Last Holiday

I saw city lights making a grid. I slid the window panel in my left. City lights gleam like thousand of fireflies flying around. The seatbelt sign turned on. Speaker above me made a sound. It was Captain's voice. Telling us to buckled up because we were going to land. I always think that the worst part is when we are landing. But actually the worst part is when the plane in mid air and there are storms everywhere. A hand pinched my right forearm, the flight attendant started to offer a candy to every passenger. I took the grape candy and ate it right away. The plane felt like it was going to fall. I held tight the armrests and closed my eyes. I felt a bumping sensation twice, it meant that the plane tires already touched the ground.

I opened my eyes, the plane moved by it's tires. The plane headed to the airport. Then we stopped at the airport but it was to far to the immigrant section. I grabbed my bag on the cabin and start to walked to the stairs. Step by step I went down trough the stairs. I tired lifting the bag, approximately 10 kg, when I went down stairs. I saw a mini bus parked. On the driver's window, there was a sign 'Jeddah'. My brother was so excited that he finally arrived. Well, I was more happy that I didn't crashed on that big plane. We were on the bus headed to immigrant section. We passed by a couple of planes. A yellow sign on the immigrant door shined and said "Welcome to King Abdul Aziz airport". We were off from the bus and checked in the immigrant. All officers in the airport checked the immigrant's passport, visa, and the yellow card. We had to wait in line for almost 3 hours because the immigrants were a lot more than the officers.

All the bags carried by our guide, while we changing into ihram clothes. On the way to Makkah, we pray. It was 2 hours on the road, so I slept. A sound woke me up. I rubbed my eyes and blinked for a couple times. There was a huge tower. It gleam in green color. Big clock at top of that tower. It's Grand Zam Zam clock tower. It was so beautiful with the moon above it. It was quite magical when I first saw it. Then I realized the sound was adzan. We quickly went into the lobby to get the room key from our guide. I was almost ran into the lift and pressed eleventh floor button rapidly. The door slid open widely and I walked so fast to my room. Me and my family quickly took prayer equipments, then headed into the lobby again. We gathered in the lobby, waiting for others to came down. All of us headed into Masjidil Haram, but it was too late to pray inside the mosque. So we prayed outside the mosque, on the balcony. Then we headed into dinning room to had a breakfast. Then we quickly again went inside the Masjidil Haram to do umroh. When I saw Kabah for the first time, I didn't know why, I just cried. I felt so close to Allah SWT. We walked in circle of the Kabah, it's called tawaf. We done this for 7 times. We were finally finished and started to sa'i. In sa'i we must walked 7 time from Safa to Marwah over and over again. If I sum the distance, it was 3.5 km. We stopped at Marwah and cut our hair called tahalul. After this serial umroh job finished, we had a free time for 2 days at Makkah. Well, we mostly prayed in Makkah. But we also shopped for merchandise and food. 2 days over, we checked out from hotel and headed to Madinah riding bus. It was 6 hours trip.

We stopped for a while in the rest area after 3 hours. Others went off the bus to bought food and went to toilet, well I was in the bus all the time. I saw outside the window, the ground covered by bright chocolate sands. Kurma trees stands like a street light. Sun shined in pale orange. But something was different. Then I knew it different because there were no clouds at all. That's why Saudi Arabia always hot and arid. We arrived in Madinah at 10.00 o'clock. We ate dinner on the first floor. Then we slept on our each rooms. The next morning me and my mom prayed in Masjidil Nabawi. This were our routines for 3 days at Madinah. But in Madinah, we shopped a lot more then in Makkah. Well the amazing part was on the second day. I remembered it was 8.30 o'clock the girls group went into Raudah, Rasulullah saw., Abu Bakar r.a., Umar bin Khattab r.a., tomb. It felt so amazing that I stood near into all of this great people. We prayed there then went back to hotel. We checked out from the hotel at the same time as we checked out at Makkah hotel. We rode on bus again, went back to Jeddah for 6 hours.

When we arrived at Jeddah, we first went into Balad market. We shopped there for an hour. We went into the hotel, ate dinner, then went into our room.We just stayed in Jeddah for one night. We had breakfast the next morning and prepared to go to the airport. We wait in the airport for 5 hours then we took off. Arrived at Jakarta the next day after 9 hours trip. Then went back to our hometown, Bandung. This is the most exciting, fun, yet magical to emotion and believes, holiday in my life.