(muezzin chanting call to prayer in Arabic)
- 40 riyal, one of these.
These cashmere, India, not China.
My friend. - What's he say?
- 30 riyal, good. (Ale laughing)
- [Kris] No, it's just I don't use it.
- 20 riyal.
(static hissing)
- Currently, the country is closed
to foreign visitors. (dramatic music)
- [Reporter] Not a holiday destination.
- Saudi Arabia has been trying to diversify.
- I want to invite the tourists.
- Saudi Arabia, it is opening its doors to foreign tourists.
- New visa regime for 49 countries.
- [Reporter] An historic moment.
- It is a $1 trillion push by Riyadh
to build a global tourism economy.
- Disney World, Paris, Saudi Arabia.
- See Saudi Arabia and enjoy Saudi Arabia.
(static hissing)
- Saudi Arabia.
In November, 2022, I was in Qatar World Cup
to watch my country, Argentina.
Our first match was against Saudi Arabia.
Who's gonna win?
- Of course, Saudi. - Saudis?
I didn't know much about them.
(crowd cheering) (dramatic music)
- I'm sorry, Ale.
- Congratulations. - I'm sorry.
(crowd cheering)
- The passion, happiness, and hospitality
(crowd cheering)
made me think about visiting their country one day.
(upbeat music)
The time has finally come.
One of the most difficult countries in the world
to enter three years ago.
Now, it's a reality.
Welcome to Saudi Arabia.
(upbeat music)
(local speaking in Arabic)
- Welcome. - Welcome.
- Welcome.
(upbeat music continues)
- [All] Welcome to Saudi.
- No chance.
(vocalists singing in foreign language)
Habibi!
- Keep this real.
- [Ale] This is one of the biggest mysteries
for me in terms of countries.
- So, we are finally in Jeddah.
(dramatic music)
Looks like we found the old town.
The entrance is this gate,
but looks like everything is under construction.
They are trying to rebuild the whole old town,
perhaps some maintenance.
To me, this looks fantastic.
This was found in the seventh century.
4:14 PM, we came again too early.
All the shops are closed.
Think we need to wait till 6:00 PM now.
Things are not always open during daylight
because it's very hot.
For example, me now, I'm in black, but I'm sweating.
I'm sweating.
It's, like, 35 degrees at the moment,
or 36 degrees at the moment.
Makes sense to open later.
This part of the old town is completely destroyed,
not just old. (dramatic music continues)
So, two things, first one, this old town is owned by cats.
That's one thing.
The second thing is taxis.
People take taxis here because it's so hot to walk
that they even take these services.
- Somehow, without no clear reason,
we get exclusive access to a bakery.
So, this bakery was closed, like, a second ago,
and the owner or worker saw that we show interest,
and he just opened for us.
- [Ale] You are a baker here?
- Not me.
I'm customer.
Shukran (Thank you)
- I don't know how these guys
they manage to do this job every single day.
I was there literary for 10 minutes.
I am completely wet.
The small bread was, like, two riyals,
which is 35 cents in Euros, so very cheap but delicious.
Definitely, this is one of the places you should come
when you are in Jeddah in the city.
So, essentially we're killing time.
There's nobody.
Do you know when the shops open?
6:00? - Today.
Today. - Yeah, but at 6:00?
- They open. - Okay.
They say that they open at 6:00 today.
Not sure if they understood my question,
but I hope it's true.
People are friendly.
Every time they see you with a camera,
they wanna approach you.
They ask you where you're from, so we do a picture together.
But they don't even ask you for the picture.
Hey, guys.
As I told you, you just pass, and everyone's saying hi.
They don't even know you, but something pretty common here,
exciting and refreshing to see.
You're gonna feed the cats?
He has some sort of olives,
eating olives. - Local.
- From here, from Saudi? (plastic rustling)
Nice, what's your name?
- Bangladesh, Rials.
- [Ale] Nice to meet you.
- Where are you from?
- [Ale] I'm from Argentina.
- Argentina? - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Okay, so finally we see shops opening
mainly souvenir shops here, and clothes,
and herbs, and all that.
Everyone is saying, "Welcome, come and see my shop."
(muezzin chanting call to prayer in Arabic)
- Hello (laughing).
I like to say hello to people to see their reaction.
What's your name?
- I am... name is Wahib.
- [Ale] Wahib? - Wahib.
- Wahib.
- [Kris] Nice to meet you. - Yes.
- [Ale] Nice to meet you. - Yes.
- [Ale] You know, I'm from Argentina.
- Yes, I am from Yemen.
This 40 riyal, one of these.
These cashmere India, not China.
My friend. - What's he say?
- 30 riyal good.
- [Kris] No, its just I don't use it.
- 20 riyal, no problem. - No, no.
- 20?
No 20?
Another, friend, one piece, 90 riyal
because you're friend. - Oh.
- Yes. - Because we are friends now?
- Yes, friend.
20. - 20 (laughs).
- Argentina, Argentina,
Messi. - Oh.
- Messi. - Messi, yes.
- All right, so we are buying a few pashminas,
actually not a few,
eight pashminas from our friend from Yemen
in Saudi Arabia and cashmere not from China, from India.
So, so many different countries.
Thank you so much, sir. - Thank you
very much. - Thank you.
(upbeat music)
So, this market is getting really, really, really
busy at the moment.
I like the vibe of this market.
This market is much better
than those ones we visited in Riyadh, for sure.
It feels really, really, really local.
Habibi!
- My name is Faisal from Yemen.
- Now- - Yemen.
- Yemen. - Yemen.
- [Ale] Ah, nice to meet you.
- Thank you. - [Ale] We met one guy
from Yemen as well.
You're the second one. - Okay.
- [Ale] You are all from Yemen?
(employee speaking Arabic)
- Sanaa, Sanaa.
- They have a lot of people from Yemen
selling food, clothes, and stuff
but a lot of people from Yemen.
Actually, I met probably six or seven people
at this point all from Yemen.
It's the first time I meet people from Yemen,
so hopefully I can visit this country very, very soon
because it's on my to-do list.
In this area, it's all about,
"Welcome, come and see my shop.
Welcome, come and see my shop."
We are now in the harbor.
This is a great area if you wanna come for a bite,
for a coffee, enjoy the beach behind.
It's more like a relaxing area.
Yesterday, we've been in the old town,
very interesting old buildings,
a bit of a chaotic but a lot of history there.
Just a shame they're sort of rebuilding everything.
They might lose some of the iconic buildings,
but this place is truly to relax,
and this is what we wanna do today.
So, this is the fishermen section.
(vocalist singing in foreign language)
They've been very successful today as we are seeing.
No idea what the name of the fish is,
but looks like it's a great day for them.
- What is your name?
- [Ale] Ale, A-L-E.
- Ali?
- [Ale] A.
- A. - A-L-E.
- A-L-E. - Salvino.
- [Local] Mashallah.
- [Ale] It doesn't matter where you are.
They will call for prayers pretty much everywhere.
(muezzin chanting call to prayer in Arabic)
- During praying time, they close all the shops.
They can't sell anything for 10, 15, 20 minutes.
As you can see, this is an example.
So, we have a nice beach here by the Red Sea.
No idea if they will open at 4:00 PM, 6:00 PM,
or it's just permanently closed.
We walked, like, 15, 20 minutes all along the coast,
which actually feels like two hours
because it's 33 degrees Celsius and 70% humidity.
It's also an area where you have all the resorts, right?
All the big hotels like Hilton, W Hotel, Shangri-La,
they're all by the waterfront in this harbor.
Now, we came to a British bakery because now we're
in an area where you have international brands,
and this British brand is called Bread Ahead.
But I have to be honest, I don't like
to try international brands when I'm abroad.
Otherwise, I'd try that in the country itself,
in the country of origin itself.
But yeah, I think this looks like a good place.
I wish the pain au chocolat was a more buttery one,
more in line with what you expect from a French bakery.
Other than that, the rest seems to be pretty tasty,
and as always a little flat white
not to be completely dry with the pastry.
We found out that, if you sell the same croissant
100 meters away or just across the corner
but in a Saudi bakery, people don't go.
But if you put, like, London Bakery or Paris Bakery,
people go crazy.
These guys are so proud about their shopping malls
that, because it's the last day, the last hours,
we said, "Okay, fine, we have an hour.
Let's go to the shopping mall."
The trip is coming to an end, so quick recap.
Okay, first country, Oman,
what were the key highlights from your perspective?
- [Kris] The market that we went the first day.
- [Ale] The Friday market.
- Yeah, after half an hour sleep.
- I like the part that we tried the dates.
We went to this, remember, like a souvenir shop,
but they were selling dates, and we sat down
with all those guys, grabbing the date with my two hands,
and they told us, "No, no, no, you need to grab
with one hand, press.
You get rid of the stone, and then you eat."
- Dates, coffee, coffee.
- Exactly, even in the supermarket, have a coffee,
have a date, and then let's start talking.
- Yeah, and also another quite exciting thing was the trip
to these pools.
- We went with a guy we met from Couchsurfing.
He sent us a message to do a little tour for us,
and we went to this hidden gem, really impressive.
- Come with time so you don't need to rush.
You can enjoy.
- When you do this sort of road trip,
you have, like, a healing pool that is
on the way to this trekking activity,
so highly recommended, this one.
- Then we moved to Qatar. (graphic popping)
- Because of the World Cup,
probably the second biggest event in the world
after the Olympics.
Doha is a new city.
They built an entire metro.
You have people from all over the world coming,
and it was very challenging, first to get tickets,
secondly, to get accommodation.
Originally, we had this Match Club ticket,
which is a hospitality package, but sort of the basic ticket
in a good category, category one, but still sort
of the basic hospitality ticket.
And then, you have the business one, and finally,
you have the Pearl Lounge one, which is the top notch,
the highest FIFA product to see the match.
So, we got upgraded all the way to the top.
We came really early, like three hours before,
had sort of chats with people, interviews.
We were filming outside.
You probably saw the video already.
Next country was Kuwait, very small country.
We had a great experience because we met a journalist
from the Kuwait Times.
She wanted to chat with us.
We had a little interview.
She show us the behind the scenes,
how they print the newspaper.
The Kuwait Times is the first English daily
in the whole Gulf.
- Yeah, and then we ended up in the newspaper.
- Completely by- - It was really-
- accident. - Yeah, really nice.
- Yeah. - So, we left
our little stamp.
- Let me do an analogy in Europe.
If you are from Europe, or if you travel in Europe,
this is like going to Luxembourg or going
to, you know, this kind of, how do you pronounce this one?
- Liechtenstein.
- Yeah, Liechtenstein.
It's like going to this type of countries.
You can do that in 24 hours, really,
'cause it's not a lot to see.
It's more, like, just to, you know, have your cup of tea,
your date, sit down, chill, and yeah.
What's the next country? - Then, Bahrain.
- Bahrain, I still don't know how they pronounce it.
I say Bahrain, but local people tend to say Bahrain.
This country also very small, even smaller than Kuwait.
- This is the country of everything and nothing
because, if they didn't have natural resources...
but fortunately, they managed
to build the country based on these resources.
- You see just buildings, skyscrapers,
but then you drive 10 minutes away from the city,
and you see the real country, which is what you say,
like just refineries, all the downstream, upstream
oil and gas- - Some houses, but-
- Yeah. - They don't live
very far from the capital.
- I think, one day, we tried to go to the beach.
It's just a coast, right, so you have beach everywhere,
and it was completely empty.
And this happened to us in so many of these countries
because we go early, and people don't go early
because it's too hot during the day.
So, it's not like us sometimes in Europe
that, you know, we wanna get dark,
have a nice color, and all that.
Here, it's just way too hot.
It's a desert.
So, what do you gonna do at that time?
So, they go after 4:00 PM, and then they stay till late.
- Yeah, because they don't care about tan.
I care.
(both laughing)
- And finally, the biggest of all these countries
in the Gulf, and from my perspective,
this is a personal opinion, the most interesting,
and this is-
- Saudi Arabia. (graphic popping)
- I've been tracking this country for years.
And I remember, back in the days,
it was impossible, impossible.
You needed a business visa.
Women couldn't come without a sponsor or without a man.
And now, they opened the gates.
And then, we started our little adventure in Riyadh,
exploring the streets of Riyadh, so yeah,
we booked last minute.
We didn't stay in a good area.
We were walking anyway in a part
that was very dangerous.
We didn't even notice that.
- [Kris] No, I didn't realize.
- Riyadh is all about business.
From my perspective, it's not the first city
you should go in Saudi Arabia.
- The city which is completely oriented
to tourists is AlUla.
- [Ale] This is our favorite spot.
- It's so beautiful (laughs).
Every corner we saw it, impressive.
- [Ale] Yeah.
And one night, we were just like,
"Why don't we just do nothing
and sit and look at the mountain?"
Amazing.
- Like in the movies, that part of the trip.
And finally, Jeddah, where we are right now
before finalizing our trip. - Yeah, actually,
we're wrapping up.
The old town, absolutely beautiful.
- Yeah. - Like, I think it was
one of the most beautiful places.
- It's hot.
It's humid.
You have beach.
You have palms, massive skyscrapers.
You can only drive.
People don't walk because you just literally melt.
- I like the way one tourist
that we met in Kuwait described it
She said, "Summer here feels
like someone is blowing the hair dryer
in your face all the time." (Ale laughing)
- Yeah, but anyway, that was the trip.
Going back home now, and stay tuned.
More big trips coming soon.
(mellow music)