Backpacking in Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦: Seriously A Visa On Arrival in Dammam😂

“Maybe maybe it’s our nowhere towns” – Brett Anderson.

In April 2018, I headed to The Hotel Show in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with the Young Pioneer Tours crew. To get the visa that time, we were supposed to be “working” there. It was a really difficult visa to get, easiest the hardest visa getation of my career. One day it was finally posted to my address in Warszawa, Poland and I couldn’t believe it. I then flew from Athens in Greece to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. I was so happy we made it and were backpacking it. We toured a fair whack of the country in next to no time. Here are some of my highlights from that crazy trip.

Rose Festival in Ta’if
Old Town Jeddah
Backpacking in Jeddah
Backpacking in Riyadh (The Capital)
Backpacking in Ha’il
Backpacking in Ta’if
Backpacking in Ushaiqer
Backpacking in Shaqra

The Wacaday Train From Hail To Riyadh
Dune Buggy At The Sand Dunes
Muslim Only Border The Fork Stuck In The Road
Kudu Fast Food in Saudi Arabia
Beers in Saudi Arabia
Camel Lunch in Riyadh

Fast forward five years five months to September 2023 and I booked to visit Pakistan for the first time ever, itself a visa headache in this world I try to explore – getting a visa for Pakistan online. When checking the flight connections, I kept getting that the cheapest flights involved a stopover in Saudi Arabia. Damn! I don’t want to visit Saudi Arabia again never mind transit it. The visa was almost impossible to get that time, even though I had proof that I was working there as a Social Media manager for Young Pioneer Tours.

Now, I had no excuse for backpacking Saudi Arabia. I just didn’t want to go back. I wasn’t due to work there so there not a snowball’s chance in hell of a visa getation. It just seemed weird that these connections were all at Saudi Arabia away. I wondered why these cheap flights were going through Dammam in Saudi Arabia. How was this possible? You can’t transit in Saudi Arabia, the country is a Forbidden Kingdom. There was no way I was going through a visa headache again just to transit in Saudi Arabia for a few hours.

Way back in 2015, I remember researching ways to get into Saudi Arabia. At the time I had been working only for myself as a professional travel blogger for over a year and even with that profile, the only way to get in to Saudi Arabia was on a work visa. I’d have to get a job contract there, the easiest option would have been as an English teacher. It was definitely the hardest visa procedure of my life, although Suriname, “USA” and Bangladesh were far from straightforward. While backpacking in Bahrain in 2015, I even drove up to the Saudi Arabia border and was of course refused entry. The Border Drive From Bahrain to Saudi Arabia.

After research again in 2023 and knowing that Wizzair now fly in here, this was my time to check the visa requirements to see if anything had changed. The answer flabbergasted me.😂

There is now throth an online visa, a visa available from the embassy and a visa available ON ARRIVAL. That’s right, three options, triplets, trio, hattrick, tricity, triumph, triumvirate, throth, trojmiasto.

You read that right. You can now get a visa on arrival in Saudi Arabia at the airports. I dont know about land borders as I didn’t research it.

This was my second time here and wow it has changed. Visa on arrival is now possible. 😂🇸🇦 And here I was, yet this time I was actually only transiting but I still got my visa on arrival ($120 US) and stamped in and out (on the same day!!) of Dammam, Saudi Arabia!

I remember that huge visa struggle in 2018 for the hotel show and this was so strange now it was easy. #saudiarabia #dammam #sentimental #glorydaysloyal #backpacking #tourist #backpacker #travelwriter #author #blogger #travelblogger #gdl #dsl #dontstopliving #wacaday #whackpacker #whackpacking #writer #everypassportstamp #ulsterczyk #northernirishman