2 days in the Holy City

hey there!

Just wanted to say thank you kepada para pembaca sekalian yang sudi meluangkan masa membaca hasil tulisan saya yang tidak seberapa ini. I've received quite a number of readers since last week. The insight keep on increasing day by day. Xie xie ni! Sorry for the lack of writing skills :-( tried my best to write a good essay but there are still a lot of things to brush up.

oh and selamat hari pekerja! we are not given a one day break here in riyadh so yeah be thankful 😂

and this time i'll be writing about my experience performing umrah last Thursday. Since there's someone came and dm me on instagram asking this and that on umrah so yeah here you go. I'll go with the detail just in case but not too detail because itu you have to refer from trusted source :)

In Riyadh, weekend starts on Friday. So after working hours the day before, we departed from King Khalid International Airport to Jeddah Airport aka King AbdulAziz International Airport. It took only 1 hour and 15 minutes to Jeddah and we have to take a taxi to the Holy City for about 2 hours+

Arrived Mecca approximately around 9.30 pm macam tu. Niat Ihram on flight because we planned to perform umrah on that night. Checked in into Zamzam Pullman Hotel before terus perform our umrah. 

hotel view at night

hotel view during the day

The hotel is super duper comfy but since we came here for umrah, so most of the time we are at the mosque instead of the hotel. Tips on saving; dont spend too much money on hotel because trust me its just going to be a place for you to sleep like less than 3 hours and mandi. Thats all. 

So untuk umrah, the dress code. There are no specific baju you have to wear. Asalkan tutup aurat dengan sempurna. Mostly malaysians akan pakai jubah hitam and telekung and socks. Stokin tangan very very highly recommended. Sangat practical untuk solat and buat tawaf. Take note that these are guidelines for women, not men. 

Kalau untuk wudhu', normally kami akan ambil wudhu beforehand dekat hotel. In case anything happen and u have to ambil wudhu' again, we brought along a water bottle/or spray so that we dont have to go out of the mosque all the way outside just for ablution.

Ok untuk bahagian ni before performing umrah, saya refer balik nota Pendidikan Syariah Islamiah form 4 yang ada dalam internet sebab benda dah tinggal lama so yeah :D (sorry ayat skema) 

Rukun Umrah ada 5, nampak simple tapi banyak benda kena jaga. 

1. Niat (amat amat penting)
2. Tawaf 
3. Saie
4. Tahallul (Bercukur)
5. Tertib

Tawaf is mengelilingi kaabah sebanyak 7 kali. Saie is berjalan ulang alik dari Safa ke Marwa also sebanyak  7 kali. All the details and lafaz niat semua boleh refer sini. 

During our second day at night, we took a walk inside the Safwa Tower which is just opposite the mosque and bought some food for dinner. They have Malaysian Restaurant there at the food court. 45 riyal untuk 3 orang makan is consider affordable to compare dengan restaurant lain. We ate masak asam daging (melaka kan nak buat mcm mana 😂 ) and sup kambing for dinner. Just fun fact, my dad and I are peminat tegar daging kambing 🙃

Sedih je tengok breakfast :p 

Breakfast are provided by the hotel :) And this is my breakfast for the first day. I didnt manage to snap my food for the second day because left my phone charging. actually there is a lot of food provided at the cafe but i dont eat like all those arab kinda breakfast. Im very picky when it comes to food, or to be exact mengada-ngada. hehe I end up eating plain rice (saya anak malaysia), sausage and sweet corns.

Sambil menyelam minum air, kami survey-survey jubah untuk baju raya nanti haha but survey only, tak beli pun. The jubahs and abayas are soooooooo prettyyyy but harga pun cantik jugak T_______T

I freaked out a bit the night before buat tawaf wida' (selamat tinggal) because during my 1st experience in 2014, i nearly fainted waktu tawaf round ke-6 rasanya. Because the temperature is super high and that was during fasting month.

But alhamdulillah this time, it was raining that morning and the lowest temperature is 28 degree. Praise to Allah. So we took the golden opportunity to tawaf waktu betul-betul after the rain stopped. Still packed with humans but it is windy and the air ventilation is good. I survived this time alhamdulillah.

Sepanjang ada sana, i didnt see any malaysians at all to be honest. Or maybe there is but they didnt come in a group. There is one moment in the lift haritu.

We are standing farthest from the door of the lift. and the lift is full of indonesians. My mum and I are wearing niqab so i guess maybe they thought we are arabs la kot kan. So when its time for us to keluar from the lift, we cannot move because its too full infront of us. 

My mum was like "ibuk, mahu jalan". THEY WERE SO SURPRISED TO HEAR THAT because they thought we are from Saudi. Im holding myself not to laugh because they were so impressed with the slang lol. One man was like "bagusnya kamu berbahasa" while showing us thumbs up. haha pakcik, kami memang cakap bahasa melayu dekat rumah :')

One thing i would like to say is, throughout performing umrah we have to be extra bersabar with everyone. Its not like people are selfish, its just yela dah ramai-ramai people are looking forward to sit near to the Kaabah as possible.

Plus we have to deal with 1001 perangai manusia and we dont even understand each other to communicate which makes the situation more mencabar. 

and yeap i think we have come to the end of the post already 😇  there is nothing much to say because its not a holiday trip so we didnt do anything except for staying in the mosque.

Hopefully everyone who read this akan diberi peluang untuk merasai kenikmatan beribadah di Mekah suatu hari nanti. Ameen :-)

Regards,

sara