Ramadan in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [Part I] - Starting the Trip

This first section i'm gonna tell about the trip from Indonesia to Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. So, joined a tour agency An-Nahl that has several branches in Indonesia. We started our journey from Yogyakarta, Indonesia to Jakarta, to gather with the whole group. From Yogyakarta we're only 13 people, including me, my mother, my aunt, my uncle and my cousin. We also had a 75years old grandma that was traveling alone, with no family member to accompany her.

(left to right) My aunt, my mom, me, and my uncle.

An-Nahl

After we landed in Jakarta, all people from many provinces (Jakarta, Malang, Surabaya, Semarang) that also joined An-Nahl, gathered with almost 150 people. BIG GROUP, EH!

From Jakarta we went to Brunei Darussalam. It took 2 hours flight and we had one night transit there. To be honest, this travel agent is very good in picking hotels with great facility (worth the money we're paying tho). Next day, we went to the airport at 9am to have flight to Jeddah at 11am.

Brunei Darussalam Airport - Check in area

Our group

Arrival at Brunei

The Hotel we stayed in Brunei. Their Minister name is very fabulous (it's his title and/or family name i think that make it so literally long)

The flight from Brunei to Jeddah was about 9hours with 999km/hr ground speed *that was the only things i remember hehe*. For the departure we used Royal Brunei. In this flight, most of passengers were all about to do the same thing, Umra. All from Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam and maybe some other neighborhood countries.

Bandar Seri Begawan - Jeddah

The service was good. But sometimes the pilot really like to give such surprise that leading to heart attack (eg: sudden jump at 12000ft, or very dramatic landing etc). Damn. But i believe it's not common things happen, right? haha

I do thank the schedule that we started our fasting on June 29. Because if we did on June 28, we'd be fasting for 17hrs! So, we landed safe and sound in King Abdul Aziz Airport at 4pm local time. But we needed to wait for like 2hrs until the airport staff/porter of the airport to finish picking up our lodging. Yes, the good things about joining a tour agent is that we don't need to be bothered by our own luggages. We only submit our luggages at airport where we started our journey and we took them once we arrived in the hotel.

After all luggages were put on the bus, we proceeded to our 6-7hrs road trip to Madinah. It was 7pm, quite dark so i didn't take any picture, didn't even see the amazing Saudi Arabia yet.