Inside Saudi Arabia

Living in Saudi is not always the highlight reel. This week we get honest.

Carly and Vesna talk through the hard parts of living in Saudi Arabia, the things nobody posts about. From the fear of driving in Riyadh, to the loneliness of expat life, to the real struggle of starting a business here.

If you are moving to Saudi Arabia or already living in Riyadh, this episode covers what it is actually like: why everyone is scared to driv...

We toured every compound in Riyadh, so you don't have to.

In this Inside Saudi episode, Carly and Vesna give an honest review of the best compounds in Riyadh, from Flow Granada to Palma 2, Vives, Wadi Qortuba, Al Nakhla and more, then answer your questions in a full Q&A.

If you are moving to Saudi Arabia or living in Riyadh, this is your guide to compound life: what it really costs, the Ejar rent freeze that can save you money,...

This one is bittersweet. It is our goodbye episode.

Carly and Vesna are back from summer and packing up their studio for the very last time. In this catch up they get into everything that went down over the break, the good, the dramatic, and the completely ridiculous.

From the nanny who left the baby home alone and then did a runner, to a 300 year old house falling apart, kids catching 12 fish spearfishing in Greece, dogs that look...

This might be the most important conversation we have had on Inside Saudi.

We sit down with Sajid Khan, a child safeguarding and education expert who moved from Birmingham to Riyadh at 24 and has spent over a decade protecting children in schools across the Kingdom. We get into what safeguarding really means, why Saudi can feel safer than the UK, the neglect cases that changed how he sees parenting, how AI is creating a whole new r...

We went to our first Saudi weddings, and nothing could have prepared us.

This week Carly and Vesna break down everything they have learned about Saudi weddings and gatherings, from a total newbie point of view. Dinner served at 2:30 in the morning, glam that rivals the Met Gala, and the unspoken rules of what to wear.

We get into the real flow of a Saudi wedding, why you can never overdress, the coffee and chocolate before the 2:30...

From night classes in Cairo to a runway at Paris Fashion Week. This week Carly and Vesna sit down with Pacinthe, the Egyptian couture designer behind two Vogue Arabia covers, a Paris Fashion Week show, and a client list full of Arab stars and red carpet moments.

We get into how she built her fashion house from the ground up, her signature draped corsets and sustainable line, dressing for weddings across cultures, and why she does h...

One year in Saudi, and we finally figured a few things out. In this episode, Carly and Vesna swap the ten lessons they learned after their first year living in Riyadh, going back and forth without knowing each other's list.

We get into being kind to yourself through the move, whether you really need the big compound, why making Saudi friends changes everything, the truth about getting help at home, what drivers and nannies actually...

We've never done a two-parter, but there was too much to cover. In Part 2, Victor Barrero is back to talk about the next chapter: Vision 2030, Expo 2030, and what it actually takes to build a country at the speed Saudi is moving.

Victor helped launch Flow in Riyadh, close to 1,000 households across ...

One of us has had a live-in nanny since September. The other has a cleaner for three hours a week and a robot vacuum called Robbie, who has just broken down.

A year into life in Riyadh, Carly and Vesna compare notes on help: how to find it, how to manage it, and what it costs you when you refuse it.

In the summer of 2009, Victor Barrero typed "life in Saudi Arabia" into Google and got scared. He came anyway, on an eight-week flynas internship, a 25-year-old from Mexico who packed a camera and a checklist: camel market, old Diriyah, the grand bazaar. None of it looked like the photos. Diriyah was boarded up. He got into Kingdom Tower only because a guard mistook...

A year in, Carly and Vesna re-priced their whole life in Riyadh: what's gone up, what surprised them, and what they'd tell someone running the numbers before a move.

This is the granular version of the cost conversation, from the two biggest line items down to the ones nobody warns you about. They wa...

Your neck pain and your gut might be the same problem. This week we sit down with Peter from Tonic The Method on what wellness actually looks like in Riyadh right now.

Peter is a physical therapist and Chinese-medicine specialist who moved here from Lebanon expecting wellness to rank near the bottom of people's priorities. He was wrong. We get into the nerve that connects your neck to your stomach, the breathing fix he reaches for...

After a run of guest episodes, we did something different.. a live summer Q&A on TikTok, answering your questions in real time, and turned it into this week's episode. No guest, just us catching up before the summer break.

We get into what a Saudi wedding at the Ritz-Carlton is actually like, the...

Saudi Arabia had no sunscreen of its own, in one of the hottest climates on earth. Ghadi Alshehri spent three years fixing that.

Ghadi is the founder of Borderline Beauty, the first homegrown Saudi sunscreen. She sat down with Carly and Vesna in Riyadh to talk about the gap she found, the science most of us were never taught, and what it takes to build something Saudi-made right now.

In t...

There are seven routes to Saudi Premium Residency. Most people only know about one or two of them, and almost everyone thinks Vesna got hers because of Instagram. This week, Carly and Vesna walk through all seven, what each costs, what each unlocks, and what they wish they'd understood before they started navigating it themselves.

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