Housing for newcomers (March/April 2015)

If you have not found it yet, Al Zamil store just off the Corniche is worth the effort to find. It is right beside the ANB bank building on 3rd street. If you like Sears appliances, Zaina Store is the place for Kenmore. Unfortunately with the recent new law, they can only sell 240V appliances. Zaina is juxtaposed to the Harley Davidson dealership so win-win. Most houses now have some 240V outlets. If not, I think you can get maintenance to install some. There have been rumors that everything will be switched to 240V at some point. Technically that is not that hard for Aramco to do but it would cause many of us a lot of problems. Extra Store also has nice appliances, TVs, etc. and they deliver in case that new 75” OLED TV doesn’t fit in the car. TVs sold here are generally multisystem and I believe that Saudi uses PAL or 576i standard instead of the USA’s NTSC 3.58. I have tried converters before but found them a total waste of money. TVs are too cheap anymore to even bother.

If you plan to keep your house back home, I recently bought a Slingbox so I can watch my DirecTV from the USA. It is wise to set it up and make sure it is working before you leave though. I have OSN here but find they repeat a lot of the shows no matter how many channels I have. OSN does not carry American sports very often other than golf. As much as I try to understand cricket, I am sadly incapable.

Sultan Garden center is a block away from Extra and also worth getting to know although high on price. If you are heavy into gardening, there ae a dozen or so nurseries all very close together on the right side of the highway on the way to RT. Much better pricing and they can also deliver for a price low enough to make you rethink getting your own car dirty. Pricing can vary enough from one to another to make it worth the time to shop around.

If you need to use a 120/240 transformer, do not use any of the small electronic transformers. They are okay for phones and computers but not for appliances. You can buy proper transformers in the local market. Radio Shack in Bahrain sells really nice ones but a bit pricey. Do not go short on KVA. A 1 KVA transformer is not enough to run a hair dryer. If the transformer is too small for the load you put on it, it can cause a fire. These transformers also give a true sine wave so will not damage sensitive electronics. You can also run them backwards with no problem. Transformers are one thing worth paying a bit more for and the heavier, the better so you can sleep better at night.

Ace hardware is known as SACO here. There is a SACO store on the Dhahran-Khobar Road and SACO World at Mall of Dhahran. They are very different and you can find much better choice of tools and hardware in the Khobar store. If you don’t mind a stroll through Khobar, I think it is King Faisal Street but it is where where Jotun Paint is, walking north from there, you will find anything and everything you need. Capital Electric is one of the more complete electrical stores in Khobar. I found a nice shop across the street with a very helpful Pakistani clerk. If I take him my shopping list and leave for 30 minutes, he will have it all waiting when I get back. On that street, you can find every kind of hardware imaginable all the way up to industrial grade. Building materials are all located near Prince Majed and Prince Abdulelah streets between 4th and 5th more or less. There is a shop on 7th Street and Prince Mohammed that sells every kind, shape, size, color, flavor and smell of any screw, nut, bolt, rod, clevis pin, cotter key, etc. you could ever dream of in both English and metric. In most any of the shops, you can go behind the counter and go through the shelves to see everything they have. Very relaxed atmosphere. A few times a year I make a pilgrimage to Khobar with a private driver who lets me off at one end and I walk to the other. I periodically call him when my arms are full so he can drive by and take my bags so I can continue on. If you buy large items, there are plenty of drivers with trucks available who, for a small fee, will deliver to your house.

Rahmania Mall (or the “Philippino Mall” as some people know it) is great for Dockers and the like. Definitely worth visiting just to see what all is there.

One thing that can be very useful here is an Aramex Shop & Ship account. I don’t know if they charge a fee to sign up but, if so, it won’t be very much and there is no annual fee. They will give you a “mail box” in the USA, UK, China, HK, UAE, Canada and 9 other countries. If I order something from the USA, I have it sent to my USA mail box. Aramex airfreights from my NYC mail box 2 or 3 times a week. It takes about 3 to 4 days to arrive at my doorstep after it gets to NYC. Go to shopandship.com/#/en/home to sign up. They will need to get your passport info in order to be able to import on your behalf. They ship most anything except the prohibited items they have listed on their website. As far as airfreight goes, it is likely the lowest cost of any of the providers but the less something weighs, the cheaper it is. I think I may have paid customs duties on one shipment and it was only about 10 SAR. I’ve never paid duties on any other shipment. I have used my UK address twice and China once and all was smooth.

I have shipped many different things including laptops, iPhones, iPads, 120V appliances (replacements) and the reliability is very good. One time I shipped two iPad minis. They arrived to Aramex in Bahrain from NYC but disappeared off the face of the earth between Bahrain and Saudi. They were engraved with my daughters’ names and were intended as a holiday gift so the disappointment was large. Aramex repaid me the full cost of the iPads plus their freight. I have found that it is better to pay avoid using US mail to ship to NYC. Usually their shipment is not traceable and it can sometimes take 30 days or longer from the time it is shipped until it shows up in my Aramex account. I prefer to buy Apple products from the USA as they always sell the lower memory stoe versions here for any given model and some of the apps are not available such as Facetime. The AT&T version of the iPhone works here with a local SIM card but I buy the T-Mobile version or one that has no contract. I have heard the Verizon version of the phone doesn’t work here. Unfortunately Apple no longer accepts orders for shipments to Aramex as they have figured out that it is a freight forwarder. In those cases, I have them shipped to my sister who sends it to NYC by UPS. Unfortunately she is only slightly more reliable than the US mail. For everything else, I registered the Aramex address on my Amazon account and with the credit card companies. I did temporarily lose another shipment once. Aramex mistakenly put DOH #### on the shipment instead of DHA #### and it went to Qatar. The guy in Qatar was kind enough to give it back to Aramex and they got it to me. He was not required to give it back so fortunately it was not something he wanted.

If you reach a point where you want to have a large amount of things sent over by airfreight, you should talk to the local DHL office here. One year I had about 130 KG of things sent to my sister’s house. I consolidated it into 11 boxes. The trick is you have to get the Dhahran DHL office to arrange to collection and shipment. All I had to do was give them a proforma invoice that I made and the pickup location. They contacted DHL USA to pick up the boxes and I think I paid about 2,600 SAR total for the shipment. If I had taken the things to DHL in the USA myself, it would have cost 3 – 4 times that amount. This seems like a nice service that DHL provides to Aramcons and it really is. Unfortunately I was stupid (still am but nothing I can do about that). On the proforma invoice, instead of putting “11 boxes”, I had put “1 shipment”. Causeway customs found an October holiday decoration they objected to and halted the entire shipment. My choices were to ship it all back to the USA at my cost (was going to be over 8,000 SAR) or they would destroy the entire shipment. If I had put “11 boxes”, I would have been given the option to return or destroy that one box and the other 10 would have made it through. I could not have it left in Bahrain to pick up later as it was already in Saudi Customs. I eventually cut a deal with DHL to ship it to the UAE for 3,000 SAR and I drove to Dubai and brought it all back.

October holiday event time is one of my favorites here because it is not as frowned upon as other more non-secular holidays. I have brought over many decorations but found it easier to have them sent to a friend in Bahrain and then drive over to get them. For some reason, Causeway Customs is far stricter on what they allow than shipments that go through Riyadh. Unfortunately you cannot choose the route with Aramex. That is determined by the day of the week that things depart the USA.