Posted Wednesday, December 19, 2007, 7:19 PM by Lonely Planet
Under an Arabian sun, the hottest skateboarders, BMX riders and motocross athletes compete for medals and money while pushing the boundaries of gravity and sanity. For the third year in a row, Dubai's Festival City, a massive shopping mall and outdoor pavilion in the middle of the Middle East plays host to the X-Games.
With temperatures hovering at just under 32° Celsius (90° Fahrenheit), a dusty breeze kicks up from across Khor Dubai (Dubai Creek) and with it the aroma of rotisserie shawarm (roasted mutton served in flat bread) wafts in.
There's a street-course full of ramps, stairs, rails and ledges, a motocross jump (70 ft.+) and a 12 ft. tall vertical half-pipe. With ESPN cameras everywhere, instant-replays of the sickest tricks are played out to a pop-punk beat on a giant screen TV. In fact, if it weren't for the skyscrapers (including the Burj Dubai, the world's tallest at 141 stories) looming in the background and the multicultural crowd in the foreground, I could be in Anytown, USA. A group of preteen expat kids saying 'Yeah!' and raising horned fingers only adds to the illusion of being back in California.
Behind the 'skatebrats' I see a pair of veiled Muslim women, a couple of bearded Pakistanis in bengalis (oversized nightshirts) and two Emirati men in dishdashas (an all white gown and tribal headdress combo).
On a break from the vertical and intercultural action, I pick-up a copy of Rage, a free local skate magazine put out by Rage Skate Shop.
The zine is the fruit of a vibrant, diverse skate scene taking root here in the desert. Transplanted hometown heroes like Chef Spanky (a 17 year-old Lebanese skater and chef), Ibrahim Wadhai (a 15 year-old Iraqi skater out of Abu Dhabi) and Meriem Aissa, an Algerian snowboarder (often found on the artificial slopes at Ski Dubai) grace the pages of this local rag.
Only in Dubai are you as likely to skate with an American or Canadian as you are with an Iraqi or a Moroccan. And with three skateparks - Wonderland, Mamzaar Bowl & Hayyaa! Springs - not to mention loads of contests, visiting out of town pros (Ryan Sheckler & Bam Margera being the two most recent), in addition to jam sessions, punk rock shows and the X-Games, the only logical conclusion to come to is that Dubai has got it going-on.
- Baxter Jackson
Labels: Festivals and events, Middle East
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Posted Sunday, November 25, 2007, 10:29 PM by Lonely Planet
Last month the British Sunday Mirror, reporting on a forthcoming BBC documentary, revealed that the 1994 edition of our Middle East guide had been used for planning the Iraq invasion. 'Former American ambassador Barbara Bodine, who was given the job of helping to reconstruct Iraq, said: "It is a great guide book, but it should not be the basis of an occupation."'
Well yes, particularly since they used the wrong book. An older edition, our 1990 West Asia guidebook would have been a much better tool for invasion and rebuilding. We'd sent intrepid Englishwoman Rosemary Hall to research Iraq for that edition and, at the time, we were even thinking about a stand alone Iraq guidebook. Then Saddam invaded Kuwait and it all ended in tears. For him and for us.
To be perfectly honest we don't write our books with invasion, coups, revolutions and general mayhem in mind. Not that they aren't regularly used for such non-touristic purposes. In his book Zanzibar Chest, Reuters correspondent Aidan Hartley reported that as the Ethopian rebels closed in on the Soviet-backed dictator Haile Menguitu, the rebel tank drivers were guided into the capital using the Addis Ababa map photocopied from the reporter's dog-eared copy of Africa on a Shoestring.
I'm happy to hear we played our part in getting rid of one awful dictator (Mengistu's now in Zimbabwe where Mugabe, another awful African leader, looks after him), but I have to admit our books sometimes get used in ways I don't approve of. On one occasion a Kashmiri separatist organisation bought a copy of our India book to select a hotel to kidnap Western visitors. Fortunately the resourceful travellers they captured soon managed to escape. In 2003 a Weekend Australian story headlined 'Terror with help from a Lonely Planet guide,' reported that two misguided young British Muslims used our Israel guidebook to choose a hostel before making a suicide bomb attack on a beachfront bar.
- Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet
Labels: Breaking travel news, Middle East, Travelsnitch
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Posted Sunday, September 16, 2007, 11:51 PM by Lonely Planet
The first OzBus London to Sydney overland trip has just hit the road. Haven't heard about it? OzBus - in return for 3750 of your hard-earned pounds sterling - will pop you in a bus with around 35 other people and take you on a 12-week drive from London through Europe and Asia to Timor, where you'll jump on a plane to Darwin for the drive down to Sydney. It's old-skool as.
Of course, many independent travellers are turning up their noses at what is, essentially, an organised tour. And why not? They and their progenitors have been legging it overland since the 1960s without the help of a bloke with a microphone pointing out the sites. Despite the media-generated excitement about this 'world first travel experience', for some people taking such a short overland trip is about as adventurous as a week on Ko Pha Ngan. And of course there's the cost: you won't have to go far to find someone who'll tell you 45 pounds a day for transport, food and a camping spot is a heinous rip-off and they could do it for less than three.
But you know what? I reckon it's great. Sure, there are plenty among us who are hardcore enough to do this trip themselves. But there are also plenty among us who find the whole thing just too hard, and end up opting for the plane even though we'd rather save the emissions and see the world close-up. OzBus is saying it's possible, it's fun and anyone can do it. Anything that encourages travellers to take it slowly, meet the locals and enjoy the trip rather than pelting their way to the destination; anything that makes travel a journey that you have to plan for and live over a sizeable chunk of your life, rather than a short-break that you've forgotten before you've even paid off the credit card, has got to be a good thing.
- Jane Rawson
Labels: Asia and Pacific, Europe, London, Middle East, Sustainable and responsible tourism, Travelsnitch
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Posted Sunday, April 22, 2007, 9:46 PM by Lonely Planet
'A guest is a gift from God' goes the popular Arab saying. The hospitality of the Middle East is legendary, and Saudi Arabia had proved no exception. During our weeks on the road and over the course of the 11,250km we clocked up, our car had become so stuffed full with presents that I now called it 'Abdullah's mobile bazaar'.
We stocked everything from the choicest dates and most luxuriously packaged boxes of chocolates to lavish coffee-table books, the finest coffee beans and even a pearl necklace. Saudi generosity was overwhelming, and it did not seem in any danger of dwindling.
The Red Sea port of Jeddah was our final destination. Considered the most cosmopolitan town in the Kingdom - and somewhat wild, degenerate and dangerous by the country's more conservative kinsmen - Jeddah had a palpably relaxed, seen-it-all air. On the private beaches outside town, we even came across bikini-clad girls on jet skis.
With its ancient souqs and crumbling coral houses that once belonged to the city's moneyed merchants, as well as the excellent museums of the heritage-proud Hejazis, laid-back, libertine Jeddah was a lovely place to end a circuit of the Kingdom.
But engulfing the region in the form of two million pilgrims was the Haj (the annual pilgrimage to Mecca) and every hotel room was taken. Without a second's hesitation, several Saudi 'friends' stepped up to offer accommodation in their own homes.
Abdullah insisted on showing me some Saudi hospitality too. Invited for 'lunch', I sat down the following day to an all-afternoon feast of fish, meat and vegetables in the company of his charming family. Near the end of the meal Abdullah suddenly burst out:
'What will become of you in Riyadh, Ms Frances?'
'I'll be fine, Abdullah, don't worry. I am sure your countrymen will take good care of me.'He need not have fretted. During the remaining days' research in Riyadh, and following an interview with a minister, I found myself passed like a parcel between princes. The hospitality was such that I found I had only to show the slightest interest in a subject, the least liking, and my 'wishes' were granted or dreams became true.
One day, Aladdin-like, I murmured imprudently about the ancient art of falconry. The very next day, I found myself being flown first-class to a nature reserve north of Najran to see a royal falconry display staged especially for me. On muttering about camels, I was whisked away to a camel beauty contest outside Riyadh and given a personal tour of the princes' favourites.
A fracas followed merely trying to persuade my hospitable hosts that I could not delay my return home.
Saudi Arabia. Quite possibly the most frustrating and fantastic, demanding and dream-like assignment I had ever had. Were it not for the sand still in my camera bag, I would never have believed I'd been there at all.
- Frances Linzee Gordon
This is the last in a series of eight blog posts from Frances Linzee Gordon on her unprecedented research assignment in Saudi Arabia for Lonely Planet's forthcoming guide to the Arabian Peninsula. As the first person ever to be granted a visa to visit the Kingdom as an independent tourist, she kept a diary of her adventures. Read the whole series here...
Labels: Frances Linzee Gordon in Saudi Arabia, Middle East
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Posted Sunday, April 15, 2007, 3:40 PM by Lonely Planet
'That's not good enough', I growled, narrowing my eyes at the official standing before me. 'I would like to visit the site now.'
To my enormous surprise, the official nodded obediently and scuttled off at once to attendto my request.
'You see, Ms Frances, I try to explain', Abdullah had volunteered early on in the trip. 'We Saudi men, we cannot say no to women when they ask help'.
Abdullah had encouraged me to take full advantage of this convenient dictate of Saudi etiquette; I did. Soon I had become quite brazen in my demands, asking for anything we required while Abdullah lurked smirking in the shadow of my abeyya.
'I want to visit the village of Habalah', I stated succinctly as soon as I had entered the offices of the Asir Tourism Board. Soon an entire cable car - lying dormant in the off-season - had wheezed into life, requiring a team of perhaps twenty to coordinate it.
Though women are denied such simple freedoms as driving a car, staying unaccompanied in hotels, entering Internet cafes or even eating in many restaurants, the treatment of women had in fact turned out to be very different from what I had imagined - or from what is popularly portrayed in the West. Most people appeared to accord women remarkable respect - as indeed I had always found throughout the countries of the Middle East.
Upon entering a shop or bank, an airport or railway station, I soon learnt to march to the front of a queue (as women everywhere were expected to do), watched contemptuously as men scattered before me, and waited impatiently while everything was done for me. If I hadn't been working such long hours, I would have become as large as a Saudi house (as many locals were; the country apparently has the highest incidence of diabetes in the world), so entirely indolent, spoilt and shamefully demanding I had become.
In the meantime, we continued to clock up the kilometres as we slowly wound our way around the Kingdom. From the beautiful mud-brick towers of Najran, we travelled via the spectacular rock carvings of Bir Hima and ancient tombs of Al-Faw, to the stunning, skyward, 20th-century towers of Riyadh, and onto the town of Al-Hofuf, home to one of the largest and most ancient oases in the world.
From the Eastern provinces, home to most of Saudi's oil and a seething mass of immigrant labour, we turned northwards to visit the country's greatest attraction. Known as 'Saudi Arabia's Petra', Madain Saleh numbers among the most magical and monumental sites of the Middle East - or it would if it were better known. Built by the Nabataeans in the first century BC, the rock-hewn tombs spread spectacularly over a desert landscape.
'The Al-Khuraibah tomb is closed...', the guard began.
As I drew myself up and narrowed my eyes, Abdullah took a step back and smiled.
- Frances Linzee Gordon
Frances Linzee Gordon has just completed an unprecedented research assignment in Saudi Arabia for Lonely Planet's forthcoming guide to the Arabian Peninsula. As the first person ever to be granted a visa to visit the Kingdom as an independent tourist, she kept a diary of her adventures. There is one post left in the series... tune in next week.
Labels: Frances Linzee Gordon in Saudi Arabia, Middle East
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Posted Sunday, March 25, 2007, 6:05 PM by Lonely Planet
Frances Linzee Gordon has just completed an unprecedented research assignment in Saudi Arabia for Lonely Planet's forthcoming guide to the Arabian Peninsula. As the first person ever to be granted a visa to visit the Kingdom as an independent tourist, she kept a diary of her adventures. In the sixth of eight blog posts, Frances wonders whether she's seeing double...
Were the long days and drawn-out journeys beginning to take their toll? Was I imagining the cars behind us, and vaguely familiar faces? At first Abdullah denied it, but one day confessed: we were followed wherever we went.
Abdullah's natural Saudi taciturnity (and perhaps intrinsic fear of the authorities) prevented him from telling me exactly who they were, though I suspected it was the Ministry of the Interior (those in charge of the Kingdom's internal security).
Though notorious, the Saudi secret police apparently operated in a much more subtle way. So ubiquitous and all-pervasive are they that even immigrant street sweepers and loo cleaners are said to be in their services. So effective is this network that suspects are apparently apprehended within hours of murder.
Abdullah explained that they followed us for our own security; I suspected it might have been for theirs. The Saudi take any criticism of their precious Kingdom extremely personally and so quake in the trail of writers or journalists - the very few they let in, that is.
It was also a fear of more Western killings. In 2003 and 2004, a spate of murders of
Westerners had led to the direct departure of no less than 50% of the 10,000 American resident expats, and 30% of Europeans. The Saudis, desperately dependent on them for their technical expertise, were terrified of scaring off more.
Though Abdullah feigned frivolity and fun, even he appeared to follow a tight procedure. Whenever he got out of the car (even to buy petrol), he would lock me tight within. He also insisted on accompanying me wherever I went - including to the portal of the ladies.
Every day, a 'Mr Saad' would call to check on our movements. Sometimes Abdullah would pass me the phone. Feigning belief he was a friend of Abdullah, we would talk the most ludicrous trivialities as Abdullah covered his mouth to contain his laughter:
'How is Saudi, Ms Frances?'
'Oh very beautiful, Mr Saad, and the camels are very handsome...'
One episode in particular caused Mr Saad the most terrible upset. As visitors are only ever granted a one-month visa to the country, I had to sneak out and then back in in order to keep my visa valid. I decided Bahrain was the place and to Abdullah's enormous anxiety jumped in a taxi. We sped off to the border and back in less than an hour. As soon as I returned, Abdullah's phone began to ring:
'Ms Frances, she go to Bahrain for 46 minutes! What she do in Bahrain for 46 minutes?'
Without flinching, Abdullah told him that I had all my life wanted a photograph of 'beautiful Bahrain'.
Labels: Frances Linzee Gordon in Saudi Arabia, Middle East
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Posted Monday, March 19, 2007, 4:54 PM by Lonely Planet
Frances Linzee Gordon has just completed an unprecedented research assignment in Saudi Arabia for Lonely Planet's forthcoming guide to the Arabian Peninsula. As the first person ever to be granted a visa to visit the Kingdom as an independent tourist, she kept a diary of her adventures. In the fifth of eight blog posts, Frances reflects on Saudi fashion...
'A woman's beauty is her hair', goes the Arab saying. And walking around without a headscarf certainly seemed to attract attention. Though you don't have to wear a head covering by law in Saudi Arabia, doing so avoids chastisement from the mutawwa (the infamous 'religious police', a kind of self-appointed moral vigilante), as well as earning the respect of the ordinary citizen.
In the more conservative regions of the Kingdom (the centre, the far north, the northwest and far south) many would apparently prefer more:
'May God lead him to a straight path', were the mutters Abdullah and I heard as we walked down a street in Najran in the far south of Saudi. As we were alone, people assumed we were married. It had its advantages: like donning a disguise, we could move about undisturbed doing what other couples did, such as browsing the local markets, or sharing a rug while picnicking on the seafront. But it also made Abdullah even more responsible for me than he already was. As my 'husband', it was his shame to show me.
For Abdullah's sake therefore more than for my own, I decided sometimes to adopt the full attire. To my surprise, I rather liked it. From within the veil I could see without being seen, understand without being understood, and ogle the magnificent tribesmen of Najran without suffering inspection myself.
It shielded from the sun and deterred the dust; it hid blemishes and bags brought on by a late night's writing or a 15-hour journey. It concealed uncombed hair, a crumpled shirt or clumsy cosmetics. When I later returned to London, the pressure to appear fashionable, feminine and au fait again seemed almost overwhelming. To my surprise, I secretly coveted those days in my coverings.
Don't think the Saudis themselves miss out too much either. Underneath that austere attire, many Saudi women don the finest fabrics or Milan's most fashionable fittings. Saudi women are also among the highest spenders on luxury lingerie.
Saudi men manage too:
'From the fold in a woman's ankle, you know her age,' Abdullah one day explained gleefully and sheepishly at the same time. 'From the size of her wrist, you know her build. From the abeyya in motion, her figure; and from her hands, her complexion. And from the eyes, you have everything else...'
Labels: Frances Linzee Gordon in Saudi Arabia, Middle East
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Posted Monday, March 05, 2007, 6:29 PM by Lonely Planet
Frances Linzee Gordon has just completed an unprecedented research assignment in Saudi Arabia for Lonely Planet's forthcoming guide to the Arabian Peninsula. As the first person ever to be granted a visa to visit the Kingdom as an independent tourist, she kept a diary of her adventures. In the fourth of eight blog posts, Frances starts to feel at home...
As we turned into town, it began to drizzle. I rubbed rather dismally at the fogged-up car window.
'The Japanese, they don't like it' Abdullah said sadly, shaking his head. 'But we Saudis, we like it very much... Look - clouds!', he pointed excitedly at the murky miasma enveloping the town.
Arriving in Abha, perched 2200m above sea level, was truly a shock to the senses. Not only was it palpably cooler - or colder (both hail and ice aren't unheard of) - but it was the neat green lawns, marigolds, mountains and mist that made the greatest impression. I blinked; I could easily be back at home in Scotland.
Asir - the name of these mountains - means 'difficult' in Arabic, after the legendary difficulties involved in crossing the crags by camel. No such problems today crossing by car.
'The Bin Ladens, they build the road, you know.' Abdullah said, hoping to raise a reaction at last.
The family behind one of the largest construction companies in the country had crafted many of the Kingdom's highways. The road, beautifully built, took us through steep escarpments, patches of juniper forests, and valleys that dropped dramatically to the torrid, torpid lowlands beneath. It was stunning scenery, but impossible to believe it was 'Saudi'.
During the journey, we had passed one of the famous 'flower men' of Asir, so-named for the garlands they traditionally wear in their hair. After stopping to ask for a photo, I returned to the car for my notebook. Suddenly, a terrible commotion broke out: Abdullah and the flower man were having a row.
'What happened, Abdullah?' I asked alarmed, when he too soon returned to the car.
'What do you mean?' he asked perplexed.
'The man - he was very angry...'
'No!' Abdullah laughed. 'He was inviting us to eat! But I try to explain we have no time... but he not accept it... What can we do?'.
Merhaban alf - 'a thousand welcomes' is the traditional greeting of the Asiri people. It seemed to sum up supremely the hospitality of the people of that region.
During our days there, every man we met pressed us to eat with him; every meeting we had ended with a present; every parting, a fond farewell. It had happened at last: I was beginning to fall for this curious country.
Labels: Frances Linzee Gordon in Saudi Arabia, Middle East
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Posted Monday, February 26, 2007, 7:21 PM by Lonely Planet
Frances Linzee Gordon has just completed an unprecedented research assignment in Saudi Arabia for Lonely Planet's forthcoming guide to the Arabian Peninsula. As the first person ever to be granted a visa to visit the Kingdom as an independent tourist, she kept a diary of her adventures. In the third of eight blog posts, Frances finds out what's beyond the checkpoints...
'Are you her husband?' the policeman enquired.
'No, I am her driver' Abdullah replied.
'But there is no sponsor. Who is her sponsor?' the policeman asked with irritation as he peered perplexed at the visa.
'She came... independently' Abdullah ventured.
'Independently? What do you mean independently?' the policeman asked, baffled.
'She came on her own. She doesn't have a sponsor.'
'She came on her own? She can't come on her own - it's impossible to come on her own!'
The procedure was familiar now, like a ritual. Abdullah duly lowered his window and handed over the fat file of permits.
Though holding the file upside down, the policeman fingered it, feigning examination of the papers. After a minute, he withdrew to show it to his superiors. They then proceeded to refer my case to their superiors via radio. It seemed something of a Saudi speciality: a disinclination to take responsibility.
There were checkpoints everywhere. Though the blank entry in my visa continued to cause consternation, the precious permission file seemed to do the trick. With an air of exasperation, my passport and papers were usually stuffed back through the window, and we were waved on.
After the bureaucracy of the capital and the officiousness on the road, it was a relief to turn in at last to the new Red Sea resort at Al-Lith.
With the longest coastline of any country on the eastern seaboard of the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia has huge diving potential. The very few who know it rank it among the best diving in the world. This obscurity is also its greatest advantage: the reefs are almost deserted of divers and boats.
As soon as we hit the water, we came face to face with two of the largest whitetip sharks I had ever seen; they were quite unruffled by our presence. Above our heads, just below the surface, was a shimmering shoal of some of the most curious creatures I have ever encountered: large, bumphead parrot fish, turquoise-green and with a prominent protrusion from their head. The corals - hard and soft - were magnificent. Towards the end of the dive, a huge leatherback turtle, startled by our presence, dived deeply below us.
Knowing that I came to the Kingdom without a sponsor, and that I am qualified as a divemaster, Abdullah is now convinced I am a spy.
Labels: Frances Linzee Gordon in Saudi Arabia, Middle East
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Posted Monday, February 19, 2007, 5:03 PM by Lonely Planet
Frances Linzee Gordon has just completed an unprecedented research assignment in Saudi Arabia for Lonely Planet's forthcoming guide to the Arabian Peninsula. As the first person ever to be granted a visa to visit the country as an independent tourist, she kept a diary of her adventures. In the second of eight blog posts, Frances gets her first real taste of the Kingdom.
I listened for my cue. It came:
'Ladies and gentleman, we will shortly be commencing our descent. Local time in Riyadh is 9.45pm.'
I raised myself from my seat and marched purposefully towards the toilets. Two and a half minutes later, I re-emerged. As I walked back down the aisle, I became aware of heads turned towards me: my transformation was complete.
As the airplane door opened, I was seized by that sharp sense of anticipation upon first setting foot in a foreign land. Pulling my niqab (headscarf) further over my face, I lifted the skirts of my abeyya (the name given to the full-length black robe worn by women here) and shimmied off into the warm Saudi night.
But if my arrival had met expectations, what followed did not. Contrary to the embassy's briefing, there was nobody at the airport to meet me. Had a diplomatic friend not turned up to see my safe passage, I would have been detained at once by the airport authorities.
Nor did things materialise much later: for several days I found myself beached by blinding Saudi bureaucracy. While the Ministry of Information (normally appointed to the Press) and the Ministry of Tourism (in whose remit I resided) wrangled over responsibility for me, there were permits of every kind to obtain: photographic permits, site permits, place permits, and reservations to make of every type. At my hotel one evening, I had to sign even for a blanket.
In pursuit of one permission, I found myself waiting one warm afternoon to see an official. Ushered eventually into an enormous office, I started to explain my purpose. Half an hour later, I discovered that the somber, expressionless civil servant across the room from me was in fact the secretary. He had not understood a word I had uttered. Shoed next into an even bigger bureau furnished with the largest plasma TV I had ever seen, I began again. A total of three hours and ten minutes later, we emerged with the precious permission.
'You are lucky', my guide announced. 'Engineer Ahmed has been very kind.'
Furnished with a file overflowing with permissions and permits, we began our journey at last. Though days had dissolved into the mind-boggling abyss of Saudi bureaucracy, I was soon more grateful than I could have imagined for persevering with those precious permits...
Read Frances' first blog post here
Labels: Frances Linzee Gordon in Saudi Arabia, Middle East
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Posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007, 6:38 PM by Lonely Planet
Frances Linzee Gordon has just completed an unprecedented research assignment in Saudi Arabia for Lonely Planet's forthcoming guide to the Arabian Peninsula. As the first person ever to be granted a visa to visit the Kingdom as an independent tourist, she kept a diary of her adventures. In the first of eight blog posts, Frances reveals the secret of visa success.
Saudi Arabia. The world's last great forbidden country. The toughest territory in the world for women to travel in...
As I sat before my suitcase pondering my packing, my mind began to replay at random some of the things I had heard about this mysterious realm.
A kingdom closed to outsiders. Penetrable in the past only to the bravest and the boldest such as Burton, Thesiger and Lawrence, who risked life and limb to travel there.
Could I bring my CDs, and DVDs? And the books I had bought on the Kingdom - were they all banned?
For centuries the holy cities of Islam were forbidden to Christians on pain of death. Even today, the country's an emblem of everything inexplicable to the West: the Middle East, Islam, oil and terror...
My jewellery - did I have any crosses? I'd have to leave them behind. And where could I buy an abeyya? Would I face arrest if I arrived uncovered and without?
I sat back: it was impossible to imagine myself there. Impossible even to believe that I had in hand at last the notoriously elusive visa, so famously difficult to get. How had I got it anyway?
'No chance', the ambassador's secretary had said with a smirk when I asked her to rate my chances. 'Not a hope in hell!'
I had set foot inside the Saudi embassy so many times that the security guards now knew me and greeted me, grinning, as 'First Secretary'. I had sent legions of letters, had had dozens of meetings, and countless telephone conversations. Accompanying my application were work references, personal references, character references, even moral references.
Then, early one cold winter's day, I decided it was time to change tack and to set in motion Plan D. Nearly four months had passed since first darkening the doorway of the embassy and I seemed no nearer my goal. Reaching for my address book, I sat down to send an email.
Six and a half hours later, the telephone rang. It was the ambassador's secretary: 'We are ringing to inform you, Ms Frances, that your visa is now ready for collection.'
Waasita. I had just learnt my first - and possibly most important - Saudi word and lesson. Contacts.
Labels: Frances Linzee Gordon in Saudi Arabia, Middle East
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Posted Tuesday, January 02, 2007, 8:01 PM by Lonely Planet
Lara Dunston, author of the Dubai city guide goes into battle with the paparazzi...
The 3rd Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) promised scores of celebrities. Our 'VIP' press status got us a great view of everyone arriving on the red carpet - from behind. In true Dubai style, there was a 'VVIP' media list but unfortunately we weren't on it. Welcome to Dubai...
When DIFF launched three years earlier, in the great tradition of Arab hospitality it opened its arms to everyone. Cinemas were packed. Stars shopped solo at Madinat Jumeirah. The parties were crowded and fun.
This year, after a week of movies and disappointing photo ops, we left with the impression that like Dubai, the festival has grown too big too fast. Poor organisation resulted in 'sold-out' screenings and half-empty cinemas. The 'black tie' galas saw parties packed with corporate minions, while more interesting filmmakers were either left off the list or went elsewhere, reluctant to don the now-required tux.
While scores of C-listers experienced Dubai's five-star treatment, only A-listers Oliver Stone and Richard Gere were - as rumour had it - ensconced at the Burj Al Arab, Dubai's iconic 'seven-star' hotel. On the red carpet, camera-phone wielding tourists jostled alongside paparazzi for a look at the pampered pair before they were whisked into Madinat Theatre for a discussion panel. Stone was embarrassingly inarticulate, with no apparent knowledge of the rich tradition of Middle East cinema, while Gere was a surprise - opinionated, sincere, and down-to-earth. He even tried to talk to fans afterwards until over-zealous security whisked him away.
As for the films themselves, the highlight was the significantly expanded Arab selection featuring wonderful movies from around the Middle East, and some excellent world cinema. However, there were too many mainstream movies, some screening just days later in the multiplexes. Somewhere beneath the glittering layers of gaudy evening gowns and red carpet galas, a truly great Middle East film festival is just dying to get out of its festooned frock and slip into something more comfortable.
If you're in Dubai in mid-December, take advantage of the rare chance to see some (sub-titled)films from the Middle East region. You can check out the program and buy tickets online before you leave home at http://www.dubaifilmfest.com/.
Labels: Middle East
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Posted Sunday, November 19, 2006, 3:33 PM by Lonely Planet
Austrian Airlines have seized on the all-important Baghdad red-eye and launched regular connections from Vienna to the Iraqi capital. Touted as a lifeline to the still quite rogue-like state, Austrian doubtless have their eyes on the travel budgets of the dozens of NGOs whizzing in to 'The Dad'.
Slightly more optimistic is the Kurdistan Tourism Board, hoping to tempt us into northern Iraq with our buckets and spades. A California-based communications company seeks to sell us this dream by shattering our preconceptions. "You think of bombings and this is peaceful, you think of desert and this is mountainous. You think of camels and you are more likely to see sheep." Don't fumble for your wallet just yet... although you may be desperate to go and confirm whether there really are sheep in northern Iraq another quote from the press release dangles tastier bait: "Westerners walk around freely and there is an active nightlife." All the ingredients for a holiday of a lifetime! But let's not be too harsh - if Iraq can attract tourists there's one reason to keep those well-hidden WMDs well out of sight.
Labels: Breaking travel news, Middle East
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