We drove to Dhahran today to pick up a framed tribal facemask from Madinah that we had seen at a bazaar in Riyadh but hadn’t had enough cash on us to pay for it. Our bank (whose main clientele are Foreign Service officers) cut off our ATM access that day we first saw it because we were trying to withdraw funds from Saudi Arabia. That has since been fixed, but I found it pretty interesting.

I tried to take pictures from the car during the very long trip (four hours each way) although obviously that isn't an ideal way to do photography, but stopping every time I saw something interesting -- even just desert scenes -- was impossible with the countless truck caravans and high speed that most everybody was driving at.

Dhahran is in the Eastern Province, on the east coast of Saudi Arabia, and is home to Saudi Aramco, which although now 100 percent Saudi owned, still dominates the town, with a compound there that hosts close to 10,000 people, many of them expatriates. The area comprises three cities – Dhahran, Dammam and Al Khobar and is the center of Saudi oil extraction. We got a very late start so really only had time to go to the shop, but must return in a month to pick up something else so will hopefully see more of the area then.

Driving to the Eastern Province was a real adventure (although not as bad as I had feared) – the highway, three lanes in each direction, is heavily used by trucks. We found we had to watch not only the traffic in front of us but that behind us as well because cars would come up on us suddenly and pass us (when we were in the fast lane!) on the left shoulder. The first time that happened, I almost fainted ;-).