---
type: Place
title: Jeddah
description: Saudi Arabia's Red Sea city, and the one Harry ends up recommending over Riyadh — a seafront that only comes alive after dark, a beach club with no alcohol, and a hosted night in a suite quoted at $75,000.
tags: [saudi-arabia, jeddah, corniche, beach-club, hotels, food, souk]
coordinates: {lat: 21.5504, lng: 39.1742}
timestamp: 2026-08-05T14:30:00Z
---

# Jeddah

The Red Sea city in [Saudi Arabia](/countries/saudi-arabia.md), and the whole of
Harry's first trip to the country, with [Kieran](/people/kieran.md).

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](/tips/give-strangers-a-lift.md).

## 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](/tips/wear-the-local-dress.md).** 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 🇸🇦](/videos/OKVUlN2Jjss.md) —
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKVUlN2Jjss