back to car dealership…still hopeless…next shipment of SUV’s comes in a couple months
6. Plan B - fellow co-worker mentions this fantastic car market in the next suburb to the north. “No worries, mate” he says.  So we hop in his coffin…er…rental car and take off in typical Saudi traffic (please refer to the “Driving” post if you’re just tuning in).
7. Arrive at the Dammam Cars Auction Market.  This is code for “Pure freaking Arabian Mayhem”.  If you thought the roads here were crazy well then you should see this place.  Cars are going the wrong way down roads on the wrong side.  Lights flashing, horns honking, people standing on the side of the road trying to buy your car from you.  My Aussie co-worker is cool as a cucumber as he says “watch this”.  He pulls the rental car over as three extremely excited Saudi locals approach his car.  One says “you sell?!?!? you sell?!?”  I laugh to myself.  This is a piece of garbage 2013 Honda Accord that’s been rode hard and put away wet yet this guy thinks its amazing.  I’m pretty sure the only english he knows is “buy, sell, yes”.  At this point I’m wondering what this mad scientist of an Aussie is up to but he pulls out his phone and fires up the calculator app.  Numbers are the universal language for selling cars.  Wait a minute…is he selling the rental car?!?  After they can’t settle on a price the mad Aussie closes his eyes and starts to slowly nudge out into oncoming traffic.  Crazy?  Heck no.  This is normal.  Drive a bit further down, park the car and begin touring the Used Car Souk.
8. Wait for a break in traffic and make a run for it.  Ya know…this place isn’t half bad and once you’re off the roads and looking at vehicles things seem almost normal.  “Almost” being the key word.  Now enter my brand new Egyptian buddy Mahmood.  This guy is great; his english however…not so good but we can get past that.
9. 5 brand new Nissan Patrols await the Aussie and I. Ooooohhhhhh Aaaaaahhhhhhh. These things are fantastic.
10. Engineering 101 - Saudi Style: Size + Power = Safety
11. Wave over Mahmood.  Me: Year, Price, Mileage?  Mahmood: uh…two…uh…zero…uh…one…uh…three. Me: ok this is gonna take a while *pull out phone*
12. Start Calculator app and start typing in numbers to determine the year, price and kilometers of each vehicle
13. Its pretty easy to figure out which one of these vehicles Mahmood is wanting to get rid of: the 2013 Nissan Patrol SE Type 2 with zero mileage.  Why?  The 2015’s are starting to move into the car souk and he needs some room
14. Name your price, negotiate a little bit, get close to an agreeable price and then walk away.  Always walk away.  Walk away even if it’s a steal of a deal.  As we leave the Aussie says “you got ‘em mate, that’s a fantastic price, you’d be dumb not to take it but lets go grab a tea and see what else is…WHOA! Watch where the #$%& you’re driving!!!”  The Aussie almost gets taken out by a local and I’m starting to wonder if his company is going to get me in trouble.
15. Go grab a freshly brewed green tea from the local who’s got a kettle brewing over a campfire on the side of the road (no joke at all).  Further down the way we see a fellow who has a hukah set up on the side of the road.  I start bobbing my head to the imaginary beat of Cypress Hills “Hits from the Bong”.  I chuckle, grab my tea, haggle a bit over the price (2 riyals is steep for a tea that I’m getting from a street vendor), take a sip and realize it’s easily the best green tea that I’ve ever had.  Makes me start thinking about stopping by the hukah vendor to see what he’s got available…
16. Realize that my new buddy Mahmood is standing at the edge of his dealership hollering something at me which may or may not be English.  Likely not English though as he’s  talking too fast.  Then I realize he’s talking to his fellow dealers about the Aussie and I.  Note to self: learn Arabic so you can figure out what and when these guys are talking about you.
17. Realize that there are far too many dealerships crammed into this space to adequately find something
18. Turn around and return to Mahmood where he’s much more receptive to my final offer.  We agree on a price so it’s as good as done.  Ya right!  I attempt to ask what the next step in this process is.  All Mahmood keeps saying is “you give me money, I give you puck”.  And I start to think, “sure buddy, I am pucked if I give you this much money before I get the vehicle”.  I have no clue what this puck things is all about so I do as Taylor Swift does and just “shake it off”
19. Give Mahmood a 1000SAR deposit and tell him that I’ll be back Monday or Tuesday, inshallah with the rest of the money.  He gives me a photocopy of something written in Arabic and says “need this for insurance and bump number”.  I say “bump number?!?!?” and after going back and forth a few more times I realize that he’s talking about the license plate.  Ok, cool, give me this paper and I’ll do what I can.  I keep insisting that I want a receipt for this deposit that I’ve given so Mahmood tells us (or tries to) that we need to go to another one of his dealerships to make this happen.  Another dealership???  This should be interesting…what kind of freaking shell game are you playing here Mahmood?
20. Grab hand written receipt (all in Arabic), wonder what in the world it even says, shrug and pull another Taylor Swift
21. The Aussie and I depart into the increasing mayhem of the car market and begin our trek home.
22. Day 2 - goal for the day is to secure the rest of the money and obtain insurance.
23. Contact bank in Canada and tell them that I need a large sum of money transferred from my Canadian account to my Saudi account.  They pretty well laugh at me.  They kindly tell me that they are not going to send that kind of money to a bank account based in the Middle East.  That’s when I lose it.  CAN NOTHING SIMPLE BE ACCOMPLISHED IN THIS COUNTRY?!?!?  That’s it, we’re leaving, this isn’t happening, I’m done, where’s the airport???
24. I then put myself in their shoes and realize exactly how stupid that sounds.
25. Pop into insurance broker on the main compound during my lunch break.  Learn that they only work from 9AM-noon Sunday - Thursday.  Awesome.
26. Day 2 = FAIL
27. Day 3 - Call bank back and insist to speak with bank manager to straighten things out.  They hesitate but it works out.  Lots more to this story but lets just say that transferring money between two completely legitimate bank accounts in your own name is extremely difficult.  The things that seem so simple at home are VERY difficult here.  We have yet to figure out why.
28. Obtain insurance.  Pretty sure this is a scam too.
29. Get phone call from Mahmood.  Tell him I’m on my way with money and insurance.  Tell him that he needs to get bump number.  Speaking over the phone with this guy is hopeless.
30. Drive half an hour through Saudi traffic/hell to the car market.  It’s 1pm in the afternoon an this place is a ghost town.  Not a soul in sight.  I get to my dealership and it’s as if life has simply disappeared from the planet.  A stray ferral cat walks past me and I feel like I’m in the middle of some post-apocalyptic nightmare.  Not joking.  This is really starting to weird me out.  I start calling around for Mahmood, whistling, looking in office windows.  There’s no sign of this guy.  What’s going on here???  Then I hear some noise coming from one of the rooms with a sign on the door completely in Arabic.  I’m now convinced that I’m living an episode of AMC’s The Walking Dead.  Great.  This is how it all ends.
31. Knock on the door, step back, body slightly turned, escape route planned, ready to sprint.  Out pops Mahmood.  He’s got food all over his hands and he invites me in to sit on the floor of a dimly lit room which appears to be his living quarters so that I can dine with him and his two partially dressed companions (both of which are male to clarify) just using my hands.  Thanks but no pal, I’m good, where’s my car?
32. Mahmood washes up and we begin the next round of charades about what needs to happen next.  Out come the phones again.  I need bump number and Mahmood is trying to show me on a map where to go.  He finds it on his so I give him mine.  He starts tapping wildly in the bottom left corner of my phone trying to pull up the Arabic keyboard but only gets a keyboard full of cute Emoticons.  Sorry pal, I can’t read it so why would I need to spell it?
33. He calls over his half dressed companion (it’s 44C without A/C at this place so I don’t blame the guy) to drop a pin on my phone.  I can already tell this isn’t going to end well.
34. Head over to the other dealership to do some more sketchy paperwork.  I’m pretty sure I’m handing over a massive cheque for a vehicle that I’ll never see.  Wait a minute here…why am I giving you this cheque before I get the car anyways.  Mahmood says “you give check, I get bump number, you get get puck”.  I think “ya pal, I’m pucked, completely pucked”.  Wait another second, I thought I was going to this random pin on my phone to get bump number.
35. Hand over the cheque and pull another Taylor Swift.  Ask when I get my bump number and istamara (which I think now is this “puck” that he’s referring to).  Mahmood says (tomorrow, 2 or 3 in afternoon, inshallah).
36. Learn after the fact that this istamara thing is basically the vehicle registration and the vehicle can’t be registered in my name unless it’s paid for in full
37. Head home, attempt to go to sleep, replay the events of the day, convince myself that Mahmood is now in Bahrain living the dream with my money.
38. Get up, go to work, watch phone all day long, waiting for a call.  2pm comes.  Nothing.  3pm comes.  Nothing.  Screw this.  I’m calling him.  He answers, hooray!  No idea what he’s saying.  I think he forgot that I don’t speak Arabic.  Now I’m convinced he’s gone sideways in Bahrain.  I say “bump number?!?!?”, he says “yes, you come get car now”, I say “absolutely, see you in an hour”.  
39. Inform the Aussie that I haven’t been scammed and that I need yet another ride to the car market to actually get my new ride.
40. Arrive at car market and just about run over at least a dozen locals who, again, try to purchase the rental car.
41. Get car, sign paperwork and drive away.  No problem.  Couldn’t have been easier.  Mystery dinging sound comes from car.  Oh good, what’s that?  Low fuel.  Are you kidding me?!?  At $0.12/L for fuel they couldn’t even fill it up?  Whatever.
42. Locate nearest gas station and tell guy to fill it up.  He puts in 83L which is worth roughly 50 SAR and I take off with 3/4 of a tank of gas. $13 for 3/4 of a tank of 95 octane gas?  Geez this thing is gonna be a thirsty beast.  I do some more quick math and realize that it’s going to take less than $20 to fill this thing to the brim where it would have cost $165 back home.  We’re not going home.  Ever.  This place is fantastic.  Why would anyone ever want to leave.  Please refer back to #23.
43. Relay story to all your friends back home so they can stop taking for granted how easily somethings really are and so that they realize that their “First World Problems” really are just that.  First.  World.  Problems.  Don’t sweat the small stuff people; you could be going through processes like this on a daily basis.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

Just keep swimming...

Hello again from kobar , I realize it has been a long time since our last update as it takes a long time to do this with our lovely internet which we are still constantly struggling with . But we have figured out if we stream through our router from home and the computer on airplay we can usually get an entire episode off netflix before it stops .Can you tell I really miss my Tv shows. But at  least we figured out something . 

Since last time  I have made some new friends  , most of which are from austraila and I have to get a translator  to understand some of the words that they use !! Love it ,  and we  have found Tam tams cookies and they were epic. One thing I have noticed here is that the stores have so much imported we can truly have food from all over the world , so if it says imported from USA try to avoid it and get something new.  Why not right , the food here is really tasty ,not a lot of salad but i'll find to live:)

We did finally get a drivers licence and bank account !!! hurray  who knew those tiny things would be such a big deal!  We have money in Canada perfect go to the bank tell our saudi account we are going to wire money to you …..well first sign and scan these documents and send them to canda , easy right ? nope apparently people here don’t/can’t fax to Canada ? all right after days of back and forth with the 9 hour time difference Brandt got a phone call to finalize thing in Canada but with no printer or scanner or Internet he had to write things out in hand  , take a picture on his phone and send it to them !then after all is said and done they say perfect that will take up to 3 weeks~  umm all righty  , it did arrive in about 4 days but man that was stress full .  Then Brandt went car shopping and that is a whole other story that he will have to insert….see Brandt’s guide to buying a car in Saudi******

Like anyone we are having our ups and downs.Kayden is doing better in school and we are forming some sort of routein which is hard in any world cause there is never enough time to do all the things you need to get done. But I am crossing things off the “to do “list  Such as take a cab  , So me and One of my new “peeps” went to a store down the way from us and it was like Ligudation world meets  winners  , so it took some hunting but it was great! we took a cab with no men and the cab even had seat belts when in Saudi that is an upgrade:) But it was fun and events full . I have also Gone out with a Driver and a friend cause i’m not ready to that one alone just yet:)  but it was great got out one afternoon while that older kids were at school and was back by the time they got off the buss , And i even found frozen blueberries which was the high light of my day , I had been looking since we got here  , i ended up paying like 5$ for 2 cups but who cares , small victory! 

So we have our re-entry visa’s and we have a long weekend here so we ventured out to the “get away” place over here which is Bahrian it’s just a quick drive over the cosway bridge which about 2 km long 2 lanes on each side  , with a speed guide line of 80 but everyone was going close to 120 , it was wild . Were we so optimistic that we were going on an adventure and see this part of the wold , but then we passed a fatal accident were we saw 5 men physically lift a car off a person. Life changing it was truly sad. Then we got the security /Customs and there were 7 separate ones , about 3 seconds drive apart from each other  , fun .  Then once we got to the Island we were in search of this special restaurant where they serve…BACON! Now i know you are thinking big deal. but in Saudi there is no bacon or pork of any sorts , so this Bacon was the first pork product we have eaten in 5 weeks!!  After an hour of searching we found it , and it was a hole in the wall  but the Bacon was epic!! 

but we have learned one thing is our outings recently ……..we don not like #Adventures!!!   at first we were all about the adventure and going to try to travel the places around us while we are over here but since a every day seems to be an adventure we are going to travel to places we know we love!!! 

So instead going to see Hong kong and Tokyo , we are going on a disney cruise and Disney in Orlando . I know you are all thinking really!! but when everyday is so very frustrating and Different we have to know that we are going some place we know and love so we can relax ! we have deffinaly learned that about our self …..Tracey’s don’t really like change but we can make to most of a lot of difficult situations:) We are good with it 

One of the joys of living in a Hotel for lack of a better term:) The Cart for bringing in the groceries

Take out thursday is our favourite night , Kayden loves this food! and the Nan bread is out of this world.

This is our outting to Bahrain @ 7am  it was truly beautiful

Even Kayden thought it was picture worthy ! It was so cute , we were driven along and just herd the camera shooting away

This is the Bacon place , can you spot it ? It was called Rik's kountry Kitchen 

Lost paradise Water park , so Cool it was literally in the middle of NO where , but the park was amazing !!We spent hours there  there were 10 plus water slide , lazy river and a huge play ground for water play .  See the fence  and on the other side is nothing  

Kids splash area   , it was the biggest one we have ever seen

lol , this was on the lazy River  , had to post it

Sunset drive on the way home on the cosway  , after 2 hours getting through customs .It was beautiful 

My next goal is to figure out how to do some shipping to here as my Lulelmon order was cancelled and i was truly sad:( so i have to get creative and try again .And our boxes were supped so leave canada on the 18 so my Crafting supplies maybe here some day soon:) Inshallah....as they say it here...which means "If Allah wills it"  but in my translation means.....maybe , hopefully , we will see 

Till next time 

#Adventure ??

honey moon phase is over

Well when we first arrived people seemed very …curious as to how we were doing. First question when meeting anyone here is … how long have you been here . Now that we are reaching that one month mark we are becoming veterans’ . Next question where do you live  everyone who is not in the tower with is gives us the ohhh , and how is that going ?? well long and short and theme of my life right now….it all part of the adventure!!! Life  here is truly what you make off it  , and if you want to sit around and think of all the things that would be a lot smoother at home you would never stop …. For the most part things are good , but there are days…..that’s fur sure that you just look out the window at the crazy world around us and wonder ……what are we doing here!!   Then after a few tears and some four letter words , you dust your self off and go tackle the world.  

School has started and it has it’s own challenges , curriculum here is way more advanced than in Canada  ,  so kayden is having some issues with being behind at school . Plus all the drama of starting the first grade   , plus taking the buss Ridiculously early every morning.  But  the school if really nice and seem like they are going to do good things for our dude.

Skylar is also at school everyday for half the day , and she is loving it . But the standard reply to the how was your day was the buss ride took for ever  , but i went to the play ground 3 times!! so her simple life if Great!!

 We finally tackled the mall here …and let’s just say it was epic!!!  It made chinook in Calgary look small!! they had everything you could ever need , so we started our shopping trip with a store called Saco world. This place was just like walmart except more industrial . We found everything from tupper wear to bouncy houses! Now I know you are all thinking what good would you need a bouncy house with no back yard…..well that’s the point !!! all I will say is the kids were pretty stoked!  So we have a cart full of items we packed them to the car and with approximately 2 hours till the next prayer time we were off!! The mall was very family friendly most stores had a large family only sign in the window so as  long as you are with you family you are good to go everywhere. Except for the men’s only section in the restraunts but who want to got there:)  They had everything ,poetry barn kids , children’s place , a giant candy store , cooking store that was just like papered chef   , there was even a theme park and a massive indoor play structure . So we shopped and shopped , then when prayer time was quickly approaching we made the mad dash through the mall to the car before we got locked in …when we arrived at our mini car(yes we still have the worlds smallest rental car)  which was already full from our trip to saco world we proceded to unpack everything and cram it all in  let’s just say kayden had a stroller on his lap and I was holding bags on mine and the trunk was probably on the verge of bursting open . #adventure   I can defiantly see us spending a lot of time and money at that mall:)

Brandt finally got a bank account here which is a bit of a lengthy process but we are one step closer to buying our own car if we can only figure out how to get some of our money into this country .  We  did receive our Residency card , that was a hard one to handle when you get your card that says saudi resident with a big ol picture of you on it ! Yikes that is one of those…how did that happen moment!! 

We are having a lot of those lately simple things that should not be an issue are very difficult , like internet . It is so slow that we can not stream netflix!!! first world problem  but still.Brandt went and got a router to hopefully improve that  , and 2 hours later it was slower than what we started with so the next day another trip to the store and got another router  and after testing it in every corner of the apartment it works sometimes if its in the corner by the window with nothing around it , then you can get netflix for 3 mins at a time before it’s lost again and searching. So I  know this is not a life or death thing just frustrating !!! It’s the little things that just seem so difficulty you wonder why you bother trying  . I was getting a little cabin fever one day and after skylar goes to school i have a 3 hour window to get something done with only one kid but you are very limited as to what you can do as there is only one buss that can take you anywhere in that time  , so me and my saudi sidekick hoped on a buss to camp to got the the library , well the buss left and after a 40 min ride we arrived at the library hiked across the parking lot to get in returned our books then had a total of 8 mins to get another book , Rush back across the parking lot to the bus stop only to stand there for 20 mins then get on a buss that took us to another compound before our own thus making our buss ride home , 60 mins which usually takes 15 …….with Colby crying and threading to get car sick just so we could get out and get a new book , which we all know i probably could have found online in 5 mins.  but it’s all about the adventure and i know  i can’t have an adventure sitting in the condo all day but after that  it makes it hard to want to do that one again .  All was good bit just one more thing that is harder to do here. But on a positive note with all my free time  , as my boxes have still not even left canada!!! ( I seriously  think at this rate i might have them by christmas!) I’m getting smoking good at pintrest ,we have had a new meal every night the family is liking that part. Most the time i can find all the ingredients i need and the arabic writing on the label just adds to fun . The baking ingredients are so rich and pure compared to home the sugars and butter are out of this world !!! However as i still and camping for the most part things are a little tricky still  , it's was brandt birthday and i had to bake him something so i made red velvet whoopee cakes , proud moment was making the icing by hand ! just timing it right so that the butter was soft from sitting it out and mixing to a wonderful rufflynees with my whisk  ,  it was simple but yet  different from home .   And making buns and breads with no mixer means you are latterly needing it on the  counter , and as i don't think i'm quite pioneer worthy it was pretty satisfying ~!

making buns in Saudi makes me feel like I know what i'm doing!!! proud moment

Thursday is our take out dinner night so we try someplace new every thursday , this week was sea food . Brandt went alone and went a little crazy , but you got to pick your fish from the cooler and how you wanted it prepared so here is our lobster larry!

No much needed here , who doesn't have a bouncy house in the condo?? right ! apologies

 to our neighbours below :) 

just another shopping day at the Dhahran mall

Check these out , star wars cake pans ...happy 32 i mean 6 year old

Even pottery and  batman come to Saudi