I’m live-blogging my SAS EuroBonus SkyTeam Million Mile challenge this week. Click here for background and route information.
There’s a paradox here and it drove me crazy like nothing on this trip has up until now. The beauty of the Jeddah Airport and the Saudia Lounge and yet the agony of internet so slow that I ended up wasting my eight-hour layover.
Layover In Jeddah Airport Marked By Beatufiul Lounge, Crawling Wi-Fi
Vexing is the right word here. First, the good. Wow, Jeddah Airport has changed. I remember my first trip to the Kingdom in 2010 and how absolutely awful the airport was. Well, it has come a long way and the new airport is very nice.
And the new Saudia Al Fursan Lounge is really nice, giving leading business class lounges of the world a run for their money (I’ll post a full review when I get home). The lounge space is tastefully decorated and there are amenities like a sleeping area, showers, and an extensive selection of food and (non-alcoholic) drinks that make it a very comfortable place to wait for your flight.
I had an omelet and barista-made coffee at 10:00 pm…I love it. The staff were great and the food was delicious.
Augustine loved it too…he was over-the-moon about the all-you-can-eat ice cream (bookmark that, for tomorrow…).
But, the internet…
There is an internet signal in the lounge, but the speeds reminded me of the dial-up modem days. Speeds were so poor I was not able to get anything done.
And that was a huge problem because this whole trip was predicated on my ability to use the layovers effectively to work. I had a job to do, not just blog posts to write, and I could not do anything in Jeddah because the internet was so slow.
And it wasn’t just the lounge wi-fi: the airport wi-fi was not better (it was worse) and my mobile signal (even though I had paid for a high-speed data package from T-Mobile) was no better.
The internet lagged like Joe Biden…I just couldn’t get it to function beyond a crawl that made it impossible to accomplish what I needed to accomplish.
Understandably, I was incredibly frustrated. Eight hours with very little to show for it.
But hey, at least I did not go hungry. The lounge is beautiful. The airport is beautiful. But the internet is horrible. There’s no excuse for that.
“The internet lagged like Joe Biden…” LOL! Yesterday we were watching Young Sheldon and it was the episode of him getting a modem and connecting his computer to the internet. It was a dial up and of course nobody could use the landline at his home because it was busy. It was interring me trying to explain to my kids what a dial up internet was and why it made the awful noise while connecting.
T-Mobile international high speed is really slow. Using gmail to read an email with only text takes 3 seconds in US on average but more than 60 seconds outside of the US. LALF takes a really long time to download. Conclusion: T Mobile is barely usable overseas except voice calls are ok. I buy a sim overseas
Could Augustine have seen Jeddah? Have a taxi drive around for 90 minutes?
Visas were over 100USD each. If I didn’t have other obligations, we would have stayed a few nights at the Park Hyatt Jeddah and relaxed, but I wasn’t going to deal with the hassle on this trip for an eight-hour layover in the late evening/night.
Makes sense but still unfortunately rushed. Hope Augustine will have some good memories besides the lounge ice cream.
Biden passed the biggest infrastructure, climate and investment acts in US history with a booming economy that put the US ahead of any other nation, so please explain the lags here. By any measure his work didn’t lag at all
Dude, it was a joke. I love Biden and applaud the infrastructure package.
But have you heard him speak lately? Did you catch the Trump debate?
Yes, a cruel and vicious joke. Is that the kind of joke that you want your son to be making about you when you’re old?
Oh, get over yourself.
Speaking of jokes I heard a great one yesterday, Chi will love it.
How do you make an Aaron want to have sex with a woman?
Take a sh#t in her sn#tch.
Has that ever worked for you?
I love it!
LOL
I think Matthew has the intelligence to know when to retire and call it a day.
People forget that Biden had a “mysterious medical ailment” that kept him from running in 2016. Yet in 2019, he was perfectly “fine” to run. The man was ready to retire. Instead, power hungry assholes at the DNC made him run and kept him around instead.
You love Biden, LOL Idiot.
A good and decent man who was cruelly taken advantage of.
Taken advantage of? Yes. Good and Decent? No, he was crooked and incompetent from the very start.
@Chi … +1 . Yep . “Taken advantage of “? … we still don’t know who were his puppet masters , no ?
“Cruelly” ? : the ‘normal nation’ was what was “cruelly taken advantage of” , with the ‘open borders’ , for example .
“Crooked” … yep , for a long time .
Biden was a failure in almost every respect , (except promoting ice cream and lounging at his expensive beach house).
That is why President Biden should immediately resign and allow VP Harris to have the joy of being President for 6 weeks or more. If Biden is reluctant, then get Harris to commit to nominating him as VP and even get Harris to promise to privately consult him for major decisions.
If it is so important for some people that Harris becomes the first Black Indian American president of the US (yes, because some people care about race and color vs competency) she should aim for something much bigger. She should get into one of Musk’s rockets and be the first Black Indian American to colonize Mars. That would be something people will remember. As for Biden, well, good riddance. Hope he finds a good nursing home after January 20th.
She is probably more competent than the incoming president, which is granted a very low bar to clear.
@Aaron: yes, she is so competent that she lost in all ways you can dissect the data. Worst, she didn’t get more votes than the Demented got back in 2020 in a single county in the entire country. That tells a lot about her competency.
Popularity is not competency.
@Aaron … It is true that “popularity is not competency” , and in the case of Camel-a , her Unpopularity is also not competency .
An asinine statement to make.
Camel-a famously nonsensically said “space connects us all” .
Sorry , but the West does not need nonsense ; therefore we don’t need Camel-a , who is all nonsense .
Can’t wait for him to go,a man who claims to be catholic but supports abortion and crackhead son boinking dead military service son.Give me Trump over the delusional Pelosi-Biden-Harris Dems any day,and he’s not perfect,who is,but not a genocide accommodating war monger,like Biden.
Dead military sons wife,his own sister in law.Like hillbilly trash.
“Booming economy”. Are you serious? Have you not been paying attention over the last few weeks?
@Chi … +1 . And a scary aspect is that Brandon gave us a disaster which will continue .
The Plaza Premium lounge has acceptable WiFi. In the Al Fursan lounge it used to depend on where you were sitting, but this month it was terrible throughout the lounge.
I tried all over the lounge and it was bad everywhere. I did not see Plaza Premium Lounge. Where was that?
What causes the horrific speed? Is it the Saudi censors?
It is same lave but subpar compared to lounge you were in.Its just one room not even big. Foodwise worse as well. I dont think internet was there faster.
What were the Ookla speeds?
Didn’t even register there was an eternal ping…
Maybe it was due to Saudi censorship filters.
I’ve been on a few international trips lately with friends who’ve got T-Mobile and it’s been a nightmare for them. AT&T, on the other hand, has been pretty flawless, if pricey.
I’m considering the switch again. T-Mobile is great in Germany and the USA, but has been really bad this trip.
Over the moon on all you can eat ice cream? Uh oh. If there’s a follow-up, I will hope Augustine did not suffer.
Stay tuned. 🙁
Still do not understand why most of the “travel bloggers’ are on the left of the left side with politics??? Biden and his crowd ran our economy into the ground among other problems he started and now we must have President Trump try to fix them all!!!
Tariffs to the rescue…
@dee … No one will be able to fix this heavily indebted economy , which is on a downwards spiral .
Furthermore , Trumps Cabinet choices so far have included some doozys : (a) the resigned congressman who himself is being investigated for vile accusations for Attorney General , and (b) the television news-reader who was investigated for an incident with a woman at a conference whilst her own husband and children were at the hotel for Defense Secretary .
( Although I do like my Hawaii girl , Tulsi Gabbard , for Intelligence Chief . She does have common-sense intelligence , after all .)
I know Tiffany basically scared everyone off, but Google Fi really is fantastic. I get 5g across most of Europe and Asia, and I recall it working great in Saudi.
This is Matthew’s travel/frequent flyer blog. Will you political obsessives please spare us & move yourselves to X?
I flew BAH-JED-NBO recently in business class with a roughly 3.5 hour connection. The lounge around midnight was heaving with people and it felt cramped and dingy to me. I wasn’t in need of the wifi service so I can’t talk to that, nor did I try the food. I probably should have though because my inflight meals left something to be desired.
The main circular area there with the duty free shopping was under construction when I went through so it was not convenient to just walk around and enjoy the airport. I suppose it was nice enough but not that great. Seemed cold and uncomfortable to me after I left the lounge early.
Overall, the connection process in JED for business class was fine but not worth making that detour. The 2 of us in business class from BAH did get a private bus, which is always nice, and transfer security was empty when I went through. The boarding to the NBO flight was a scrum and the plane was an older A330, loud and not too comfortable. I can’t complain however as the ticket was only $350.
(anyone that believes that any lifetime politician is ‘good and decent’ should not be allowed to vote)
I’d be more bothered by the presence of a genocide supporter in that lounge.
Absolute Zionist trash.
It’s ridiculous they don’t allow wine in airport lounges, airlines, and hotels. Just ridiculous. KSA will never become what MBS wants it to be until they allow alcohol.