Women's Kingdom

I just wanted to share with you one of my shopping experiences. Unsually on my day's off I feel the need to get off the hospital compound, as when I am working I often don't leave for a couple of days in a row. One of my favorite places to shop is Kingdom Mall.

Kingdom Mall is a three storey mall located at the bottom of Kindom Tower. It was built my Prince Al-Waleed, the fourth richest man in the world. He owns 30 billion dollars, and surprisingly not of it is directly oil money! Kingdom Tower is 303 meters tall - the tallest building in Saudi and 25th tallest building in the world. It includes a four-season's hotel as well as the highest mosque in the world.

Something else intersting about the tower is that it includes the only all-women's shopping floor in Riyadh, called 'Women's Kingdom'. Women's Kingdom is interesting because it's on the top floor and once you get there you can take your abaya off because men aren't allowed up there. And you can actually try on clothes in a fitting room before buying them. And there are actually women behind the counters. In other malls only men work in retail, selling everything from underwear at Lasenza's to make-up at Body Shop.

The other day I went to Al-Fisalia, another favorite shopping spot of mine. But there are no women only area's, so you can't fit clothes on before buying them. You just have to guess if it's the right size. And the other difficulty about this is that you only have one day to get a complete refund and 3 days to exchange. That means if you go home and decide you don't want it you have to go back right away and pay a 30 Riyal ($10) taxi fee. To avoid this I sometimes just try clothes on in the public washroom at the mall.

Last week when I went to the restroom to try clothes on and the wheelchair stall with a mirror in it was occupied. So I tried to wait for it, but the girl using it was taliking on her cell phone and after waiting 5 minutes, I got really impatient and just decided to try the new clothes on in the sink area over my other clothes. There were two Saudi girls there retouching their make-up in the mirror and they found me quite amusing. They would give thumbs up for clothes they liked. And then of course, like all Saudi's you interact with, they ask 'ayna anta' (where are you from). To which I reply 'Canada'. And they usually say 'Canadi Quayes' (Canada good).