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And Bahrain becomes a Saudi colony for the weekend. When they finally take off down the Bahrain stretch of the causeway, the signs imposing an 80 kilometre speed limit are gleefully ignored, and the whole thing resembles the start of a Formula 1 race. Inappropriate analogy, I know, but better than bullets from a gun. Or not, depending on circumstances that have never been clear to me.Īt this stage some of the younger Saudis are like corks ready to be fired from a champagne bottle. The final hurdle is the insurance booths, where you are required to show insurance papers. Not that there are many illicit things you might want to export from the Kingdom, but anyway. Assuming you pass muster there you line up for the customs inspection. Then you go to the Bahraini immigration stations. After that you hand your customs slip to a guy waiting at another checkpoint. If you’re lucky you’ll get someone who’s not on the phone or chatting to one of his colleagues. Next, you, and hundreds of others, proceed to the Saudi passport booths on the Saudi side. It’s partly because of the volume of traffic, and partly because the process is so brain-frying.Īt the first set of booths you collect your little customs slip. On Salary Day the causeway becomes so choked with Saudis trying to get into Bahrain that you are lucky if you get through customs and immigration in less than two hours. The young guys ditch their thobes, put on the shorts, Real Madrid t-shirts and baseball caps, pile into their Mustangs and souped-up SUVs and bomb down the highways at breakneck speed towards the King Fahad Causeway.Īt which point everything stops. Every weekend thousands of Saudis – families and young single males mostly – descend upon Bahrain from as far away as Riyadh. As I expected, “Going to Bahrain” was the answer from several. I asked a number of people what they were planning to do for the weekend.
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I happened to be in Dammam – on the east coast of the Kingdom – on this Salary Day just passed. And yes, people were smiling, because it was the last Thursday of the month, which for most government workers is when they get paid. At an institution that I was visiting, a middle aged Saudi gentleman was wandering around the central atrium with a wicked grin on his face, urging all he met to “be happy, it’s Salary Day!” The line at the ATM was at least ten people deep.