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Living Life in the Digital Age - Living Life with Technology past, present and future. Find me at https://www.lifeat100Mhz.com - Produced by Dave Bunyard - earthdrifter@gmail.com Cover Photo: Charles Sharp Crawford in a Cole car at the Indianapolis speedway in 1910.
This is Dave Bunyard. And in this episode of life at 100 megahertz, we are on a deep dive into the rest of my Saudi weekend adventures between 1997 and 2001. You can find my Saudi Arabian travels with my many photos in a 150 page downloadable PDF from etsy.com. Just look up Earth Drifting Saudi Arabia. I hope you enjoy this.
Sam:You know, when you pull up a satellite map of the Arabian Peninsula, it is a it's incredibly easy to let your brain just sort of smooth it all out.
Delilah:Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Sam:Right. You look at that screen and you see this massive unbroken sea of beige and, well, your mind takes a shortcut. You just assume it's this blank slate of sand, like a vast empty nothingness.
Delilah:Right. Because we are entirely conditioned to see that specific color tan on a map and equate it with a void. I mean, we project our own lack of knowledge onto the geography, assuming there is nothing going on down there but heat, dust, and, you know, maybe a few oil rigs.
Sam:Exactly. But then you actually zoom in and that beige canvas cracks wide open. You suddenly find yourself looking at, mile wide volcanic craters, ancient carved tombs that literally smell like death and people navigating these incredibly strict, highly complex parallel societies.
Delilah:It is a completely different world when you get on the ground.
Sam:It really is. And today on this deep dive we are opening up a stack of personal journal entries and travelogues written by a western expat who lived in Saudi Arabia between 1997 and 2001. We're using these sources to completely shatter that empty desert stereotype and explore a terrain filled with cursed cities, high stakes human encounters and the kind of unscripted moments moments that, completely upend how you view a place.
Delilah:It's such a fascinating window into that specific era.
Sam:So, okay, let's unpack this. To really make sense of these journal entries, we have to grasp the sheer culture shock of the world this expat was dropping into back in the late nineties.
Delilah:Yeah. The geographical and cultural stage here is just vital to everything that follows. I mean, late nineties Saudi Arabia was a strict, profoundly conservative Islamic country where the religious foundation really dictated the absolute rhythm of daily life.
Sam:Right.
Delilah:Even the most basic measurement of time, like the work week, ran from Saturday through Wednesday. It centered entirely around Friday as the holy day of rest and prayer.
Sam:Which, I mean, that structural shift alone would completely scramble your internal clock.
Delilah:Oh, totally.
Sam:You're waking up on a Sunday morning, and instead of, you know, reading the paper or whatever, you're heading into a corporate office.
Delilah:Right. The disorientation was almost by design in a way. The Saudi government brought in western expats heavily during this period for engineering, infrastructure, physical labor. I mean, they needed the expertise, but they did not necessarily want the cultural integration.
Sam:Which makes sense from their perspective at the time.
Delilah:Exactly. Authorities maintained a rigid separation keeping Westerners largely contained within their own secure, walled off compounds. They lived in bubbles. So when this expat steps out of that bubble, the invisible walls they hit are incredibly jarring.
Sam:Yeah. And we see that jarring reality instantly in the journals when we look at how boundaries, specifically religious boundaries, are enforced. Yeah. There is this one entry from November 1997 that starts as this comedy of errors and then rapidly turns into a terrifying detour.
Delilah:This is the Medina trip. Right?
Sam:Yes. Exactly. So a group of 20 expats are planning a weekend trip. But at the airport in Jeddah, five of them actually missed the shuttle out to the tarmac because they're sitting in an airport cafe sipping cappuccinos.
Delilah:A completely mundane miscalculation I mean the kind of thing you do on a layover in Chicago.
Sam:Right but here it changes everything. The remaining 15 get on the plane and fly to Medina expecting to meet a tourist bus that the others were supposed to coordinate.
Delilah:But there's no transport waiting.
Sam:Exactly. They wander outside, find a single local bus driver and manage to convince them to take them to their hotel and they're laughing, joking around in the back of this bus completely oblivious.
Delilah:Just acting like normal tourists.
Sam:Right. But then the chatter just dies. Someone looks out the window and realizes they are driving just two blocks away from the Grand Holy Mosque in Medina.
Delilah:Wow. And the panic that sets in on that bus isn't just about embarrassment. I mean, it's about sheer physical danger.
Sam:Because of the restrictions.
Delilah:Exactly. Non Muslims are strictly forbidden from entering the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and certainly not anywhere near the perimeter of the Holy Mosque. This is a fiercely protected boundary meant to prevent sacred spaces from being spoiled by nonbelievers.
Sam:The journal author notes that the fear circulating among the expats was that if they were caught, they might, quote, lose their feet.
Delilah:Oh my
Sam:The western women on the bus frantically started pulling out whatever fabric they had to cover their hair and faces and they're begging the bus driver to kill the interior light so nobody on the street can look inside.
Delilah:Because if the religious authorities saw a bus full of westerners two blocks from the mosque
Sam:That driver is going to jail.
Delilah:Without doubt. It's a moment of profound, sudden vulnerability. They cross an invisible, sacred line without even meaning to, and the consequences in that environment are entirely out of their control. The driver has to navigate them out of the center in total darkness.
Sam:Right. But wait, I need to pause here because this creates a massive contradiction to the journals. Well, you have Medina, which is this living, fiercely protected holy site where an accidental wrong turn could end imprisonment. But then the expat visits another site called Mais Dansaleh.
Delilah:Ah, yes. Up north.
Sam:Yeah. About 800 kilometers north of Jeddah. It's essentially the sister city to Petra in Jordan. Just these massive sandstone tombs carved into the rock two thousand years ago by the Nabateans.
Delilah:Incredible archaeology.
Sam:Truly. But the journal describes Medinsala as a cursed city. The expat Saudi boss actually instructed him to fake cry out of respect when walking through it. And Muslims are actively discouraged from visiting. So I have to ask, why would an educated Saudi boss tell his employee to fake cry while walking through a world class ological site.
Delilah:What's fascinating here is how the culture negotiates its relationship with time and really its own pre Islamic history. Medinsallah represents an era of different deities. The tombs have these intricate eagle carvings above the doorways representing an Abadian god.
Sam:Right. Pagan gods.
Delilah:Exactly. For a strictly Islamic society, acknowledging the grandeur of a civilization that predates the prophet Muhammad and one that worshiped pagan idols is theologically deeply uncomfortable.
Sam:Oh, I see.
Delilah:So the instruction to fake cry is a coping mechanism. It's a way to view the ruins not as a triumph of ancient architecture, but as a tragic, cursed reminder of those who lived in ignorance before the true faith arrived.
Sam:That is wild. The expat also knows a really visceral detail about those tombs. He says there is a lingering smell of death inside the chambers.
Delilah:It's very evocative.
Sam:Yeah, and outside, almost all of those intricate stone eagle carvings have had their heads completely chopped off by locals over years.
Delilah:The decapitated eagles are a physical manifestation of that theological discomfort. I mean, the expat observes that this isn't just mindless teenagers committing vandalism.
Sam:Right, it's intentional.
Delilah:Yes. It is a striking example of what happens when a society avoids educating its people about the historical context of other cultures. When you don't understand the meaning behind another civilization's symbols, and you are taught that anything outside your belief system is a threat, while the easiest solution is erasure. You literally deface history to make it less intimidating.
Sam:That makes total sense. And that instinct to exert control over something that intimidates you doesn't just apply to history. The journals actually transition away from these invisible religious boundaries into the crushing physical boundaries of the landscape itself.
Delilah:Right, the desert environment.
Sam:Exactly. The desert doesn't just dwarf human ambition, it sort of demands that you invent ways to comprehend it.
Delilah:Let's look at the Waba Crater.
Sam:Oh, Waba Crater. Geologically speaking, that is an anomaly in the middle of a vast volcanic field halfway between Jeddah and Riyadh.
Delilah:It's massive. An extinct volcano roughly a mile wide. The expats take this brutal, treacherous hike down the side of the ash cone. The descent is so steep, the author explicitly notes they would never attempt it again without climbing ropes. It's a very dangerous trek.
Sam:But the detail I can't stop thinking about is the contrast in how this crater is explained by the people looking at it. Geologists theorize it was formed when a rising column of magma hit an underground body of water causing a massive subterranean steam explosion.
Delilah:A very scientific thermodynamic explanation.
Sam:Yikes. But the local Bedouin myth. The locals say there used to be a mountain there but it fell in love with another mountain, got up and moved to Yemen, leaving this massive hole behind.
Delilah:It's a beautiful story.
Sam:It really is. Isn't it amazing how we invent these playful, stubborn myths to explain extreme landscapes? Geologists see thermodynamics, but locals look at a mile wide crater and see a tragic romance.
Delilah:It comes down to cognitive load. When faced with an environment that operates on a scale spanning millions of years and unfathomable destructive force, the human brain really struggles to process it.
Sam:It's just too big.
Delilah:Exactly. By assigning human motivations to the landscape, the mountain fell in love, the mountain packed its bags and left you shrink the incomprehensible down to a human scale. A steam explosion is indifferent to your existence. A heartbroken mountain is something you can understand.
Sam:That is such a great way to put it. And the physical reality at the bottom of the crater is just as bizarre as the myth.
Delilah:The salt pan.
Sam:Yes. When the expats finally reach the crater floor, they step onto a massive salt pan. The journal describes how it deeply crunches underfoot and looks exactly like a fresh sheet of frozen snow. So you are standing in the blazing, oppressive heat of the Arabian Desert, you're dripping with sweat, but your visual and auditory senses are telling your brain that you are walking through a winter wonderland.
Delilah:The sensory whiplash there is intense, and the desert's ability to completely disorient and reject human presence is echoed in another geological site the expat visits, which is Marble Mountain.
Sam:Oh, Marble Mountain gave me chills. It's an abandoned marble mine, not far from Jeddah. The author finds old worker lodgings built from stacked rocks, and standing right in the middle of it all is this 50 year old heavily rusted industrial crane.
Delilah:Just left there.
Sam:Just left there. It has this profound Mary Celeste vibe. It looks like the workers simply dropped their tools mid swing one Tuesday afternoon and vanished into the sand. The official word was that they stopped mining because the quality of the marble wasn't high enough for export. But the author stands there watching ominous clouds roll over the peak and notes it just feels like an odd unnatural place that actively expelled the people trying to harvest it.
Delilah:Well the desert is unapologetically unforgiving to human ambition. If the land doesn't yield a profit margin high enough to justify the immense logistical nightmare of surviving out there, you don't slowly pack up and wind down operation.
Sam:You just run.
Delilah:You abandon the site instantly. You leave the crane because the cost of retrieving it is higher than the value of the machine itself. Ambition.
Sam:But the desert isn't entirely a void of humanity. It's populated by nomadic Bedouins. And the deeper the expats push into the wilderness, the more the social safety nets of modern life just vanish.
Delilah:Right. You're out of the compound now.
Sam:Way out. Out there, you don't rely on police or international law. You rely entirely on incredibly ancient, incredibly tense codes of hospitality. So in the year 2000, the expats take their 4x4s off road to a place called Al Muwei. They're driving through the dunes and they stumble upon a literal sea of camels.
Delilah:226 camels, I believe the journal noted.
Sam:Yes, just wandering the sands.
Delilah:Encounter a herd of that size in the open desert means you have intersected with a major economic and nomadic artery? That is significant wealth.
Sam:And the herder is a Sudanese man. And the interaction is surprisingly beautiful. He invites these random foreigners to tea, allows them to take photos of the herd, and actually asks them to bring physical copies of the photos back to the desert on their next trip so he can mail them to his family in Sudan.
Delilah:A genuine moment of connection.
Sam:It's this warm, entirely peaceful exchange of curiosity. But the journals make it very clear that not all encounters in the deep desert are that relaxed. There is an entry about a shotgun incident that feels like something out of a tense thriller.
Delilah:Oh, yes. This specific encounter serves as a master class in cross cultural tension and nonverbal diplomacy.
Sam:Okay. So the expats are exploring the crumbling ruins of an old mud and wood village near King Abdulaziz's palace. They're entirely alone. Suddenly, a battered pickup truck pulls up. A Bedouin man steps out, and he starts walking purposefully toward them, holding a 12 gauge shotgun.
Sam:Context is everything here. In Saudi Arabia at this time, only the police and military are allowed to possess handguns. Bedouins were permitted carry rifles, but strictly for hunting food in the wilderness. So seeing a stranger approach your group with a 12 gauge shotgun in the middle of an abandoned ruin triggers every alarm bell you have.
Delilah:The expat is rapidly assessing the threat matrix at this point. He's looking at the truck, noting that there are women and children sitting in the cab. That detail is crucial because it generally signals that this isn't an ambush but the presence of a firearm still demands absolute caution.
Sam:So they exchange these tentative Arabic greetings Then the Bedouin breaks open the chamber of the shotgun, slides in a shell, snaps it shut, and hands the weapon to the expat.
Delilah:Just hands it over?
Sam:Yeah. And he says, as best as the expat can translate, you must shoot the gun. And here's where it gets really interesting. This isn't a threat. It is the ultimate high stakes cultural trust fall.
Delilah:The mechanics of that trust fall are brilliant. The Bedouin is testing their character.
Sam:Exactly. I mean, if you are an American expat standing in the dust, your instinct is to politely decline the loaded weapon.
Delilah:Naturally.
Sam:But you cannot refuse this offer without causing a grave, possibly dangerous insult. The Bedwyn is offering you an honor, a shared masculine experience. He's handing over his leverage.
Delilah:Which is a huge gesture of trust.
Sam:So the expat takes this 12 gauge having never fired a shotgun in his entire life aims it at a nearby mud wall and pulls the trigger. The kickback is so violent it deeply bruises his shoulder for days but the mud wall holds steady, a little dust cloud pops up and he hands the gun back.
Delilah:And everyone is happy.
Sam:Right, by absorbing that physical pain he secures a peaceful actually friendly interaction. He substitutes a bruised shoulder for cultural harmony.
Delilah:If we connect this to the bigger picture, survival in this environment relies entirely on surrendering your own bodily comfort and submitting to local customs. You see this physical submission happen again on a trek the expats take down into a valley called Bunisad.
Sam:Oh man, the descent alone sounds terrifying. They drive their vehicles down a mountain dirt track, dropping 3,700 feet in a single hour.
Delilah:Just a sheer drop.
Sam:They are locked in four low gear, relying entirely on the engine braking to keep from tumbling off a three quarter mile drop.
Delilah:They are leaning into total vulnerability, and when they finally reach the bottom of the valley, they arrive at a small remote outpost. A local man there milks a camel right in front of them, filters the milk just once through a kitchen colander to catch the hare, and hands the expat a bowl of warm, raw camel milk.
Sam:And the man hands it over with the incredibly ominous warning that drinking it is going to clean out his system.
Delilah:Is quite the biological gamble when you were at the bottom of a 3,700 foot gorge hours away from any modern plumbing or medical facility.
Sam:I know right? But he drinks it. He has to. He notes that the texture is strangely thin, much less fatty than cow's milk, and it tastes almost exactly like a cardboard flavored soy milk.
Delilah:It's not about the culinary experience, obviously. It's about the communion of the You cannot reject the hospitality of the desert without rejecting the protection of the people who live in it.
Sam:Now, returning from that wild raw frontier, the journals take us back into the concrete reality of the city of Jeddah itself. And we get to see two vastly different ways people cope with living under these rigid constraints, preserving ancient wisdom or inventing pure absurdity. First, the expat details exploring Old Jeddah, a historic district called Balad.
Delilah:Balad is the architectural heart of the city dating back to when Jeddah was a walled port catering to pilgrims arriving from the Red Sea.
Sam:Right. And the expat specifically chooses to explore Balad early on a quiet Friday morning. And the journals note this is a strategic choice. They go early to avoid the Mutawa who patrol heavily later in the day to enforce strict public dress codes, ensure no one is engaging in forbidden activities. But on a Friday morning, before the city wakes up, Gaulat is magical.
Sam:There is a mosque minaret stretching up that dates back to 700 AD. The ancient houses are lined with these incredible, intricately carved wooden window covers called Roshan.
Delilah:Those wooden Roshan windows are a brilliant intersection of climate control and cultural values. The latticework is angled to catch the humid sea breeze and funnel it into the house, but it fundamentally functions as a strict privacy screen.
Sam:Ah, I didn't realize that.
Delilah:Yeah. The women inside the home can look out at the bustling street and participate visually in public life, but absolutely no one on the street can see inside. The architecture physically enforces the culture's absolute division between private sanctuary and public space.
Sam:It's brilliant engineering.
Delilah:Yeah.
Sam:And at street level the sensory overload is fantastic. You have chaotic juice fenders banging spoons against the glass to get your attention. You have these labyrinth like Arabic spice shops where the expat spends an exhausting morning just trying to communicate the Arabic word for nutmeg. Nutmeg. Yeah.
Sam:Because he is determined to make a batch of eggnog for a clandestine Christmas party.
Delilah:That is hilarious. And we shouldn't overlook the practical local wisdom the expat adopts to survive this environment like wearing the gutra.
Sam:The headwear.
Delilah:Right. The traditional red and white checked headwear isn't just a cultural uniform. The journal points out it's essentially a wearable desert air conditioner. It protects your neck from the blistering sun, the loose folds allow a cooling micro breeze circulate around your head, and in a second you can wrap it across your face to filter out a sudden sandstorm.
Sam:Wow! So you have the locals perfectly adapted to the climate through architecture and clothing, but then you pivot to how the western expats adapt to their psychological environment.
Delilah:Hash House Harriers.
Sam:Yes. They adapt by forming an underground society called the Jitta Hash House Harriers. The journal affectionately describes them as a drinking club with a running problem.
Delilah:The Hash House Harriers are a global phenomenon, but operating one inside a country where alcohol is strictly banned and public gatherings are heavily monitored takes on a profoundly different significance.
Sam:They engineered these massive surreal events. The expats would drive out to the empty desert and follow a trail of chalk lines drawn in the sand by a designated hare. If the runners hit a circle with an X inside it was a false trail and they had to run all the way back.
Delilah:It sounds chaotic.
Sam:It was. They hosted massive illicit bonfires with 300 expats out in the dunes to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day. And they had this deeply weird ritual called gunning. If an expat's contract was up and they were leaving the country to go back home, the club would force them to kneel in the dirt while the members poured a massive cooler of foul mystery liquid over their head. Right, so what does this all mean?
Sam:I look at this and think, why on earth do highly educated engineers and executives form these slightly ridiculous, heavily organized micro societies?
Delilah:This raises an important question about human psychology under pressure. When people are placed in highly restrictive foreign environments where the laws, the language, the justice system, and the daily customs are entirely out of their hands, they experience a severe loss of autonomy.
Sam:They feel powerless.
Delilah:Exactly. To cope with that psychological weight, they construct their own absurd rituals. Chasing chalk lines in the desert or pouring liquid on a departing friend isn't just a frat party, it is an exercise in regaining a sense of community and control. When the outside world is rigidly ordered and penalizes you for stepping out of line, you engineer your own predictable, safe chaos.
Sam:They build their own bubble of silliness to stay sane. It's a psychological pressure valve.
Delilah:Very well said.
Sam:Looking back at this entire stack of journals, I am just struck by the sheer, whiplash inducing scale of the contrast we've explored today. I mean, think about the ground covered in these pages. From the suffocating silent panic of almost being arrested outside a glowing holy mosque to the nervous adrenaline of firing a stranger's 12 gauge shotgun against a mud wall.
Delilah:It's an incredible range of human experience.
Sam:It really is. From standing on a blinding white salt pan that crunches like winter snow in a boiling crater to watching a rusted crane stand vigil over a deserted mountain.
Delilah:It serves as a vital reminder for you listening to this. When you are presented with a single monolithic narrative about a country, a culture, or a landscape, when the map looks like just one solid impenetrable color, remember that it is an illusion. Yeah. You have to actively look for the nuances. Look for the cardboard taste of warm camel milk handed to you by a stranger.
Delilah:Look for the uneasy historical tension carved into a decapitated stone eagle, or look for those intricate wooden windows in ballad that let you safely observe a hidden complex world while keeping your own secret safe.
Sam:The zoomed in view changes absolutely everything. We constantly book flights and travel thousands of miles to see massive physical landmarks, but the things that actually lodge in our brains and permanently change our worldview are those unscripted, highly awkward, vulnerable human interactions. So we want to leave you with a thought to ponder today. What is the camel milk experience in your own life? What is that strange, slightly intimidating local custom or that unexpected challenge in your own community that you've been too polite or maybe too afraid to try?
Sam:Because you never truly know what you'll find when you finally step off the beige map and wander out into the real terrain.
Dave Bunyard:You can get the 150 page downloadable photo book from etsy.com. Just search for earth drifting Saudi Arabia. This book includes the seven day Northern Hijaz trip as well. This has been another episode from Life at 100 megahertz. This is Dave Bunyard.
Dave Bunyard:Thanks for
Sam:listening.