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…).

 

[Scarlett]

I’m falling well behind on this TR.

Time to depart KSA. I was returning the hire car to JED so again just followed the gps, but with some human over-ride as it was trying to send me an overly circuitous route. Mostly easy trip out and JED was relatively quiet in the mid morning. Dropped off car in the large parking garage back to Budget and walked over to the terminal to find the QR check-in.


JED airport: large and modern.

QR1191 JED-DOH
A330-300 A7-AEQ
On time

I’d chosen QR for the intra-Gulf relocation as they weren’t overly more expensive than the LCCs; I could earn a few VFF SCs; and could use my status benefits to avoid paying exorbitant fees to take my golf bag. Also, they flew wide bodies for both legs. All booked through the QR site with (WP) VFF number added to the booking.

I lined up at the priority check-in lane (marked ‘First’ for the intra-Gulf region) and had no issue there. VA PT was printed in very small font on one part of each boarding pass so the system worked. The boarding pass for this first flight also had a notation on it to go to the Plaza Premium lounge.

Security and then immigration were quick and next there is a intra-terminal shuttle (train) to get into the main part of the terminal. One had just pulled away as I walked in so I just kept walking rather than standing around like everyone else seemed to do. It was probably an 800m walk to the main central part of the terminal where the lounges were.


Plenty of SV jets at this hub.


The central hub area where lounges, money exchange and most shops are located.

I changed my couple of hundred left over SAR for about 25 KWD at one of the exchanges, including receiving a 1/2 dinar note. The KWD runs about five to one against the AUD.

Plaza lounge was small and basic but I had a coffee and a snack for about 20 minutes before deciding to stroll towards the gate.


My QR A333 at the gate.


EK A380 in the background for the two hour trip to DXB.

On booking I had selected the front of whY bulkhead seat and the aircraft type was indicated as B787. At some stage that updated to A333 but my bulkhead seat remained. FR24 had shown, for the past week, that the aircraft scheduled was A359. Even as I was sitting on board, post scheduled departure, and the outbound leg had been flown by this A333, FR24 still steadfastly advised the operating aircraft would be an A359.



Plenty of legroom and think I even had a spare seat beside me after boarding complete. Cabin about half full. Actually, now I recall, a really big unit did show up fairly late for the aisle seat beside. His family were in three of the four centre seats.


Taxi


Takeoff

I did drive past that gold thing when heading into Jeddah a few days ago. Must look up what it was. Looks to be the Jeddah Superdome event venue, but not usually covered in gold. Largest free standing dome structure in the world apparently.



Approaching DOH

Gas, oil and fracking! The major contributor to Qatari GDP.

Arrival

No bus gates here!

I’d only been through DOH once before and it was late at night after being invol rerouted onto QR. Impressive airport.

 

[Scarlett]

I had five hours at DOH and after a walk around some parts of the terminal…


(I’d never seen an image of this side of the bear)

…headed to the Platinum lounge south. I followed the info from the AFF DOH Lounge article and headed to gate A1 and found the lounge. All fine to access as VA WP. Gold lounge is downstairs and Platinum the floor above.

It was mostly empty on arrival and really only became about one third full by the time I departed.


All very nice and new. Not large, but there were more staff than guests for most of time there. Behind where I was seated was the à la carte dining area.

Whilst seated there I spied this albino B777 nearby. Ex-VA?


Actually no, it turns out that A7-BOC is in a ‘retro’ white livery from the 1990s.

View from the lounge at dusk with Qatar City in the background and a Gulf Air jet just taxiing in, an airline I’d be flying in a few days.


It’s no Al Mourjan but was still a very pleasant place during the transit.

 

[Scarlett]

QR1082 DOH-KWI
B787-8 A7-BCG
On time

Even though only scheduled for just over an hour, this flight was still being operated by a wide body jet.

As an aside, there’s a recent thread about MH scheduling different aircraft types in the early AM departure PER-KUL. In the past week for this flight QR have flown the following types:
4Jan A359
5Jan A332
6Jan B788
7Jan B773
8Jan A35K
9Jan B789

QR flight scheduling department

This was one flight where I did have to update seating as during one of the probably multiple equipment changes I’d gone from 10K bulkhead to 10E middle seat in the middle block. No thanks. Manage booking allowed me to update to a window seat at a central cabin bulkhead. Maybe not the best choice but for an hour, no problem.


No window immediately to my right either.


I posted this in the FR24 thread, noting that apparently we had a fighter jet parked at a DOH gate behind us (it was listed as a Eurofighter Typhoon) but it was actually just an ops vehicle driving around the airport with type set to ‘Typhoon FGR4’.


Flight mostly full, but a juice and kind of heated sausage roll snack was served. Uneventful and quick flight then it was into Kuwait.

 

[Scarlett]

Niche Public Service Announcement:
If you go to Kuwait and travel on an Australian passport, do the e-visa before getting there. You’ll still have to visit the visas office on arrival but it will probably only take 10-20 minutes of your time.

As it was, I had traveled electing to use the visa on arrival process. Bad choice. This took about an hour of waiting, then more waiting to be finally seen for paperwork, moved to the adjacent booth for biometrics (fingerprints and photos), then back for visa payment (KWD10) paid by credit card, and finally a stamp. Then finally downstairs through immi and to collect luggage which had been moved to a central baggage handling office.

I’d downloaded Careem (ride sharing app for the Gulf region) and could pull up all the details but couldn’t make a booking from the airport. It kept failing at the ‘make booking’ step. I suspect the taxi mafia have it deliberately geo-block from pick ups at the airport.

So KWD8 in a taxi for the 20 minutes to a hotel in the Sharq area of Kuwait City.

 

[jase05]

Niche Public Service Announcement:
If you go to Kuwait and travel on an Australian passport, do the e-visa before getting there. You’ll still have to visit the visas office on arrival but it will probably only take 10-20 minutes of your time.

We did the eVisa beforehand when we visited. Sounds like it was the right choice

 

[Scarlett]

The next morning it was out to find some breakfast and the first thing about Kuwait is the architecture of the skyline. I found it fascinating with all the modern buildings and their individual style elements.



Car park view from the hotel room


I decided to head from the hotel down toward the water, through one of the souks, then around to the Kuwait Towers. Then kept going along the corniche area, before retracing to find some food. Turned out to be about 20,000 steps and dinner around sunset, which was relatively early about 1630.




The Grand National Mosque of Kuwait.
(which incidentally is located next to a modern building housing the stock exchange - the Boursa Kuwait).


This Central Bank of Kuwait building was my absolute favourite. It genuinely appears to be razor thin; like one office wide the whole way up. It’s an amazing illusion, but I’m not sure I’d ever want to be someone working in there. Lovely sandstone like colour too.

As you get away from it the frontage looks like this.

From above, Google maps shows it as a triangular shape, but from ground level I just kept laughing to myself.


The souk Sharq turned out to be more shopping mall than souk and was very modern compared to the much older and more bustling Mubarakiya Souk I visited later. (people everywhere so I kept my phone in my pocket)


There is a cross Kuwait Bay bridge which looks like it would have been ridiculously expensive to build and doesn’t really go to a major population centre. 36KMs long apparently.

Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah Causeway - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I reckon this would be popular of an evening in the warmer months.






There were signs to a restaurant up inside the towers but I instead had a cup of coffee and just admired the view and people around the area. Then continued on south but it was really just a path with various beaches and western style food places. Not really a corniche as I expected it. There were a few kids enjoying the sand in places but I think it was just too cold for most. The temp was 18degC and sunny and that was fine for me to be in a golf shirt, but everyone else was rugged up.

I had a late afternoon dinner of chicken biryani at a cafe then headed back toward the hotel.





Much like KSA, it felt perfectly safe, mostly clean and just enjoyable to walk around in the sunshine without the heat being experienced back in many parts of Aus.

 

[RooFlyer]

Behind where I was seated was the à la carte dining area.

Out of interest, did you have a look at the a la carte set-up? Bit surprised at this 'level' of lounge.

 

[jase05]

Out of interest, did you have a look at the a la carte set-up? Bit surprised at this 'level' of lounge.

Have never visited it personally but I guess it had to be half decent as this is the lounge for OWE’s and VA Plats.
Does look quite nice

 

[Scarlett]

It was indeed a very nice lounge, but relatively small so might get busy at times. They had an attendant in the bathrooms tidying up after every person and proper little hand towels for drying hands.

There were maybe 25 tables in the dining area. Sorry @RooFlyer but I didn’t look at the menu. I had dinner about 40 minutes before my flight was due to board and was happy to have the chicken dish from the pots on display. Plus a pineapple cheesecake from in the chiller area. (no biscuit base like a traditional cheesecake but was good!)

Oh, the other piece of luck: the gate for my onward flight DOH-KWI came up about an hour before departure as A3. So was a whole one minute walk from the lounge.

 

[Scarlett]

Formerly, the place to play golf in Kuwait was at the Kuwait International Golf & Country Club, an 18 hole grassed course in the southern part of the nation. After a dispute (foreign owners versus someone local…) this is what the course now looks like:



The story goes that the owners built a pipeline to bring recycled water to the course, but that due to some reason or another, most of that water then started being diverted off elsewhere in 2024. So all the grass has died, the trees planted on the course have all died and they’re left hand watering nine of the greens. It’ll all be gone before long.

Fortunately, another grass course exists inside the main horse (camel?) racetrack nearer Kuwait City, at a large sporting club called Sahara. Equestrian, hunting, tennis, gym etc and a golf course.


Looking across the track to the golf course in the centre.

It wasn’t busy on a weekday although there were more people around as I was finishing up in the mid-late afternoon.

Nothing really great to describe. It’s a fairly short course, with 14 of the 18 holes hemmed in by the race track. There are wide expanses of sandy waste areas in play if you stray off the fairways.



Being winter time the grass cover was thin and there were some bare patches. Also, the greens were a little sparse on the grass. At least the design was interesting, making full use of the undulations of sand it had been built on.



Pleasant afternoon in the cool sunshine but nothing memorable.

 

[Scarlett]

For my final day in Kuwait I wanted to check out Brian’s Brekkie then continue on to Al Shaheed Park and the Memorial Museum, before heading to the National Museum.

Careem would’ve been only about $10 per short trip to get around but it was another nice day so walking shoes went on.




The buildings were still catching my attention.

Including this one, the, er, large… quite.


Closer to the park was:


And Black Mountain Tower from Canberra had a doppelgänger.


The park is a long crescent shape and stretches for a couple of kilometres through the city. Plenty of people were out enjoying the greenery walking, running, taking selfies and just generally relaxing.



First stop was the Habitat Museum, a small display about the native environments found throughout Kuwait.






Then on toward the Martyrs Monument and the Memorial Museum.





The Memorial Museum was closed at this point, but said it reopened at 1500 on the door so I went on for a look at mini Kuwait park a little further on.







Serious overtones of ‘Pissweak World’ which those of a certain age might recall from the D-Gen.

I went back after 1500 and the door was open…

… but the guy inside would only say closed. Hmmm.

So I set out to find a coffee and rest my feet. Went back via my hotel to recharge the phone and grab my jacket, then as dusk was setting continued on to the National Museum.



Full sized dhow out the front but on entering:

Not a promising sign.



It didn’t make any sense, you could walk into the museum, but you couldn’t go into any galleries. There was clearly major work going on so I’m not sure why it was open. Maybe it wasn’t and I and some other groups just wandered in around the tradies?

Stymied twice in the same day!

At least I found a nice place for dinner on the way back to the hotel. Had some nice beef brisket with what I guess was a dukkah style coating.



Kuwait City was clean, modern and easy to get around, but quite expensive. More flash cars than in KSA and everyone in a service role seemed to be from India or the Philippines. Another place that I’m glad to have seen, but don’t see any reason to return to.