Post by sss on Oct 1, 2013 3:10:12 GMT
For the benefit of everyone, I will summarize my experience below (and perhaps update it from time to time). For background, we are a family of four who departed from New York / JFK via Emirates airline:
Landing to getting to house
- Only had to fill out an entry card for myself, and list all my dependents. Even though I filled a card for everyone in my family, it was not needed
- Immigration was quick. There was a separate line for families which was helpful. The immigration officer was courteous and quick. They did fingerprinting for both adults and took pictures of them as well, but not of our kids who are 10 and 3.5, respectively
- We used two porters to collect our baggage. Upon exiting arrivals, there were tons of signs for people but we just told our porters to take us to where Aramco drivers are. There was a driver from a company called Majestic who met us right after we passed all the other signs. He walked us to the Aramco office located inside the airport
- Customs was very quick and painless and they did not check anything in our luggage. The porters offloaded everything on to the scanner and loaded it again on to the carts
- The porters waited while my family and I went in the office. There was only one family ahead of us. The staff was courteous and asked me for the passports and also the pictures for each member of our family that were sent by the relocation advisor.
- The staff kept our passports to apply for the "iqamah." They gave us a small envelope with keys / address of our house in Rakkah and also issued temporary ID cards for my wife and I. They also gave us stamped copies of passports of all family members to be kept with us at all times, in case we were stopped and asked by authorities for our identification.
- We got out and had our porters load up the van. We had 10 suitcases, 3 carry-ons and a stroller and a car seat. Because the porters waited outside for about 30 minutes or so, and I believe the fee is 5-10 SAR per bag (one of the frequent contributors mentioned that), we gave them 85 riyals and feel we should have given slightly more (but thats a personal call).
- The driver took us to the Rakkah compound, which was probably no more than 20-30 minutes. Our temporary IDs were checked and we were dropped at our new residence
- There is a welcome pack at the console on the entrance that has important phone numbers, etc.
- Almost all outlets are 110 and all our US devices are working perfectly. I do believe there is a 220 outlet somewhere but we havent had the need to use it yet
- A person from housing came by to ask if everything was okay. He gave us our wifi password as well and have to say the internet speed is very good with no issues streaming (though we havent done a lot and there are only about 70-80 families here so far)
- The house is quite nice and the furniture too is quite good. The welcome supplies in the kitchen have most of the stuff we need. The bedding / mattresses are brand new. Our water heater was switched off but we called services and they fixed it promptly
- There is a phone in the kitchen to call within the various places on the compound (service, taxi, etc.)
- There is a router and another phone in the living room, which can be used to call outside the compound. We connected our vonage device / phone to this router and it works fine
- We have made one trip outside the compound. We took a taxi (25 SAR) to Dhahran mall and its very nice and has a lot of stuff we are used to seeing (H&M, Pottery Barn, Guess, Gymboree, etc.) There is a large supermarket called SACO where you can get pretty much anything for the house that you may want. We bought some basic things from there
More later and I will try to be responsive to questions but please understand that we are still in the process of figuring things out ourselves. I thought something like above would have been helpful to us so doing our part.
Landing to getting to house
- Only had to fill out an entry card for myself, and list all my dependents. Even though I filled a card for everyone in my family, it was not needed
- Immigration was quick. There was a separate line for families which was helpful. The immigration officer was courteous and quick. They did fingerprinting for both adults and took pictures of them as well, but not of our kids who are 10 and 3.5, respectively
- We used two porters to collect our baggage. Upon exiting arrivals, there were tons of signs for people but we just told our porters to take us to where Aramco drivers are. There was a driver from a company called Majestic who met us right after we passed all the other signs. He walked us to the Aramco office located inside the airport
- Customs was very quick and painless and they did not check anything in our luggage. The porters offloaded everything on to the scanner and loaded it again on to the carts
- The porters waited while my family and I went in the office. There was only one family ahead of us. The staff was courteous and asked me for the passports and also the pictures for each member of our family that were sent by the relocation advisor.
- The staff kept our passports to apply for the "iqamah." They gave us a small envelope with keys / address of our house in Rakkah and also issued temporary ID cards for my wife and I. They also gave us stamped copies of passports of all family members to be kept with us at all times, in case we were stopped and asked by authorities for our identification.
- We got out and had our porters load up the van. We had 10 suitcases, 3 carry-ons and a stroller and a car seat. Because the porters waited outside for about 30 minutes or so, and I believe the fee is 5-10 SAR per bag (one of the frequent contributors mentioned that), we gave them 85 riyals and feel we should have given slightly more (but thats a personal call).
- The driver took us to the Rakkah compound, which was probably no more than 20-30 minutes. Our temporary IDs were checked and we were dropped at our new residence
- There is a welcome pack at the console on the entrance that has important phone numbers, etc.
- Almost all outlets are 110 and all our US devices are working perfectly. I do believe there is a 220 outlet somewhere but we havent had the need to use it yet
- A person from housing came by to ask if everything was okay. He gave us our wifi password as well and have to say the internet speed is very good with no issues streaming (though we havent done a lot and there are only about 70-80 families here so far)
- The house is quite nice and the furniture too is quite good. The welcome supplies in the kitchen have most of the stuff we need. The bedding / mattresses are brand new. Our water heater was switched off but we called services and they fixed it promptly
- There is a phone in the kitchen to call within the various places on the compound (service, taxi, etc.)
- There is a router and another phone in the living room, which can be used to call outside the compound. We connected our vonage device / phone to this router and it works fine
- We have made one trip outside the compound. We took a taxi (25 SAR) to Dhahran mall and its very nice and has a lot of stuff we are used to seeing (H&M, Pottery Barn, Guess, Gymboree, etc.) There is a large supermarket called SACO where you can get pretty much anything for the house that you may want. We bought some basic things from there
More later and I will try to be responsive to questions but please understand that we are still in the process of figuring things out ourselves. I thought something like above would have been helpful to us so doing our part.
