Have Passport, Will Travel: April 2008

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

In the sandpit again...

Afternoon all,

I am back in Saudi Arabia. I have done a tour of the country. I started in Najran near the Yemen border. It was boiling there and fortunately the job went fast. After that I went to Hofuf and that is where the following pictures are from. Hofuf is near Dammam on the east coast. The driver that picked me up said that he knew a short cut but we would have to watch out for camels. I didn't believe him, I thought he was joking...

Then after an hour there was the first stepping out into the road. These beasts are stupid as anything. They will not move or shift when you drive at them...


A little bit later we actually had to stop as a camel herder was driving his beasts across the motorway...
This was the site in Hofuf. This was a first for me. This is the biggest cement plant in world. The new lines produce 10.000 tons of cement per day. It also meant that the scanner towers on which my scanners are mounted were the highest I have ever climbed. They were about 30 meters on a straight ladder and yes it scared the crap out of me. I had to climb them wearing my back pack with my tools and laptop in there and that was dragging me backwards.Luckily the chinese imstallation company had done a good job and i only had to climb each once, thank f^%$!


As you can see the staff were very helpful, i wasn't even allowed to carry my own bags. The company I worked for was Sinoma and they were ace. I have heard a lot of complaints about this company but they did a great job for me!

I have been asked to put pictures on the Blog of my new greyhound Izzy but I picked her up on the friday and disappeared off to Saudi on the saturday early so haven't got any piccies yet. I should be back in Blighty by sunday so I'll update it when I have some pics to add. According to the missus she is doing great and getting along with my grumpy Jay very well, so all's well.

OK, gotta go, one more day here in Arar on the Iraqi border and then on to Eastern Province Cement and then on to home, can't wait.... An alcohol free country, now that sounds like the place to send me...... NOT.....!

Cheerio, Alex.


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