Tuesday 11 March 2014

Beer... glorious beer!

There I was walking the supermarket floor on one of my “hunter gather” mission when I saw it.



Yes you can buy beer in Saudi Arabia…… non alcoholic of course!  Then I noticed it is artfully flavoured.  You can have cherry, apple, pear, pomegranate and strawberry flavoured beer!  One of the locals has told me it’s not hard to make the beer alcoholic, you just need to add a pinch of yeast to the bottle and reseal it!  Cherry flavoured alcoholic beer……. Maybe not!

The following is a photo of my cheap (£20) 7” tablet that I bought in Carrefour, Granada Mall. 



 There is nothing on it to indicate the country of manufacture and on checking the website (www.nikai.com) the company appears to be based in the Middle East.  However a quick check on Google indicates a number of Indians also own them.  Not that any of this matters to me.  Whilst it is a “full blown” colour tablet with wifi etc, all I need it for is reading my ebooks.  The major difference between the tablet and a genuine eReader is the tablet has far less battery life.  The Nikai has to be recharged every day whereas my BeBook and Nook go for weeks between recharging.

Looks like I have another meeting in Dammam tomorrow and have been booked on Flynas (Local RyanAir).  I’m going to use the trip to renew my visa (again).  So it will be another early start to the day to reach the Saudi/Bahrain border before the usual weekend queue.  It will be the same quick trip through Saudi customs and immigration before doing the usual hard left turn to cut down the alleyway and arrive at the inwards Saudi customs and immigration control points.  I’ve also realised the “trap” with the visa.  It’s not a six month visa.  It’s for 180 days and it must be renewed every 30 days – not once per month!  That’s how people get caught!

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