Of Islands and Gulfs (golfs!)

[Scarlett]

KAEC is home to the Royal Greens Golf Club. A course built in the desert and home to various professional tournaments from the Ladies European Tour to LIV Golf.

It’s all quite over the top and designed in an American country club style.


Excellent facilities and an enjoyable and challenging course. It goes without saying that it’s expensive too: at about $250 a round. All that grass isn’t going to grow itself!





At least this par 3 used waste areas to effect.


The back nine holes had floodlight towers along each hole so that golf could continue into the evening, or when it was cooler during the hotter months of the year. It was also where the course finally had two holes near to the Red Sea. I think they missed a trick by not incorporating more of the seaside into the design.



This par three has the green on a form of natural rock ledge hard against the water. An expansive new (planned opening in 2026) Rixos all-inclusive resort is being finished in the background.


This 18th hole claimed my golf ball both times I played it. The first time was trying to be too cute with my approach and taking on the sucker pin close by the water. The second time I was much smarter and dumped my approach in the bunker. Then hit out of the sand with too much power and watched my ball roll across the green, past the flag and disappear down the closely mown slope, never to be seen again… c’est la vie.

Golf in
89/199 countries completed.

(I’ve had to increase the number of countries with golf as, by all reports, Afghanistan does actually still have a course - so I’ve added them back onto my list…)

 

[TomVexille]

Yeah $290 for 7MB seems very steep compared to the pricing available at Barnbougle and even the top notch public courses on the Mornington and Bellarine peninsula.

I'm still going to find a way to go though

 

[drron]

I only played Barnbougle once but it was free. A guest of a member. Won’t mention my score but I did enjoy. it.0

 

[Scarlett]

Yeah $290 for 7MB seems very steep compared to the pricing available at Barnbougle and even the top notch public courses on the Mornington and Bellarine peninsula.

I'm still going to find a way to go though

I don’t understand their business model with that green fee. They had 42 golfers on the day I played and that was in the last week of December - absolute peak season.

When it gets to late Feb or March, I wonder how many they think they’ll be getting? A couple of thousand international visitors a year is only ten a day and add in maybe another ten or fifteen a day from within Australia? That’s $7K a day.

Guesstimating the daily costs:
- interest on the ~$5M+ debt to build the course is at least $1000
- wages for the staff $4000
- water/electricity/insurance $100
- plant and course maintenance vehicles (incl. POL) $300
- fertiliser? parts?

Interesting, maybe they do only need 20 players a day to keep it going. That might be difficult through the winter months. I expect we’ll see a low season or local (Australian) rate before long.

Mind you, when I played at Cape Kidnappers over in NZ, ten or so years ago, I paid $250. On the day I played I was one of only two golfers… they’re still going.

 

[Scarlett]

The day after playing golf at Royal Greens, I tried to head down to another course about 30 minutes south at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Some information online indicates visitors can play and from Google maps satellite view, it looks a good course. I’d emailed them beforehand and had gotten nowhere so figured worst case I could go down there and see if I could blag my way on for a game.

From reading about KAUST, apparently they offer a significant number of free tuition scholarships for students from around the world.



My back up plan was to go visit the King Abdullah monument which appeared to be set on the coast, with a lot of fish visible from a rock wall.

That was a hard no. I couldn’t even get on to the campus without a prior organised invitation. Walls, security, the whole lot. To top it off, when I followed the map to get around to the monument the road leads directly to what looked to be a Navy base. That had even more security!

So no joy from my little outing south of KAEC. Instead I headed back to the apartment, got changed and went for a walk as far as I could get along the shore to the north. It turned out to be a 7KM round trip, so although I didn’t get to play golf I still got plenty of steps in.

The next morning I got up early to walk around to a coffee shop for some breakfast. This is looking out from my apartment over the potentially abandoned development next door. I hadn’t seen any workers there for the time I’d been in KAEC.





The hospital and business park area:


The beach area in front of the promenade with the restaurants:


I had a leisurely breakfast, then wandered back and packed up to check out and drive down to Jeddah.

Nice enough place, but quiet and not really much to do. The thought I had whilst playing golf was I do wonder what will happen in say ten or so years time when someone makes the case to Prince MBZ that they just haven’t had the return on investment for the mega projects. Will the place just crumble away over time? Will they turn the taps off and let the desert landscape reclaim the golf course? Or will the visionary ‘build it and they will come’ really bear fruit?

 

[Scarlett]

Navigating in to Jeddah was a little more ‘interesting’ than just driving on the main roads and mostly deserted KAEC. Clearly when people talk about the ‘good ole days’ somehow being ‘better’ they’re not considering modern marvels like Google maps, connected through car play, that is smart enough to give you warning about which kind of lane you need to be in, whilst being an Australian driving in Saudi Arabia. So much simpler. It got me to the front of my hotel where I parked on the street like everyone else.

After check in and a little unpacking it was time to go for a walk: choices; turn right or turn left out of the hotel?

To the right was this big flag. Who doesn’t love a big flag? I wonder what it’s for?


To the left was the water and the corniche, so I decided to head that way.

Getting closer to the corniche were the standard western hotels, with the IC directly across the road and I think the Grand Hyatt actually at the waters edge.

Nice that the apartments have some individual style rather than the boring boxes in most Australian cities.


Got to the water at a perfect time.


It turns out that plenty of others did too.




The island(s) the sun is setting behind are the location for some of the royal palaces.

There were some Indonesian families there as part of a tour group conducting ‘umroh’ visits to the holy cities of Medinah and Mecca, with a side trip to Jeddah. I asked one father if he wanted me to take a whole group photo as he had the camera and was snapping the rest of his family and that led to various chats with the others on the tour. (I asked in Bahasa Indonesia) It’s a nice party trick to pull on them (the faces give away their thoughts of, hey, why is this westerner talking to me in my own language). More so when we’re all in a foreign country! Plus it’s good for me to try and keep my ear in: I still can’t keep up with, mostly the ladies, when they go full bore.

About ten minutes after sunset the reason for the gold looking thing out in the water became apparent:


I didn’t take an image of it, but also around sunset there were guys pulling large roll up mats out behind where I was taking these pics. Like an elongated roll-a-door box on the ground and they pulled multiple long thin cloth mats out of it. Then there were group prayers on the mats. All the guys were on the right as I looked at it and some of the ladies present used separate mats on the left. Ingenious setup.



Continued on along the corniche and there were families eating and kids playing on various little playgrounds. Plenty of people brought along their own chairs or a kind or rug with a triangular back rest. Some had them on the path right at the waters edge. Seemed like good vibes from all.

This guy is just popping his triangular rest up, almost like an oversized tablet/phone rest.



Glad I turned left!

Getting back to near where I started I headed into a place called Caffe Aroma for dinner, thinking it would be a standard sort of arabic cafe/restaurant. Turned out to be an interesting cave style thing with plenty of plants and decorations. I had a very nice steak and some sort of juice mocktail and left impressed.

It was full and with people waiting in the entry ‘ante-room’ when I left, so I guess it was a good choice.

 

[Scarlett]

The next day was much of a write off from late morning, likely due to something from breakfast. I’ve been very lucky in my travels and rarely need to stay close ‘to the facilities’. I carry a little ‘baggie’ of basic medicines with me and the GastroStop came in handy.

I did head out in the evening when feeling better but ate only some very basic flat bread and bottled juice.


I did see a ‘Ladies branch’ of Saudi National Bank. This and the praying in separate groups were about the only forms of minor segregation I saw in the KSA. Plenty of ladies were out doing their own things; the staff at various customer facing roles were mixed; ladies were driving themselves around. It all looked very… normal and modern.

I don’t know what I was expecting in Saudi Arabia, but as a tourist it was easy to get around. Everyone was friendly; actually more than friendly: helpful. They seemed genuine too. My Bankwest Zero Mastercard credit card worked everywhere and aside from paying for my apartment, I probably didn’t need cash. Card payment machines were ubiquitous (and no surcharges!) for tap and go transactions. I walked around a lot and everywhere felt safe.

I’d happily return (but won’t because there are too many other places to go…).