I HATE SHOPPING IN SAUDI ARABIA!

I  hate shopping here in Saudi Arabia. All right, maybe the word “hate” is a little strong, but I for one, just speaking from my own personal experiences, really do not find shopping here nearly as enjoyable as I always did back in the states. There are many reasons why.

First of all, probably the main reason I don’t like shopping here is because of my husband. Now don’t get me wrong, Adnan is a great guy. But he has pretty much always hated shopping. And now that we are here in Saudi Arabia, it is a very stressful ordeal for him to go through. He’s always in a rush to get out of there once we arrive (more on that later), and I hate being rushed especially when I’m shopping. I like to take my time and I enjoy looking at things. Not that I have to buy everything I see, but I just like to look.

Now Adnan actually didn’t always used to be like that, so anti-shopping, I mean. In fact when we first met, he used to make it really fun. I remember one time when we were at a large department store, I tried on a pair of jeans and came out of the dressing room to get his opinion. When I returned to the dressing room, the pants I had worn into the store were missing, so I ended up having to purchase a new pair of jeans since I couldn’t very well leave the store in my underwear. My overly dramatic husband ranted and raved to the poor salesgirl, “What kind of a place is this? You steal a person’s clothes so they are forced to buy new ones? Get me the manager!” Yes, it turned out that Adnan was in cahoots with the salesgirl, and my old pants eventually showed up again, and it was all quite hysterical at the time. But see, he USED to be fun to shop with!

The second reason I hate shopping here has to be the traffic. Most of the time, it is nerve-wracking driving anywhere in Jeddah. Of course my husband has to drive me, since he brought me to the ONLY country in the world (that I know of) where women are not allowed to drive. The stress endured while driving in this crazy traffic is off the charts. The traffic here is absolutely horrendous. Right now is Ramadan, and traffic is much lighter earlier in the day until around 3pm. So my husband prefers to do any shopping during a two hour window of time between the mid-day prayer and the mid-afternoon prayer. However many shops are not open at all during the day until later, especially now that it’s Ramadan. The shopping and traffic are busiest after the final prayer of the day, which is now after 8:30pm. So with everyone and their mother out then, it’s bumper to bumper traffic jams until well past 2am. Entire families are out and about shopping at this time, from elderly grandmothers down to little babies and toddlers. It’s crazy. The stores are extremely crowded and it’s difficult to find parking spaces too.

Another reason I hate shopping here in Saudi Arabia is because of the store hours. All shops must close during prayer times. There are five prayers a day. The first prayer of the day is so early, it doesn’t really disrupt most business schedules. The other four prayers are at mid-day, mid-afternoon, late afternoon, and early evening. Many businesses just close all afternoon, instead of opening and closing several times during the day. Then they stay open until at least midnight or later. During Ramadan the shops stay open later to accommodate all the late night shoppers. The closing of the shops for prayers is why my husband is always in a rush when we are shopping. The stores will literally kick shoppers out of the stores, or some just lock shoppers in so they can’t get out. I guess I have had a difficult time adjusting to the crazy store hours here in Saudi Arabia.

With Ramadan upon us, we are hungry and thirsty during the day when we fast until sundown. This includes my husband’s approximately two hour shopping window in the early afternoon, plus the souks are largely in the open air. The heat is brutal and along with that comes sweat dripping off shoppers and workers alike, not to mention some pretty foul odors of everyone involved in the shopping experience. Bargaining in the souks, my husband will walk around in the heat to ten different vendors, all carrying identical items, just to bicker the price down another ten riyals (US $2.50). Adnan makes me feel like I should settle for something less expensive that I don’t really like, and then I’m at the point where I just don’t care anymore. Then he grudgingly buys me what I really wanted in the place. Adnan insists that the prices are much cheaper at the souks rather than the new large super stores (similar to Super Target) that are air conditioned. But my feeling is that even if we would pay a little more, there is a lot to be said about shopping in air conditioned comfort during the really hot months especially when we are hungry and thirsty, and that would be my choice. During the winter months and when it’s not Ramadan, it really isn’t so bad shopping in the souks.

All right, I admit I have never been particularly fond of grocery shopping since I’m not the greatest cook in the world. My expertise definitely lies in the eating part! You can find just about anything you want - or at least a reasonable substitute for - in the groceries and vegetable markets here, but there are some items that are scarce and very difficult to find. Short of going to several different markets, which my husband refuses to do, to satisfy my gastronomic desires, we end up grocery shopping at only one store, which may not have everything I may want. Like sour cream, for example. The Arabs simply do not use sour cream. They use some products that are similar, but they are NOT sour cream. I know that there are a few shops here that carry real sour cream, but we don’t do our regular shopping at those places, so I do without sour cream. Okay, okay, I know I probably shouldn’t have it anyway, but still, sometimes I would just like to have some sour cream - is that so wrong? Another thing about grocery shopping here is that in some things, there is just not a wide variety to choose from like I am used to. The health conscious diet hasn’t caught on here like in America and finding low fat items is very difficult. Plus if you’re counting carbs or calories, many products do not list this information on the packaging.

One of the reasons I hate shopping for clothes here is because in most places there are no dressing rooms to try clothes on. And since women are not allowed to work in shops (with a few exceptions, women are only allowed to work along side of men in the medical field), the sales clerks here are all foreign men. Now, I have asked in several shops why there are no dressing rooms for women to try clothes on and I have been given two entirely different explanations. One reason given is that there has been a problem with theft because women’s abayas make it easy to hide things underneath. The other reason is so that there will be no hanky panky going on. You see, in this sexually obsessed/oppressed society where men and women are not allowed to date or mix socially, every precaution is taken, every conceivable possibility is thwarted, to prevent men and women from hooking up. If this is the case, the “no dressing rooms” policy was probably born out of fear that the sex starved sales clerks and the lusty female shoppers might act inappropriately behind closed curtains. This is a country where everyone is assumed to be so immoral and unable to control themselves that there is a need for religious police to keep everyone in line. Anyway, as a result of all this, I find that I don't personally enjoy shopping for clothing here in Saudi Arabia as much as I do elsewhere, since I prefer to be able to try things on first before I buy. Also, many of the smaller shops do not accept returns either, so not being able to try on or return it later if it doesn’t fit is a real turn off for me.

Another problem with shopping is that there are no marked prices in the souks, so to find out a price, you must ask the attendant. When I shop, I like to pick up an item, look at the price tag, and then either put it back or decide to buy it. Probably no big deal. But when I have to ask the price for every single item I might be interested in, I lose interest in purchasing anything. And the souks are so expertly crowded with products, it’s hard to find what you might be looking for, so again you must ask. The attendants are usually helpful and eager to serve, but I hate having to ask for help every time I go into a shop. I enjoy finding things myself and discovering new items on my own, not with a sales clerk right behind me every step of the way.

Since I implicated my husband as the main reason I don’t like shopping here, I guess it’s only fair that I’m truthful about my son and put him on this list too. Adam constantly whines about the intolerable heat, the unpleasant and pungent odors of the souks, about how he’s going to faint any minute because he‘s thirsty and hungry, or begs us to buy him yet another totally useless but expensive item that he doesn’t need. Regarding the heat, I tell him to imagine wearing a long black cloak and covering his hair and neck too! But things get even worse when my hubby has had enough of my son’s whining. I can’t stand being around either one of them when this happens. Heaven help me.

I decided to write this post because of a particularly bad shopping experience yesterday that frazzled me. So you've now seen a different side of me. The real Susie has been exposed! But I honestly think if these minor problems that I’ve cited could somehow be fixed, then shopping here in Arabia would be a much more pleasurable experience for me. There are bargains to be had, that is for sure!