Weird, Mysterious in the Holy Land.

Last December, myself and Dahlia managed to squeeze in a two weeks Ziarah Umrah to the Holy Lands of Madinah and Mekah. It was an incredible, life changing experience.

There was something that I'm looking forward during the ziarah. To have the weird, mysterious magical moment experience in the Holy Lands. You know, just like those stories they told us, coming back from the Holy Lands.


It was our 3rd day in Mekah.

Unlike Madinah, Mekah was dustier and hotter. Dahlia tried to soldier on but she fell ill. There isn't much of a choice other than to give a visit to the doctor.

I'm not sure whether it was a norm, but it took forever for us to have the doctor to check on Dahlia.

And there was Dahlia, still suffering with the fever slumping on the waiting chair.

When the doctor finally checked her, the diagnosis was she is having a sour throat. That is why she is having this unabating fever. The doctor wrote the prescription and off we went to the pharmacy.

Just before that, just in front of the clinic was a women's clothing boutique store.

For note, all along our whole visit, Dahlia always stops to buy some clothes.

But this not the normal, off beside the road clothes. The price of the abaya in the boutique was 4 times the price of the clothes she bought.

Even I saw that the clothes were special. She took a look inside.

While Dahlia was looking and choosing the abayas, I've got into friendly talks with the selller. There was two of them, one older seller and his assistant.

I've talked about my recent visit to Shanghai. How vast different it was compared to Saudi Arabia in handling sale transactions. While it is common for the Arabs to using cash, it was all digital in China. There was hardly cash transaction even in the convenient store.

After that the senior seller told me an insider information about the clinic that we visited. According to him, the clinic charged a lot for every visit. If it is not because of the insurance our travel company had, we would've had to forked out more that SAR300. There was another comment from him that make me proud to be a Malaysian. Because according to him, only Singaporean, Bruneian, and Malaysian being treated there.

That had put a wide smile in me.

Dahlia took more time than usual to pick up an abaya. The seller chiped in during her picking up the right one for her.

"You can change the size and design if you're not satisfied when trying it in your hotel."

That should ease her mind in the selection.

Right now we're actually short on cash. The main reason I'm comfortable to shop in the boutique was because of the 'We Accept VISA, MasterCard' sign sticker outside the shop.

To our horror when we want to pay that the seller told us their swipe machine is offline.

Aiyooo....

What the seller said to me after that blew my mind completely.

"Well, you can take the clothes back to your hotel. When you got the money, you can come back here and pay."

My jaw dropped. This is a RM200 piece of merch and he happily let it go?

I asked him several times to confirm whether what I'm hearing is correct. It was, and I was looking at Dahlia dumbfounded.

Well, actually we do have the cash to pay. It is just better to use the credit instead of heading to the money changer for more cash.

At this point, the readers (that's you!) should be asking, where is the magical point in this story?

Well, the special magical thing is that suddenly this lovely madam having received +100 HEALTH  once stepping out the shop with her abaya, after just slumping on the chair 15 minutes ago.

"Skadoosh!"