DAMMAM AIRPORT

Now to continue our trip with arrival in Saudi Arabia. Sorry, but I was not allowed to take pictures at the airport but it isn't much different than any other airport you might see.

We landed about 8:30pm local time, I was glad because finally the long trip would be over. Little did I know that there was still another 3-4 hours before I would be at my new home.

After we deplaned we had a very, very, very, very, very,(get the idea), long walk to get to immigration. This was our first stop in the airport. Here there were only about 3 windows, 1 window for Forgein citizens, and the other two for everyone else. Of course we were in the single window line.

It seemed that most of the flight was in our line. After about 15 minutes another window was opened for each side and our line was split. That put us closer to the front, about 5 people back. Yea! maybe this won't take long at all (my misguided thoughts). we were still there for at least another hour or more waiting our turn.

I don't think the official wanted to be working thebooth, because he spent most of his time on the phone talking while he was processing people. When it was finally our turn Mike was processed rather quickly, but they had trouble getting the computer to read my fingerprinits.

Yes we were fingerprinted at the airport. They have this really neat optical reader that you press your fingers on, a green light shows if the fingers are pressed properly. I had all green lights but for some reason the computer wasn't cooperating. Finally we got my fingerprints and moved forward.

The next section we were met by a representative from the company who was our driver. A porter came and helped us load our bags on a cart. With immigration taking as long as it did there was no wait for our luggage. It was already through and removed from the carosel. We loaded our luggage on the cart and headed for customs.

I thought this part would take a long time because they would have to inspect our luggage. Well, all they did was x-ray it and we passed right through. Our porter put the luggage on the conveyor belt and picked it up on the other side. There were no problems. That was great.

Our next stop was the Aramco offices at the airport. We had paperwork to do there. We turned in our passports, reeceived our temporary ID badges. These were yellow and only good for about 3 weeks. We were given the papers we needed to begin the process of getting to permanent residence status. Our visa's were a one time only visitor visa.

This took about 30 minutes. Then we were ready to leave. We followed the driver to the car, loaded our luggage, paid the porter and headed for Dhahran Camp where we were dropped off at our new home.

We went inside, unloaded our luggage and finally went to bed at about 12:30am. Mostly the time at the airport was hurry up and wait. But we finally got to our home. But more about that tomorrow.