Travel Day 

Today we leave Manama! Where to? Back to Saudi Arabia! We plan on crossing the causeway again, so let’s see how that goes this time. But first, let’s take our last look at the Manama skyline. It’s been a short but very, very busy time in Bahrain. Even you, dear reader, had a lot to read while we were here! 

So… I’m insulted. My partner decided to go out for a quick walk before leaving the hotel, but refused to take any “selfies” for me. I’m sure you won’t be happy that I’m not posing. 

The first is our last look at Al Fateh Grand Mosque, then the Council of Representatives, and finally just a roundabout close to our hotel (Bahrain has a lot of roundabouts).

We check out and go down to wait for the bus to the terminal. Our advice? Go early. We don’t understand if the busses are early or late, or if the schedule is just a general guide, but our busses never arrived at the time that was listed at the stop. But, even with this, we were still quickly at the terminal. 

And in two minutes we had made it to the Saptco bus station. 

While we were here busses left at noon or 10:30 pm, obviously we don’t want to arrive in Saudi Arabia after midnight, so we chose noon. Again, yesterday there were still tickets for sale online for today, but this morning there weren’t any available. We planned on arriving and hoping to buy the tickets at the bus station. If not, we would buy for tomorrow and go back to the hotel. Luckily we got our ticket quickly. You can pay 95 SAR or 9.5 BD (~35 dollars). We paid in BD and asked for our change in BD, but we were first offered change in SAR. The attendant said that in Bahrain you can use either SAR or BD, but in Saudi Arabia you can only use SAR. Interesting, but we didn’t change our minds.

So, there’s 30 minutes before the bus leaves, so you think my partner sat down for 30 minutes? Of course not. He walked in circles around the bus terminal. Walking to and from the city bus terminal, looking at the busy Bahraini street, and looking at some shops that are around there (snacks, cars, etc.). But, eventually we get on. 

You can clearly see where the bus is from and where it is going by the massive flag in the windshield. We get on through the front and sit towards the front. Nope. The bus driver tells us to move back, must be the women’s section. We get comfortable and get ready for our ride!

Just before we start our trip, it’s interesting to note that there weren’t any people outside of the bus station offering rides back to Saudi Arabia. We had considered doing it again if it wasn’t too expensive, but now we get the full bus experience. Off we go!

We start moving and there are only about 18 people on the bus which, as you saw, is a big bus that can probably hold about 60 people. The passengers are diverse; young families, men alone, and women alone. After a few minutes we leave Manama behind. 

Then we see some desert before getting to the coast and starting our crossing with your last chance to stay on the main island. 

Then it was time for border number one, leaving Bahrain. The picture below is approaching the border, and we include it because you can see this from Google Street View, we obviously didn’t take pictures of the actual crossing. 

The bus parks and everyone has to get off the bus leaving everything onboard except for our passports. Bahrain quickly checked each one and we were off. Zero issues and approximately 10 minutes later we were all back on the bus, the driver did the head count, and we were off. Border number one done. 

At the Saudi border it’s slightly different. And much longer. We all give our passports to the bus driver and he gets off with them and a couple (who knows why they joined him). After a while he came back for one guy that seems to have given his identity card instead of his passport, which was the document he was supposed to give (probably not a Gulf country national). This whole time my partner is wondering why he doesn’t have to get off. He has an eVisa for Saudi Arabia, so it’s on his phone… but he didn’t give his phone in… Maybe they made a note of it in the passport since he had already entered the country? Probably. We all just wait seated on the bus. It’s starting to get hot as there isn’t air conditioning (or it’s off because we’re not moving).

Well… we wait quite a time. The guy who had given his identity card in is outside pacing around on the phone with the border guards around him. We wait and wait… then he comes back on the bus and announces that he has to get a picture of the correct document sent to him to be allowed to enter Saudi Arabia…. Great. At least our passports are back and we’re ready to go!

Or so we thought. After 40 minutes at this stop (probably not normal to have someone not have the correct documents to cross an international border) we move about 15 metres on the bus and then we’re all told to get off with our bags. Guess what, our bag was flagged. We open it, but everything is okay. Why do we tell you this? Because my partner had to repack his bag… and the bus started moving! The bus driver must have incorrectly done his count (remember we told you he did a head count at the Bahraini border?)… All the border guards just stared at us and the bus to see what would happen. At least the bus stopped and let us on. The bus driver said something, but we didn’t understand. Time to get going! We’re in Saudi Arabia again!

In no time we’re crossing Al Khobar and then we’re back in Dammam. Our Bahraini adventure has come to an end. We sit down in the bus station to catch our breath and figure out how to get to our hotel. 

Then, when we think we have it figured out we go outside to the “swarm” of people waiting to take you wherever you want. They all want to take you to far off places across Saudi Arabia, but we tell them we’re staying in Dammam and just want a hotel.

We see the guy who took us to Bahrain the other day, but we agree a fare with another driver and he takes us to our hotel. On the drive we ask where he usually goes, and he said it can be Riyadh or Jeddah. He told us that Dammam to Riyadh only takes 3 hours (the train took four, and online it says four hours driving as well). We don’t recall if he told us 700 SAR to Riyadh or all the way to Jeddah, but Jeddah is supposedly 13-14 hours away by car… no thanks! 

Now, time to explore a bit of Dammam!

Now, we have absolutely zero clue what to do in Dammam. The guys we talked to at the Real Madrid game told us that Al Khobar (where they are from) was nicer than Dammam, but we weren’t about to go “all the way” to Al Khobar today. So we look on the map and see where the waterfront is and head off. It’s a pretty calm day for traffic, much different than Riyadh, haha. 

Just before the Dammam Corniche we pass this mosque that’s along the park that goes with the Corniche. 

And then we’re here.

It is so calm here, it’s great. There are quite a few people that came to just walk along the Corniche, it must be the thing to do in Dammam. So, of course, we join them. 

The Corniche is almost perfectly circular in shape, with just the very top of it open to the rest of the bay. First we walk to the end that is closest to our hotel and see these little pieces of street art. 

And then we start walking the other way. We walk and walk but probably only make it about halfway around the entire Corniche (it’s pretty big). But that’s fine, the sun is going down quickly. 

But when has that ever stopped my partner before? We keep going and keep going eventually turning around once we make it to a mosque we saw in the distance. And then we of course see another mosque as well. 

And we also see what is supposed to be one of the main tourist attractions in Dammam, the Sails Square. 

But that’s it. Even I’m starting to get tired (just kidding) and my partner is hungry. Let’s go to the mall that we saw and hopefully we can find some good food. 

No such luck. All we found was this sign. 

We will have to try our hotel’s neighbourhood. We start walking and walk by a shawarma place, and since we hadn’t actually seen anywhere to eat around the hotel, we stop here. We got a Kuwaiti shawarma in Saudi Arabia, hehe. We keep walking and we run across these signs. 

We’re 90% sure that these are for the GCC – the Gulf Cooperation Council – an organization made up of the countries of the Arabian Gulf. 

But that’s it! That was our day from Manama to Dammam. Now it’s time for some much needed rest. Goodnight from Dammam!

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