mall trip

As I try to avoid malls in general, it has taken me a while actually visit one called Mall of Arabia. It is shaped like a boat and heard it looks spectacular at night with all the lights aglow. It has 3 floors, the first two filled with American and European stores, while the top floor is the food court along with an indoor skating rink and a mini amusement park with slides and such. One needs to be entertained somehow in a country where movie theatres are outlawed.

It is a bit disconcerting to see only men (mostly foreigners from the Philippines, and other parts of the Arab world) working in the stores, whether is it the MAC makeup store or the Starbucks cafe. The only places I saw women working were in the lingerie section of H&M, which was closed off from the rest of the store, with a maze like entrance, allowing only women to enter, and  Hyper Panda, a Wal-Martesque store where there were Filipina cashiers. This revolutionary move has reverberated shock waves across the country where the segregation of the sexes is heavily monitored and enforced. But it is indicative of a slow change that is taking place in Jeddah, already considered the most liberal city in Saudi Arabia, through the building of King Abdullah University, the first mixed gender university. There have been mixed programs like the medical program previously but never an entire university.