Jeddah

The Red Sea city in Saudi Arabia, and the whole of Harry’s first trip to the country, with Kieran.

He arrives thinking Riyadh is the better city and leaves saying the opposite, because everyone he met said so first.

The old city and the souk

• The gold souk, which he compares to Dubai — clean, quiet, orderly, and not somewhere he was ever going to buy anything.
• The thobe shop is the best twenty minutes of the day. It is run by a Bangladeshi trader, the fitting draws in half the street, and the complete outfit comes to 120 (from video – unverified — the currency and the final haggled figure are garbled), discounted to whatever cash they had between them.
• He is stopped constantly afterwards. Strangers approach, and every second person re-ties his headdress, which will not stay on for the rest of the video.

The Corniche

The seafront strip, and the answer to the complaint that the Gulf isn’t walkable.

• Running and cycling tracks, hotels, beaches and a lot of construction — a district that was deliberately designed to be walked, which he notes is an exception rather than the rule here.
• Dead by day, alive after sunset. Go in the evening; that’s when the interaction is.
• Rented electric bikes at 150 for the day — and the sting: the rental takes only the domestic card network, so neither Visa nor Mastercard works. They pay cash from an ATM. He calls this out on camera as the clearest evidence in the video that the country isn’t quite ready for visitors.
• What they do with the bikes is give strangers lifts on the back of them, which is roughly the tone of the whole afternoon — see give strangers a lift.

The beach club

• Free entry. The inflatable assault course is 65, or 75 with a drink — he puts it at around $20, and rates that as reasonable against European beach destinations.
• A bar with no alcohol.
• 32 °C in May, and comfortable.
• The misconception he came in with, corrected: an Islamic country does not mean no beach life. Tops off, tattoos visible, nobody cares.
• The staff are the roll-call — Palestinian, Sudanese, South Sudanese, Somali — and recognise the countries he has filmed in.

The entertainment park

An all-in-one zone he can’t quite categorise: theme park, food hall and entertainment venue at once.

• A DJ, games, food stalls and a lot of families. A well-known comedian was playing the night they went.
• No alcohol, which he specifically credits: they’ve built the whole thing without compromising on it.
• Not his scene, and he rates it highly anyway.

Saudi food

• Half a chicken on an enormous plate of rice, ordered and paid for before you sit down. $9 to $15 for everything, and he rates it 8/10 — as good as or better than the chicken chain he compares it to.
• Private family rooms in restaurants, so a family can eat with the women unveiled. He doesn’t film inside them.
• Eaten on the floor, with your hands, and communally. He has done it in enough countries to be used to it and is still bad at it. Eating with the left hand is haram, and he gets corrected.

The luxury end

Obs: this was a hosted stay — Harry says on camera that he was invited and then upgraded. Per the bundle’s rule on hosted and sponsored content the hotel is not named here; what a stay at that level consists of is the information.

• A suite quoted at $7,500 a night, then an upgrade to a Royal Suite quoted at $75,000 — a figure he gets wrong on camera by a factor of ten and corrects.
• Five rooms, three bathrooms, an office, a meeting room, a butler’s kitchen, and enough floor space that he loses track of which rooms he has found.
• 240 rooms in the hotel, a 24-hour gym, a spa open 6am to 10pm, and an outdoor sauna — which, given the climate, is free.
• Breakfast served to the room, and staff who confirm that a prince has slept in the same bed.
• He is straightforward about it: he would never pay this, it is a perk of the job, and the thing he actually covets is the office.

Harry’s tips

• Wear the thobe. His closing line, and he means it practically: it produces unlimited conversation with strangers. The caveat matters — it is permitted for foreigners in Saudi Arabia and banned for foreigners in the UAE, so the advice does not travel across the Gulf.
• Carry cash. Assume Visa and Mastercard will fail somewhere they shouldn’t.
• Go to the Corniche after dark, not in the afternoon.
• Ask which city. He came in believing Riyadh was the better trip; every local he asked said Jeddah, and he agrees by the end.

Source

• Inside Saudi Arabia’s Billion Dollar Future City 🇸🇦 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKVUlN2Jjss