Bizarre Bazaar in Hofuf
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2010
1
107
154
Trip End
May 28, 2011
Hofuf, Ash Sharqīyah, Saudi Arabia
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The drive was fine… about 45 minutes of desert highways with very little traffic, and we enjoyed driving Jeremy's 20 year old Mercedes 300 Coupe. Things got a bit more crowded as we entered Hofuf, but we are pretty used to middle eastern driving now. Who cares if someone in the right lane from you wants to turn left in front… that's what your brakes are for! And if you can’t get across a median strip while exiting a driveway, just turn left into the oncoming lanes until you get to an intersection.
We went to the newest mall in town, the Al Othaim. From our western perspective, what a bizarre bazaar! It is very modern and spiffy clean, with a lot of recognizable brand names like Starbucks (what do you think we drove 45 minutes for?), Body Shop, and so on. Our first clue that there was something strange going on was Starbucks, with a sign out front: "family room", and it had high dividers between each little section of tables so men could have their coffee without having to see naked mouths on women. Pat asked for the toilet and was directed to the other end of the mall… the ladies and mens toilets were as far away from each other as possible. As far as I could tell, we were the only patrons at Starbucks the whole time we had our coffee.
Out in the mall, women browers seemed to outnumber men, maybe 2 or 3 to one, but almost all were fully covered in black including full face covering. There was only the occasional woman with no head covering, including Pat, but they all seemed to be ethnic Asians. The majority of male shoppers wore the thobe and headscarf, but all of the male shopkeepers wore shirt and slacks. And speaking of which, there was not a single woman worker in the whole mall. Every shop and café was entirely staffed by men, as required by law. Most bizarre is that many of the shops sold very flamboyant and often sexy women’s clothes and lingerie, often flimsily draped (by men I guess) on half naked mannikins, but the sales clerks were all men! I don’t know who does the bra fittings!
The range and expensive flamboyance of the women’s clothes was amazing, especially given that they can’t wear them! At least not in public. And there were row upon row upon row of women’s wear shops. We are told that they are for women to wear in kind of “hen parties” with other women in private homes. I guess the public prohibition of the items makes them that more desireable.
There were a number of kids stores with very top end clothes and toys. Apparently the one way women can express themselves in public is by dressing up their kids. Interestingly, the photo displays in all of the kids shops had blond and blue-eyed tots. It is amazing that commercialism trumps culture just about everywhere.
The top floor of the mall’s three levels was a full fledged playland arcade for kids, with bump a cars (Saudi driving school), mini roller coasters, and even a flume ride! While we were looking at the kids to try to figure out why 8 to 14 year olds were not at school, it dawned on us that every one of them was a boy! Of a hundred some odd kids, not a single girl!
Around the circumference of the playland was a food court with all of the usual suspects, Krispy Kreme, Macdonalds, Popeyes, and many other less identifiable booths. Each food booth however, had a little sign at each end of the counter, “Men only” and “Women only”, with a small divider jutting out from the counter. Of course it is the same male server no matter which counter you go to. It seemed that no-one really cared which counter to go to, there were men at whatever counter, though we did notice the boys just went to the men’s side, and the few women that were there were at the women’s side. What did not occur to us at the time was… how did the women eat? In the restaurants and Starbucks and cafes they had their little private booths to disrobe their mouths, but we didn’t see such things at the food court. Maybe there were private areas that we didn’t notice.
We also stopped in to the 5 star Intercontinental Hotel on the way out of town. Boring! I think we’ll stick with the Udhailiyah “resort”.
