Carpetblogger

Carpetblog's Round Up of Expat Shopping

It's a little known fact that Istanbul expats want for very little. If we're willing to pay for it, we can get almost anything we want, including the two big ones: pig products and booze. We bitch and moan about scarcity/price of both but, having recently spent a week in Islamabad, we should shut up.

There comes a time, however, when an ingredient for a Thai or Indian or even American dish is needed and doesn't exist in Istanbul. Sometimes, the finding of a random American product is much more important than the having (Oooo! Look! Duncan Hines brownie mix! Want!) of it. Sometimes, it's easier to buy a product on the road that you know you can find in Istanbul but not without a lot of effort (such as putting on shoes). Highly valued, expensive seasonal fruits or unusual cheeses can also be carried in (Mangos and Litchis from Pakistan! Avacados from Israel! Limes from the UK!)  Often though, the point is simply to return with perishable/breakable/potentially poisonous item that none of your friends has yet thought of smuggling in.

We've been on the road a lot lately. We count our food and wine acquisitions among our greatest accomplishments of the year. For example, we brought 14 liters of wine and booze, a kilo of Boerewores (South African sausages), ostrich pate, game sausage and several packets of biltong (jerky) back from South Africa. This, we'd like to point out, was a personal best in terms of quantity and quality. We also pulled off a stunning and unlikely-to-be-repeated hand-off of imported goods (mostly English cheese and bacon) in Istanbul during a 30 minute layover (having too little time to hit the duty free was a personal failure) between international flights. It's not easy being a part of ILIQTT (Istanbul Liquor Transport Team), but membership has benefits,

What follows is an Expat's Guide to Foreign Product Procurement, Duty Free Shopping and Helpful Packing Hints, sponsored by ILIQTT. Motto: Don't argue with us. We're professionals.

(A primer for American readers: if you don't live somewhere where imported goods or "vices" like liquor are taxed onerously, you will never understand the appeal of duty free. Prices are higher than you would pay in the product's home country but far, far less than you would pay in your destination country. We want a piece of this racket.)

Best Duty Free Overall: Dubai wins. It's practically a shopping mall. Electronics are cheaper there than in most places outside the U.S. Lots of high end makeup, too. It doesn't have anything interesting or unusual though. Neither does the entire Gulf so don't blame the Emiratis.

Best Wine Duty Free: Johannesburg offers hundreds of local varietals and helpful wine stewards to help you choose. There are purchase limits though, and prices are much higher than in the wine shops. Still, if you can't hit a local wine store, it'll do. The exchange rate with the dollar is favorable so you can get delicious and unusual bargains. It also has a wide selection of products made of kudu (an antelope) and ostrich. Both are tasty! Buy some and serve it with a Cape Shiraz for Sunday Dinner.

Most Disappointing Wine Duty Free: Tbilisi. Sure, there's a huge supply but of only of the most well-known mass market brands at huge mark-ups. Stock up at World of Wine/Urine in downtown instead.

Best Duty Free Selection of Obscure European Liquors: Tel Aviv. Did your people brew it from plums in a Moldovan shtetl? Then it's probably in Tel Aviv Duty Free. Better still, Tel Aviv doesn't limit your purchases. It's pretty much as much as you can carry and think you can get away with smuggling in to your destination.

Best Wine Transport Mechanism: Box wine. If your mother drank her Carlo Rossi Rose out of a box when you were 10, you might laugh, but box wine rules. A five liter box maximizes space and is stable in a typical rolling suitcase. If you care about excess baggage charges, plan for two kilos a box. If you're coming from Lebanon, South Africa or France, pack a five liter box and your Istanbul friends will thank you profusely and finish it in one night.

Best Wine Transport Mechanism, Runner up: Wine Skins. A clever FOC (Friend of Carpetblog) who is a superior problem solver gifted a package of this genius product on her recent visit. It's as simple as wine bottle shaped bubble wrap and it's awesome. We leave several in our suitcase so we don't forget to carry them with us when we travel. We heart them.

Best Duty Free Scotch: We don't drink brown liquor but we know people who do and we aim to please. The Scotch Usta in the Stansted Airport offers helpful suggestions of obscure scotches that taste like ones your Scotch drinking friends like but may not have tried and make you look smart.

Best Source of American Products: Pakistan. We can't explain it, but there are real American brands in the supermarkets of Lahore and Islamabad: French's mustard, Duncan Hines cake mix, Pam cooking spray, Ziploc bags, Jif peanut butter, El Paso refried beans -- the list is endless. It almost makes a trip to Islamabad worth it. Almost.

Best, Cheapest Supply of Books in English: Again, Islamabad. Saeed Bookshop in the Jinnah Market has an amazing supply and most cover prices are less than $10. The international terminal in Islamabad has a good selection too. Since books in Istanbul are often double the cover price, this almost makes a trip to Islamabad worth it. Almost. The Karachi domestic terminal also has a great selection. We advise against a special trip, though. Nothing is worth a trip to Karachi.

Best Selection of Subcontinental Spices and Ingredients: Any Gulf supermarket. Let's say, for the sake of argument, you don't want to go to India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, but you crave and can't find such cuisines in your own city of 18 million (Is Istanbul the biggest city in the world without a Pakistani restaurant? Discuss). Since these countries' populations keep the Gulf states functioning, their culinary needs are well served in every major supermarket in the UAE, KSA or Qatar.

Best Place to Buy an Electronic Haddith Organizer and Tang at the Same Time: Jeddah. An absolutely perverse selection of orange colored products (Tang, Tide), religious frippery and rip off Chinese products. Not to be missed for the freak factor.

Most Underperforming Duty Free: Kyiv. With all the different vodkas available in that country, the offerings at the Duty Free are lame. Actually, this could be said for the whole of the FSU. But because vodka is so cheap and plentiful in every supermarket, it's worth bringing an extra suitcase and cushioning the bottles with pork loin. There are 54 breeds of pigs in Ukraine. Try one today!

Worst Duty Free: Putting Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia aside, Doha has terrible duty free. It's half-assed, poorly laid out and they funnel you in there straight out of passport control. Doha airport is terrible in general. We avoid it. Also, Duty Free at Turkey's border with Bulgaria is also particularly grim.

Got any other hints?

Are you a Mesopotamiac?

Then maybe you might like these photos from our June trip to Gazıantep, Glorious Urfa (not to be confused with other, less glorious imitations), Diyarbakır and Nemrut Dağ.

Kebabingo

We would never dream of stepping on the toes of the increasingly awesome Istanbul Eats but until they develop a franchise called Gaziantep Eats or Urfa Eats, we feel  confident that we can weigh in on dining options in these Eastern paradises without stealing their thunder. We're also not likely to be as nice as they are.

There's an increasingly common meme around Istanbul that is most easily summarized as "Gaziantep has awesome food." We take mild issue with this assessment. It is true that this provincial city of 2 million about 100 kms from the Syrian border has surprisingly tasty food, given where it's located (the baklava is, without question, awesome). And compared to, say, the food in Urfa, it is pretty good (but truthfully, most things compare favorably if Urfa sets the baseline).

 Gaziantep cuisine is heavily meat-based and by meat we mean "sheep." You can make a kebab better by adding cracked wheat and sprinkling pistachios on it, but it still won't be good. It will always be poor quality meat cut without any apparent skill and cooked within an inch of its life. If you go to Gaziantep, you will eat a lot of kebab and some of it will be better than kebab you have had elsewhere. The rest of it will taste and look exactly the same. We didn't come across any particularly interesting vegetable dishes or anything we hadn't already tried in Istanbul. Lahmacun (a Turkish pizza), the other specialty of Gaziantep, is pretty much the same no matter where you go. Given the buzz, we expected something more, something different.

What Gaziantep does have is an aggressive civic boosterism project that's promoting the "Gaziantep has awesome food" meme. We admire the ballsiness of this effort, even if we disagree a bit with the premise. In fact, there's a Gaziantep Cuisine Museum which is located in a traditional stone house and is well worth a visit if you happen to be in town. There is also reputedly a woman who is promoting Gaziantep cuisine but unfortunately we were unable to track her or her restaurant down.

If you are looking for a decent meal and you have all of Eastern Anatolia at your  disposal, go to Mardin. Mardin perches on a rocky hillside, overlooking the vast Syrian plain. It's got an interesting mix of Turks, Kurds (oops sorry, Mountain Turks), Syriac Christians and Arabs. This, in our estimation, is more promising recipe for a surprising meal than a handful of extra pistachios. Accordingly, it has a gem of a restaurant, Cercis Murat.

 We had tried Cercis Murat's branch in the wealthy Asian Istanbul suburb of Bostancı a few months back. It was memorable mostly because we took a boat to get there and it seemed like we traveled practically to Beijing for dinner, but also because they stuck a bunch of stuff we didn't order on the bill (seriously, how many yabancı women order beet juice with dinner? Did they think we wouldn't notice?). The very fact we've considered going back is a testament to the quality of the food. Surprisingly, when Carpetblog's Paris Correspondent wrote about it here, she didn't mention we were with her.

Mardinese (we made that word up ourselves so please credit accordingly) food seems to be influenced as much by Arabs as by Turks but the whole is better than the sum of the parts. The mezze at Cercis Murat reminds us a great deal of those at Çiya, which is an Istanbul favorite. Made with pomegranates, dried tomatoes, walnuts, capers and whole green lentils and served in copper ayran spoons, they are genuinely different from typical Turkish food. For that, we bestow praise. If you're still hungry after the mezze sampler plate, order Dobo (lamb shoulder stuffed with garlic on rice), but temper your expectations, especially if you've ever had plov.

Van in Northeastern Turkey gets a lot of praise for its breakfasts (even here!) and there are Van Kahvaltı Sofrasılar all over town. Why has no one ever mentioned the awesomeness of Diyarbakır kahvaltı? Is it because people, rightfully, hesitate to use the word "awesome" and "Diyarbakır" in the same sentence? Well, in the old Han across from the Ulu Camii in D'bak there are half a dozen breakfast places and they rock. We had fresh yogurt with fruit and fruit syrup, bal kaymak (honey with clotted creme) with pistachio, fresh butter with walnuts and honey, a delicious tomato and eggplant ezme (sort of like a salsa) and white cheese that was genuinely complex and tasty. That, and the carpet shop across the street, make D'bak famous for more than just Kurdish separatism and 40% unemployment in our book.

Oh, did we forget to mention Urfa? Seriously, there is nothing more boring than an Urfa kebab, no matter what anyone from the Urfa booster club tells you. It's simply a blander, greasier version of an Adana kebab.

*Kebabingo is what you say when you have already eaten every single kebab offered on the standard Lokanta menu in Eastern Turkey.

Mesopotamia Rocks!

Great News! Carpetblogger has found inspiration in Eastern Turkey!

We've stood/fallen into both the Tigris and the Euphrates. We've fallen in love with  Anatolian kilims all over again (though we may just start calling them what they are -- Kurdish kilims). We've won multiple cards of Kababingo. We've seen seven year old girls with mustaches. We've searched the bazaars for the best weapon to raise the stakes in the arms race on our Sokak back at home. We've tasted watermelons grown in pools of pigeon shit. We drove up to the Syria/Iraq/Turkey border and resisted the urge to drop off the Producer who forgot to bring any form of ID with him on that particular day trip. We've heard the jingle of racing pigeons wearing bracelets and earrings (srsly!). We appealed to the authorities to hurry up and flood Hasankeyf already, the place is a shithole.

We report. You decide.

Saudi (dis) Orientation

Once people find out that you're willing to go to Saudi for a fee, you find yourself spending more time in the Kingdom than is really necessary. The place is just as opaque and disorienting the second time as it was the first time.

There's lots of things we don't understand about Saudi, but one thing we were always certain of was the direction to Mecca. It's clearly marked in the hotel rooms and in most public spaces. In fact, all the TV screens in the Saudi Arabian Airlines 777 we flew from Jeddah to Riyadh (approximately one hour) displayed the direction to Mecca during the whole flight. The arrow rotated left or right like a compass as the plane banked. It can be reassuring to always know where you are in relation to something else. Too bad in this case, it's a black box in the middle of the desert.

Traveling on your own in Saudi is anxiety inducing but not because it's dangerous in any way.  There are lots of boundaries and we still have no idea where they begin or end. Because we are never certain about what we can and cannot do, every mundane activity results in a stupid amount of stress.

We think there are two reasons for this: first, there are plenty of rules and but none of them are codified. Second, there are no good models to follow.

Here's an example from our recent visit: "Is it OK if we walk to the mall by ourself?"

A colleague explained that nothing is specifically banned by law. Instead, lots of things, like women driving, are simply not done because they are perceived to be unacceptable. This makes it even more difficult to navigate since if you ask, "is it OK if I walk to the mall by myself?" the most likely response will be a shrug. No one knows if it's OK or not. It's only going to be a problem if someone thinks it's a problem. So yah, go ahead. Walk to the mall and see what happens. This approach may, from time to time, result in unpleasant consequences. Or, it can be completely OK.

In the absence of any concrete instructions, we usually look around.  When you don't speak the language and are confronted with a culture as foreign as Saudi Arabia's, you become highly attuned to non-verbal cues. We usually cope by closely watching and mimicking the behavior of others. In most places, "when in doubt, do what other people are doing" works pretty well in most situations. But if you're a foreign girl in Saudi, there are no models to follow. We need to run around with a foreign woman who lives there to truly learn the ropes. Sort of a guide dog for the blind.

Western housewives shopping in the Carrefour with half zipped black abayas and uncovered heads signaled to us that, in most contexts, abayas (we need one of those, badly. Not only is it ugly, our beige coat A la Turka made us stand out like cheerleader at a Goth convention) are more important than headscarves.  These cues provided us with more guidance about how to behave than any other source during the whole visit. We saw a tall blond (obviously foreign) woman in the airport and felt drawn to her, simply because we had something in common and we could see her face.

The absolute absence of women in the public space is the most disorienting aspect of being in Saudi. Those that are present are shapeless, expressionless, noiseless figures usually accessorized with small children. Were there any other women walking to the mall or anywhere else? Of course there weren't, because there are no women visible anywhere in public (except, as it turns out, walking around inside the mall which, as far as we can tell, is their natural habitat).  Does that mean we shouldn't? Probably.

We went ahead and walked to the mall anyway, for about 200 meters along one of the busy eight-lane boulevards that transect Riyadh. Nothing happened, but we felt as alien as if we had walked alone on Mars.

We felt stupid taking a taxi back to the hotel but much less exposed and vulnerable. But we felt no less stupid than we did sitting by the pool in Jeddah wearing a scarf because we were the only woman in the whole hotel and didn't know what else to do, or even if it was OK for us to sit next to the pool. 

Suffice to say, the long-postponed Bikini Jihad was not launched. This time.

Suggestion for a Healthy Life from the Saudi Directorate of Civil Defense

This sign is posted in the elevator in the Jeddah Sofitel.

In case you can't read, it says:

Dear Brother,

The directorate of civil defense wish you a pleasant stay and request that you read these instructions to live in safety and security.

Know the nearest fire extinguisher and fire exit around you to keep you out of danger.

In case of "danger alarm" (god forbidden), we request you leave the placement immediately.

Using electric elevator during emergency might be risky, so please use steps to get out.

In case of any emergency do not hesitate to contact the hotel authorities through alarm or telephone.

Smoking is a major reason for accidents. It is prohibited in the holy book. Do not hesitate to stop this habit.

Also, please be aware that accidents do not need more than a second or part of a minute to become fatal. So we advise you to take all precautions to save your live by avoiding accidents.

Once again, we wish you a safe and pleasant stay and don't forget the Civil Defense telephone number.

Jim Reeves and the South African Soul

We had always been under the impression that South Africa has a rich native musical tradition. From the recently passed civil rights activist "Mama Afrika" to bubble gum hero Yvonne Chaka Chaka to Kwaito, we sort of thought South Africans had it going on, music-wise.

It turns out that that the domestic music scene was not so rich that it could not be enhanced by the palest, white-bread classic American country.

Our South African driver, Nelson (black South Africans and Zimbabweans often have classically anachronistic names -- we worked with several Nelsons, a Crosby and an Anyway) posessed an encyclopedic knowledge of 1950's country star Jim Reeves.

"Jim Reeves, he died in a plane crash. You know this?" he asked.

"You don't say."

As Reeves crooned the classic "Roly Poly," Nelson tried to help me understand Reeves' appeal to a young South African like himself:

"South Africa music. It is like pepto bismal. It is good for an upset stomach, but it has no soul. American country -- it is real music. It is full of heart."

Generally, we are inclined to agree with this assessment. But we're not sure we agree that Jim Reeves is the best example of the soul of American country music.

(Roly Poly eatin' corn and taters hungry every minute of the day

Roly Poly knowin' all the biscuits long as he can chew it it's okay

He can eat an apple pie and never even bat an eye

He likes everything from a soup to hay

Roly Poly daddy's little fatty bet he's gonna be a man someday)

The how's and, more importantly, the why's of Nelson's familiarity with Jim Reeves remained a mystery until we looked at his wikipedia page. Jim Reeves is something of a South African national hero!

In the early 1960s, Reeves was more popular than Elvis Presley in South Africa. During this period, he recorded several albums in Afrikaans. In 1963 he starred in a South African film, Kimberley Jim, which was the biggest South African production up to that date. The film's working title was "Strike It Rich" and was released with a special prologue and epilogue in South African cinemas after Reeves' passing, praising Reeves as a true friend of South Africa. The film was produced, directed and written by Emil Nofal.

Frankly, this entry raises a lot more questions than it answers. Obviously, South Africa in the 1960s was under Apartheid. Reeves recorded in Afrikaans and there's probably not a big difference between the rural experience of white south Africans at the time as the American southern white experience that spawned country music. So what in the world did a young black in 2008 see in him?  Well!

Reeves is particularly popular amongst the Zulu population in South Africa and is known amongst this community by the monikers "King Jim" and (because of his 6'1" frame) "Big Jim".

While all this illuminates, somewhat, the appeal of white-bread American country crooners in South Africa, it does nothing to help explain Nelson's admiration of the gospel stylings of Jimmy Swaggart, a topic best left unexplored.

Newsflash: Zimbabwe Traumatizes Carpetblogger

To steal from Tolstoy, all functional countries resemble each other, but every fucked up country is fucked up in its own way.  Pakistan has a substantial population of medieval warlords locked in a  struggle to return the country to the glories of the 14^th century, only with nukes.  Afghanistan has never really wanted to enter the 20^th century and the Taliban will ensure it never will. Qat-addled Yemen operates according to its own ancient principles. Turkmenistan is a cartoon.

Zimbabwe blows them all out of the water.

On arrival, my South African Airways flight descended from rainy clouds, only to abort the landing twice within a couple hundred feet of the ground. After sharply ovaling for 20 minutes, the pilot announced that he was waiting for the runway lights to come back on. The hotel – the 13-floor Crown Plaza in the center of the city – not only did not have internet or air conditioning, it also had no phones – as in “unable to call down for room service” no phone.  Not that it mattered; there really wasn’t much on offer in the restaurant, just gristly meat and starchy vegetables.

Lots of African cities look like they don’t work but they do. Harare looks like it works but it doesn’t. It’s attractive and organized with long straight, carefully signposted thoroughfares, edged by (albeit poorly maintained) cycle paths. Its wide avenues are lined with hundreds of mature jacarandas and flame trees, planted with British colonial precision 50 or 60 years ago. “Tree Cutting Available” signs posted on their trunks looked ominous.  As they dripped their purple and red blooms on the pavements, it was easy to imagine them hacked apart for firewood when cooking fuel becomes impossible to buy.

One of the benefits of a deprived middle class with no access to consumer goods and no money to buy them is very little trash. This is good because there’s no collection. The parking lot of the country’s largest public hospital was empty. All hospitals and clinics have shut their doors, which hasn’t done much to improve the cholera situation. I was told it’s a crisis if one percent of cholera cases die. Rumors are that in Zimbabwe, 10 percent of Cholera cases die. Now that it’s rainy season and the sewers overflow into water supplies, the coming outbreak should be particularly vivid.

Unlike Afghanistan or Somalia, Zimbabwe isn’t lawless. People queue politely at the ATMs, for buses and for fuel. Traffic laws are carefully obeyed, even when there’s no electricity to run the robots (south African for traffic lights, a term I absolutely adore and will use from now on. When a South African says it, it sounds like “rabbit”). People still throw their trash in bins, even though it won’t be collected. Harare has a substantial middle class population, which makes what’s happening here even harder to understand.

 I didn’t really believe it when colleagues said there is no food in the shops. It’s not 100% accurate. The situation has improved somewhat from six months ago when there really was nothing to buy. Since then, US dollars have been legalized as tender in certain shops. Now, there is some food in supermarkets but it's priced in US dollars. There’s absolutely nothing if you have Zimbabwe dollars, which is what most people have. With its dairy shelves filled with leaky bottled water, one market serving a middle class neighborhood reminded me of Moscow in 1991. The staples aisle stocked nothing but Mezoe Orange Crush, a Fanta-like soft drink that is definitely a Zimbabwean staple, but isn’t terribly nutritious. In the checkout line, I stood next to a man who had a rusty shopping cart filled with lunch box-sized bags of potato chips.

In an ordinary national chain, a loaf of Wonder-type white bread was $1.20. Two pounds of flour cost more than $3, payable only in USD. The typical wage in Zimbabwe? About 5 million Zim dollars, or about 10 USD, depending on the inflation rate. Should bread be available in Zim dollars, it cost 1.2 million.

Prices are bad enough, but accessing one’s money is next to impossible. There’s a daily withdrawal limit 500,000 Zim dollars from ATMs. That’s about 50 cents, or enough for bus fare home from work. All day long, lines of thousands of civil servants, office workers, teachers, police and military curve around buildings and down city blocks, waiting to use ATMs that will probably be out of money before most people reach them. Yet people continue to wait.

The whole visit was a lesson in macro-economics. If you want to understand why it’s like this, the short answer is nationalization of the farms and price controls. Other people can explain it better than I can. But it's critical to understand that Zimbabwe isn’t like it is because of war or natural disaster or the tragedy of history. It’s a predictable result of intentional economic policies made by people who should know better.

It’s one thing to see typical African or Asian poverty. Children shitting on train tracks in Delhi, spectacularly maimed beggars in Sana’a and AIDS victims sleeping on the streets in Addis are shocking but classifiable as foreign and other. Middle class people rely on electricity and mobile phone and ATMs to manage their lives. They expect their paychecks to be able to cover their rent and their food and their children’s education. That they can suddenly find their salaries worthless overnight, their health care and education systems shut down, their trash piling in the streets and their water fouled by sewage is fundamentally understandable. You know it could happen to you.

Things Overheard In Pakistan

"I'm going to be really glad when you leave. I heard that the US Constitution says that if foreigners get killed overseas the CIA comes to investigate."

--Pakistani colleague

"Soon, we will be landing, Inshallah."

--PIA flight attendant (Pakistan International Airlines is frequently called "Please Inform Allah)

"Some of the (Pashtun) land mine removers prefer to get paid in land mines. They never know when they might need to use them."

--Pashtun NGO leader from FATA

"I don't want to visit America. My sister told me that when Muslims arrive at passport control they have to go to a special line and then their movements are tracked."

--Same Pakistani colleague (we couldn't argue with this one because we weren't positive it was false)

"Pashtuns are only good at two things: Revenge and grudges"

-- Different Pakistani colleague

"You don't have children? You know Pakistan has some very good infertility clinics. You could come here for treatment."

-- Guy in adjacent seat on PIA flight from Karachi to Lahore

"Welcome to Pakistan. US bombs killed 132 people in my village last week."

--Pashtun activist from FATA

Things You Can Buy At Jeddah Duty Free

If you don't live in a place where staples, such as booze, are taxed 100%, you have no idea how important airport Duty Free shops are. As an American, we had never stepped in one before moving overseas and could never understand the appeal.  These days, however, we design elborate strategies to maximize our limited access to such rich sources of relatively cheap booze.

Instead of focusing on all the things we could not buy at the Jeddah duty free (uh, duh), we prefer to marvel at at all the amazing products we could purchase. It was sort of an airport version of a Tsum (sans vodka) or a JC Penneys, without all the cool clothes.  Just like at those two outlets, rewards await shoppers who approach with an open mind.

Here are some of the products that tempted us:

• An array of your favorite 70's -era consumer products such as giant cans of Tang, Nestle's evaporated milk and jumbo boxes of Tide, all of which make the dominant hue of the place ORANGE;
• A 46 CD set of the Koran
• Rip-off Armani perfume as well as hundreds of off-brand local (or Chinese) productions, such as the intriguing "Mr. Lomani"
• Emerald and diamond-studded Kaabah pendants
• A Samsung phone for $40
• An Ipod rip-off called the "City-tel"
• Electronic Hadith organizers
• Shiny polyester suits
• The complete first season of "Prison Break"

The duty free shop in Jeddah's airport wasn't the only thing that was awesome about it. With Bangladeshis and Filipinos checking in bales of plastic burlap-wrapped crap, it did have the amosphere of a third world bus station, but there was no security! When we say no security we mean "walk up to check in desk, put bags on conveyer belt, get boarding pass, then walk to passport control and get a half-assed wand before boarding." There was also no customs control, coming or going, either. This must be because there is no terrorism, or taxes, or antiquities worth smuggling out* in Saudi Arabia.  Which is why Saudi Arabia is awesome.

*In contrast, the Yemenis were pretty tight-assed about the whole "antiquities" thing. Despite our best efforts (seriously, we tried everything and we have a pretty powerful arsenal), they detained a beduoin vase we had purchased in a village. Not only do we believe it was the first genuine antiquity we have ever purchased, it is the first item we've had seized by the authorities. Sad face.