It had been a crazy few weeks at school here in Riyadh. Since we’d come back from the Christmas holidays we hadn’t had a break. Last week we had an off timetable week at school, which was really tough on Jeannie and I, as we had to organise lots of ‘hand-on’ activities for our ‘Week Without Walls’. It was great fun but exhausting and when paired with having to complete progress reports too, well, we thought we deserved a break. Luckily, we had a long weekend penned on our calendar and so for our 3 day weekend we decided to go back to Bahrain for some sun, sand (beachside) and Shirley Temples.

We were adamant that this time we would enjoy ourselves and not worry about the money and so this time we decided to drive there instead of flying, that way we wouldn't be spending £600 or so on flights for just 3 days and the spirit of Greta Thunberg wouldn't be haunting me.

Rightly so making us answerable for the future generations. Well done Greta!

The problem was that our car was a bit on a banger and there was no guarantee that it would make the 900km or so round trip. The dehydrated urine-like colour of our car was indicative of its quality and worth but we wanted a break out of Saudi and so we had to trust in the Gods that we would make it in one piece. And thus started our first leg of the 473 km journey across Arabia towards Bahrain.

We departed at 5:30am on the Friday morning, the start of the Islamic weekend, to beat the traffic we knew would build up. We knew that the journey would take about 5 hours in total and once out of Riyadh it would be one motorway all the way there, easy right?

Well, it didn't start too well. After just 45 minutes on the road, Leela did a vomit of quaranic proportions. I mean we had to stop at a drive-through McDonald's carpark, strip her off completely, throw the clothes in the bin, wipe her down with a pack of wipes, clean the vom off the car seat as best we could, place a towel on the car seat for Leela to sit on for the rest of the journey and redress her again. Bless her, she was a trooper and seemed to feel a lot better after that but the car stank of bile for the rest of the 5 hours so we drove with the windows down for the rest of the journey.

To brighten the mood we decide to play some music but the only thing we had in the car was the Disney Christmas CD. As we committed sacrilege by playing the Christmas CD, we drove through the beautiful Arabian desert. We passed camels, random towns, oasises (oasi-ed?) as Goofy sung in his dulcet tones about his jingle bells. I can honestly say that it was one of the most surreal experiences in my life and I remember thinking, the Lord wouldn't smite us would he?

As we drove on, we went past some burnt out cars and a deserted half built hotel with a rusty old ferris wheel in the middle of the desert which wouldn't look out of place in a horror film. Also we encountered a plague of locusts. I know many people may think that I'm exaggerating but I have video and photographic evidence of these events… the camera never lies… except when it uses filters, photoshop or other image editing software.

When we got to Bahrain we were so happy that we had made it- I said a quick dua in thanks for our safe if harrowing journey. Oh, to be in a place where road signs were followed and traffic lights were not a suggestion but enforced by law. Bliss!

We got to the hotel and had a wonderful day frolicking by the beach and sipping on our drinks. By 6:30pm we were all knackered and went to bed super early. It had been an eventful day and I think we were all glad that we had made it to the end of it. I went to bed watching Bird Box as I needed something light to end my day on.

The next day, Jeannie suggested we visit a local Hindu temple which was famed for its beauty. Anyone who knows my wife knows that she likes all things Indian, except me, her British-Pakistani hubby, so this was a must for her. So kids in tow, we got in a cab ready to culture it up. We were initially taken to the wrong temple but after some Google mapping and translating we arrived at the right place. We walked through some narrow streets that contained shops that reminded me of Green Street, East Ham but it was much cleaner, so like Southall but better.

When we found the temple it was undergoing some major renovations and whilst we were waiting to go in Leela had that look on her face that told Jeannie and I that there was a present in her nappy. Jeannie took her to the toilets and I chilled with Jasmine, passing the time by answering questions like "Why is God blue?" (she saw a giant photo of him and he was blue), "Why does he have an elephant head?" (Ganesh statue nearby) and "I like the praying in Saudi and God is in the sky but why is Jesus a baby?" So very interesting questions that would take a while to unpack but as Jeannie and Leela were taking a while unpack we did... To be honest I think I'd have preferred to be cleaning up Leela! These are difficult questions to answer without brainwashing a child into a certain doctrine or closing her down with my views and opinions.

After some time, Jeannie appeared looking shell-shocked and with a large suspicious stain on her top. "We have to go, Leela did a massive leaky poo and it went everywhere including my top. We can't go into the temple like this" she informed me. And so, our temple visit was cut short due to a number 2; Leela was really on form this holiday. As we walked back to the cab rank we bought garlands of jasmine to cover the pooey smell and some vittles for our forthcoming return trip.

The rest of the day was spent by the side of the pool in the hotel complex, eating pizza and ordering drinks. It’s a tough life!

That night we decided to go to the fancy on the river seafood restaurant. It did an all you can eat £30 buffet and had crab, mussels, calamari and a smorgasbord of fish cooked to order. We had a great time as a load of our teacher colleagues met up and the kids were running around, having the time of their lives.

At 8pm the kids were getting tired so we decided to leave and it was at this point that Leela projectile vomited near the fancy water fountain near the entrance of the restaurant. The staff were super kind and efficient as they mopped up and checked after our daughter. We got her to bed and she had a fitful sleep sleeping between Jeannie and I.

On the morning of our departure and 473km journey back to the Kingdom, we all ate a very light breakfasts and girded our loins for what promised to be an interesting journey, but y’know what? It actually went smoothly. The girls slept most of the way, there wasn't much traffic and the drivers weren’t too bad.

On the border I was quickly let through as for once racial profiling worked FOR me and I wasn't 'randomly selected' by my Muslim brethren. The only squeaky bum moment we had on the journey back was when the petrol was running low and I thought we'd have to depend on the kindness of strangers but might end up in a Wolf Creek type situation but luckily we found a petrol station just as the needle hit the last notch before empty.

Oh, we also found the most random McDonald's ever. It was about 250 km out from Riyadh and there were no cities or towns nearby. My immediate thoughts were why build it here, that's a heck of a commute for the workers there and is the breakfast still on? It was and I had a nice chat to the staff who seemed happy to talk to anyone, even though I only wanted to use the toilet and was being polite.

Seriously, this Maccies was miles from anywhere!

We also encountered the swarm of locusts again but they were much diminished and there were only a few of them flying around aimlessly, looking for food to plunder. I should have told them about the Maccies down the road...

So, we got home safe and sound and settled down for the afternoon. To de-stress and recover from the 5 hour drive I went to relax in the sauna, that same sauna that Jeannie had bought me a subscription to after our first Bahrain trip. Whilst in there I got reflecting.

Overall this was a successful trip and I thoroughly enjoyed it all. The misadventures will become the stuff of legend in our family I’m sure and adds to the crazy tapestry of our life. Our wonderful champagne coloured car had served us well and for that we were grateful.

We are hoping to go back to Bahrain again soon and hope third time’s the charm!

LINK- The Further Adventures of Anjum of Arabia in Saudi

LINK- High Tea and High Times in the Riyadh Globe

LINK- Reflecting on Life in Saudi Arabia After 5 Months

LINK- Life in Saudi Arabia 3 Month On

LINK- An English Geek in Saudi Arabia

LINK- Video Gaming In Saudi Arabia

After 12 looooong and gruelling weeks of meetings and teaching at our new school, my family and I finally had a holiday. Woohoo! Term times internationally are different and due to the way Eid fell this year, it has had a knock on effect on term times at our school in Saudi Arabia. Take into account that we also had Saudi National Day, where the school had to close for a few days, and you're looking at a confused timetable with a 10 week term of chalkface time with the kids!

As you can imagine, after all this we were looking forward to our break as we didn't get one over the summer, what with moving abroad and the school term starting on August 1st.

When we were thinking of where to go we though Bahrain would be a good place to travel to. It's only an hours flight from Riyadh and is made up of over 30 islands, so the fact that we would be surrounded by the blue sea whilst living it up on the beach resort rather than just the beige desert appealed to us immensely.

Having booked our stay for 4 nights at the 5 star Sofitel Thalassia Spa and Sauna Hotel in Zallaq, we were looking forward to proper spoiling ourselves. The hotel had a private beach, kids club, splash pad and a sense of extravagance these two teachers from England wanted to experience after years of being unable to do anything like this. We knew that Bahrain would be expensive as it is £1 to 2 Bahraini Dinar but how bad could it be really? Well, to give you a glimpse as to how expensive this was I will use the universal conversation code of the cost of a McDonald's Fillet of Fish meal (regular size mind you, I've watched Super Size Me and it scared me sorta slim-ish). Well, it costs 2.8 dinar, that's about £5.60! By triangulating the cost of staples like a can of Coke, Pringles and Mini Babybels I worked out that Bahrain has a 33% markup premium on goods and services when compared to England, it's science! But more on the cost factor and how it would affect our holiday later...

Anyways, we arrived after the most expensive cab ride in the world (£45 for about 30 mins) and saw that the term palatial would be an apt description for the Sofitel. Another would be proper pimp as it was all marble floors, crystal chandeliers and bell hops with those posh looking trollies…. a mark of true class. We checked in and went to our room and it was okay, slightly dated but nicely appointed. Our balcony had a great view of the palm trees and the beach beyond that.

We had a lovely view of the entire complex and a stunning view of the beach and sea.

We saw the stage going up as preparations were underway for the Halloween Beach Party blowout we had been emailed about a week or ago, about a month after we'd initially booked the room. We then went for a reccy and saw the pools, beach and sea. All looked well but the large crowd gathering for the Halloween party had us a little concerned. How busy was this thing gonna be, how loud and did the parents know where their teenage looking kids were? Well, we found out the volume of the party later as we put our kids to bed amid the most thumping bass I've experienced since seeing Crystal Castles way back in 2008 at the Electric Ballroom in Camden! Our kids are troopers though and fell asleep amidst all the noise, I'd like to think that the spirit of my trance loving formative years from 1996 to 1999 took over in their genes and acted in a soporific way to lull them into sleep... much like Cafe Del Mar did for me all those years ago.

Anyways, my wife, Jeannie, was like a she-wolf and went downstairs to complain. She's really good at that after being married to me for nearly 9 years (with good reason I might add) and the duty manager upgraded us and offered us access to the exclusive 6th floor lounge area with access to free sandwiches and stuff- but as the hotel was fully booked that would have to wait until tomorrow. I have to say, when it comes to complaining I'm proper British in that way and don't want to make a fuss but my wife, she knows what's fair and right and she fought the good fight for customer service. Who puts a family with two young kids on the side of the hotel with an all-out rave going on on the beach? Years ago, I might have joined in with the festivities but with two young kids in tow and my dad dancing I’m sure I would have been asked to leave! Also, without a babysitter we weren't going to McGann our way through it either.

So anyways, the kids slept through the crazy loud music whilst Jeannie and I endured the noise until midnight when, thankfully, the gig finished. The kids woke up the next day knackered and we were shattered too. It took a lot of the day to recover but after that the holiday really started to come together. We spent loads of time at the beach, building sand angels, castles and stuff, hanging at the splash pad and chilling out in the cabanas. We were proper European about it, getting to the cabanas at 7am to lay down our towels before we went for breakfast to ensure we staked our claim to this prime beachside real estate. We had a buffet brunch as it came as part of the holiday package and that worked out well as the food was plentiful and delicious. I followed the holy trinity of breakfast brunch rules of course; full greasy English, followed by pastries, finished off with fresh fruits and juices to atone for the earlier unhealthy food sins.

With lunch and dinner, however... well, that was another matter entirely. I thought we'd fake it til we make it, pretending not to being poor teachers... after all they didn't know our professions! I could be some relation to some royal family keeping things on the d-low, an eccentric tech. billionaire who liked to keep it 'real' or someone suitably nouveau riche who was adjusting to being ‘new money,’ but that lasted only as long as I saw the drinks and food menu. The average mocktail cost the equivalent of £10 and a cup of something stronger considerably more. The food was about £25 to £30 for nothing too fancy and they didn't accept the Taste Card so we couldn't get 2 meals for the price of 1 we often enjoyed back in Blighty. I mean £22 for a lasagne, sans garlic bread I might add! I've never been so stereotypically east London Asian hood rat in my life but more than once I thought to myself, "For that I could get 3 Kennedy Fried Chicken buckets from opposite Barking Station, or if I'm feeling flash, a whole butterfly chicken, 2 sides, a fino side and a bottomless drink from Nando’s with change to spare."

So being the prudent folks we were, we snuck a few bread rolls ‘for later’ and I went and found the local mini-mart where I got some vittles that would help tide us over… nothing fancy, just the essentials like milk, cheese, crisps, noodles, biscuits etc… and tide us over it did! We were careful where we ate and what prices we paid, only paying for a buffet dinner on one night and ordering a single room service dinner each other night to save moolah but also because the restaurants didn't open until 7pm, our kids bed time when they were shattered after a day at the beach.

However, one afternoon whilst the family was sleeping, I was in the sauna by myself, cleansing my body and soul when I had a kind of epiphany... Why were Jeannie and I sweating the small stuff? We were being so very careful with our money as since we'd been married it had always been an issue, but no more of an issue than it is for most people living in England. As two teachers living and working in east London and then Kent most of our wages went on rent, bills and childcare. We had got into a mentality of frugality, which is no bad thing but it had kind of led to us being super careful all the time and not being able to enjoy the nicer things in life. Even now, when we were on holiday we felt guilty for ordering meals and drinks that would cost us over £50 in total. So, on the final night in Bahrain I bought that £10.60 strawberry mocktail that I’d been eyeing up on the menu but had been ordering the bitter lemon because it cost half as much, and even though it wasn't that tasty, metaphorically it was sweet.

Jeannie and I had a chat on the cabana enjoying our £20+ drinks, watching the night sky as our children watched a sub-par digitally animated cartoon on the projector on a grassy knoll as we decided that we would still be frugal but we needed to chill and not live like mendicant monks, foregoing all pleasures and joys in life.

The next day we had our final buffet brekkie and nabbed two bread rolls for the flight to Dubai ... Hey, I didn't say breaking the habit of a lifetime would be easy!

Bahrain II: The Revenge

Bahrain Repaired Our Fixed Mind(set)