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[Bebsi]

Well, Stephen, there ARE useful things to buy in the shopping malls. I mean, you could get a mini-mosque that you can set as an alarm clock, and it will wake you up at dawn with a loud prayer-call. What else? Lots of sickly-sweet candies of all colours that must have been invented by the dental industry....colourful chintzy-glittery material that you can buy by the metre to have a dress made for your Indian mistress...a gigantic Rado watch that looks, well, original!!!! OK, maybe if you belong to the minimalist school you mightn't want to furnish your house from these shops...but you can't have everything.

Seriously, though, in malls like Rashid (Khobar) and Jamjoum and Heraa (Jeddah) you can get many great quality items...European designer clothes, electrical goods, jewellery etc...at substantially lower prices than in Europe. Like everything else in the middle-east you get the good and the bad in the malls.

Speaking of which, driving in KSA is to me very much a case of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Very good roads, especially the highways across the desert; extremely bad drivers wherever you go, worst in Jeddah I would suggest(?) and downright ugly cars (those horrible, garish American things).

And if anyone is looking for cheap, tin pots for cooking large quantities of rice, the souk in Hafr Al Batin does a good line, tho the best tin-pot shops for me have to be in Arrar and Usfan (don't even ask!!!!!).

If you want to get a good secondhand TV set, you know, a nice antique mid 70s model complete with imitation wood case, large hand-sized control knobs, and bubble-screens, try the junk-souk near the port in South Jeddah. The A/C units there are like something you would have found in Philip Marlowe's office!!

Any more shopping advice needed?