Isn’t there a law against infidels in Saudi Arabia?
No. 
I spent a year there and i am not a fidel… 
No. I spent a year there and I am not a fidel… [/quote]
did you teach english?
No. I spent a year there and I am not a fidel… [/quote]
did you teach english?[/quote]
No, my work was related to electronics and software. But a long-time Canadian friend has been living there for 20 years now, and he started as English teacher and worked his way up.
There are millions of foreigners in Saudi Arabia, and not all of them are Muslims. 
Hm… I seem to remember that during the Gulf War, the Saudi government had to get permission from teh ulema to allow “infidel” American soldiers onto Saudi soil to fight back Saddam’s forces…
Right… that may have been the case (anywhere inthe world, allowing some other country’s military into your own country is a matter that is usually not handled by a single junior bureaucrat ) - in any case, work visas are available with no such constraints.
I have a sneaky suspicion that I’m persona non grata there, otherwise I’d be tempted.
And if your a woman, you’re not allowed to drive a car, apparently. And don’t they keep the infidels rounded up in compounds so they can’t infect anybody? I could be wrong about that. About the only stuff I seem to read about that place is people getting stoned to death and suchlike, and the occasional foreign devils getting sentenced to millions of centuries in prison for making bathtub gin and suchlike.
Well, I was joking about the not allowing infidels into the state.
However, the overall attitude of my statement is genuine.
Look what I found: islam-watch.org/KhaledWaleed … nSaudi.htm
Didn’t an australian woman just get sent to jail their for being raped? ie she is in jail for having sex with a married man.
Doesn’t sound like a place I would want to live.
Since the topic has come up on ths BBS, i’ll make a quick list here, since i spent a year in that country a while back and also have friends who have spent much more time there - perhaps this information is useful for someone looking for work abroad after life in Taiwan. 
During the time i worked in Saudi Arabia i’ve met a good number of other foreigners - from Japan, China, Canada, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Tunisia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Phillipines, a good number of them non-muslims. Most but not all foreigners were men - the women i met were either in professional positions or worked in the service industry.
Foreign men were allowed to drive cars if they had an international driving licence.
From what i could gather, Japanese and Chinese were almost always in the country as engineers or technicians, while “westerners” would mostly be found in high-paid professional positions in Saudi universities, schools, and hospitals, or also work as engineers and technicians. The people i met who were from Lebanon and Tunisia, as well as some of the Indians and Pakistanis, worked in the area of trade (many of them self-employed), while other Indians and Pakistanis were taxi drivers, truck drivers, or labourers. Finally, service personnel (in hotels, car repair and rental companies, private households, etc.) seemed to be predominantly from the Phillipines (pretty well everybody who i met in that context spoke English). I also met a few US Americans on the odd occasion, but they worked exclusively inside their embassy/ consulate compounds (in addition, i’ve heard of Americans working in the oil industry in the eastern part of the country - but i never went there).
Many people working in the more highly paid positions seem to live in access-restricted compounds (groups of houses enclosed by walls and with security guards at the gate). These compounds are excusively set up for foreigners, and some companies rent houses in there for their employees. There is, however, no rule that foreigners have to live in a compound (i did not live in one myself, for example) - it is basically a service that companies offer their foreign employees, since many foreigners apparently don’t want to live among the local population.
Public performances of music, stage works, or films are not allowed in Saudi Arabia, but pretty well any kind of music, videos, and computer software was available in speciality stores.
Some newspapers in English were available, and pretty well all the foreigners living in the compounds had satellite TV. I used a short wave receiver to get news directly from home and from other countries. When staying in a hotel i sometimes watched the folk music program that was on at half an hour before midnight: i like Arabic music a lot, and there is a famous Saudi folk musician, Mohammad Abdu, who was often featured in those late night programs.
Shopping centers, supermarkets, and speciality stores are selling almost anything and everything you could find in a similar store in Europe or north America, including, for example, imported beef and fish, computers, and stereo equipment - what is not available were food products containing pork or alcohol. When i lived there many food items that Indians and Pakistanis often use were also available but i saw nothing Japanese or Chinese. Finally, there are lots of covered and outdoor markets (usually active at night).
I found plenty of restaurants to chooose from and enjoyed dishes from several Arab countries as well as from India and Pakistan.
I traveled a lot in the country - there were many travel agencies, and fligths and rental cars were relatively cheap. Booking flights, cars, and hotel accommodation was easy.
That’s all that comes to mind right now…
Yuli, great post. I think that anyone who has a chance to work in the Middle East in a place like Saudi or the Persian Gulf, should take it. It would be a truly soul-expanding experience.
And, if you want mind-blowing, try Israel.
forget about what you could get to eat and buy, what about your basic human rights?
What are your basic human rights? And what about them, in regards to Saudi Arabia? Any experience in that regard?
And what about those rights in regards to other countries - like China, Australia, Taiwan, Korea, the USA?
Before i went to Saudi Arabia myself i heard from quite a few people, “Why the #### would you want to work in Saudi Arabia?”. Well, i was offered an opportunity to work in a field i happen to have some expertise in and to earn a substantially bigger amount of money for that work than in most other places i had been before. And since a friend of mine had been living in Saudi Arabia for some time already and told me how he had make things work out for him, and since i was generally reasonably well-informed about the geography,climate, and history of that country, as well as about its political, social, and economic situation, it seemed to me i would be able to make something good of that offer - which i did (it turned out a worthwhile investment into my education in more than one way).
Based on my experience, i would not discourage anybody to go there (or to Russia or the USA) if they were so inclined (having said that, however, i’d think that people who can’t live without regular access to alcohol or who have the irresistible urge to be missionaries might be better advised to spend their time somewhere else, not in Saudi Arabia ). I also wouldn’t advise anybody not to go to China or Korea, etc., because i have no experience living or traveling in those countries…
As always and anywhere, YMMV…
well if you just went for the money then it’s more like a wham bam, thank you mam situation…
Actually, money was not the most important consideration: since foreigners can’t even get into that country as visitors unless they are muslims going on the hadj (pilgrimage to Mecca at a certain time), this was a rare opportunity to go somewhere where i usually would not be able to go (tourism is - or at least at that time was - strictly a domestic affair). I made good money, but more importantly, i spent all my free time traveling there and saw more of the country than most people who work there: usually you are restricted to staying within the one of the five regions that your job is located in, but since i had to travel to two regions for work already i asked the (Arab) boss to apply for an all-region visa for me, and i got that, and made good use of it. Thus i’d say the main purpose and result was “education and experience”. But, yes, a one-year affair only: i had no desire to live there for very long…
By the way, when Lili started this thread she obviously had something in mind that she thought was useful to consider before going to Arabia (and although there is no law against infidels, there is a prohibtion against the public practice of any religion the state does not approve of). And my comments in this thread are not meant to suggest that Saudi Arabia is an essentially trouble free country - far from it. But it is quite easy to go beyond hearsay and get correct information about that country (in fact, most employers will prepare their staff for living there before sending them there), and it is possible to lead an interesting life there if one stays clear of the issues that tend to cause trouble - exactly the same applies to pretty well any other country, i’d say most importantly to China, Russia, and the USA, as well as most of the countries where Islam has a strong influence…
But by living and working there, are you not essentially condoning/supporting a system which you probably do not condone or support?
What answer do you expect? What answer do you accept?
Would you say people coming to work in Taiwan or China essentially condone/support the systems of these countries?
And i wonder what people do who disagree with the systems in their own home countries - do they invariably leave? And if so, where do they go?
And if some of them are staying, would you say that they are essentially condoning/supporting those systems?
[quote=“Got To Be Kidding”]Yuli, great post. I think that anyone who has a chance to work in the Middle East in a place like Saudi or the Persian Gulf, should take it. It would be a truly soul-expanding experience.
And, if you want mind-blowing, try Israel.[/quote]
Think twice about going to Saudi Arabia if you’re a woman though. A woman from Australia was raped in Saudi and then had to serve 8 months for ‘adultery’.
Drugged, raped, then jailed for ‘adultery’
“A Brisbane woman is suing a luxury United Arab Emirates resort after she was jailed for adultery when she complained of being drugged and raped by three men.
Alicia Gali was sentenced to 12 months in prison after an assault by three co-workers while drinking at the Le Meridien Al Aqah Beach Resort staff bar in Fujairah, UAE in June 2008.
After reporting the incident to police, Ms Gali was jailed for adultery and served eight months before being pardoned in March 2009 and returning to Australia.”
brisbanetimes.com.au/world/d … 1cd7p.html
I lived in Israel for a year for a rafting company. Great fun although there was a an old fenced off minefield a few hundred metres from my lodgings.
Avoid the borders or you may have your mind-blown literally.