Saudi Arabia isn’t a country that encourages tourism, it doesn’t need to. You can’t come here as a tourist anyway, unless you’re a Muslim.

Texas tea belches out of the ground at a rate of eleven million barrels a day. It’s dirt cheap to extract at just two dollars a barrel compared with the likes of Russia where each barrel costs around forty seven bucks to get out of the ground. 

And they’ve got oil to burn with 260 billion barrels in reserve so there’s no chance of them running out anytime soon. So it’s swimming in the stuff and the money’s flowing into the country.

MORE: Trade, Human Rights and Hotels on Saudi visit agenda 

Royalty in this country is also a growth business, making the British “firm” look like a miniscule business compared to Saudi Arabia’s super rich corporation. There are around twelve thousand Princes in this country, hardly surprising when you consider the country was founded in 1932 by King Saud who was a prolific producer, fathering 76 kids by multiple wives of course.

In this country you’re allowed four wives at once and if you tire of the quartet you can move them on and install another lot.

The current King is the son of the original and the last of the 76, we’re told. So he’s the youngest of the 76? Well he’s the youngest male, females don’t count in this society in more ways than one.

You don’t get the chance to complain about female drivers, they’re not allowed to. In fact there’s a distinct lack of women on the streets here, their place is in the home. If they do venture out they’re covered head to toe in black. And their virtue is protected.

Visit a food hall and even at a McDonald’s there’s a partition at the counter, women on one side and men on the other. Men are allowed to accompany women to the family eating section, but they’re not permitted to sit and wait alone for the fairer sex to join them as a colleague discovered as he took a seat.

He was promptly told to move to the men’s eating section.

Sharia law applies here, where beheadings can be carried out for a number of offences, where flogging is an acceptable punishment and where thieves can find themselves without a hand if they’re caught dipping it into someone else’s pocket.

But we want to do business with them and that’s why John Key and his trade mission’s in town.

He raised the human rights issue with The King, not that a blip on the radar screen at the bottom of the South Pacific’s going to make much difference. He also met with a man who makes his fifty million dollar bank account look like a pauper’s.

Prince Waleed’s one of the richest man in the world and a few years back teamed up with Bill Gates to take over the luxury Four Seasons Hotel chain.

This peculiar, fidgety, twitching, diminutive man says after meeting Key, he’s coming to God’s Own to maybe team up with some developers to build a hotel or two.

Like they say, there’s no sentiment in business!