Alcohol Prohibition in the Kingdom

I wanted to write about this mainly because I never knew alcohol was banned in the kingdom. I was surprised when we were flying off to the kingdom, our luggages were checked  at the Philippine airport for anything with alcohol content and these were confiscated from us.

Bye bye to my rubbing alcohol and to my cologne. Asked why? The airport staff (which I now know didn't have any idea too) simply told us that it might affect certain contents of the cargo luggage. Even if I did not understand...huh??!!!....I was one to always follow so I surrendered.

Upon arrival, I discovered that Islam prohibits Alcohol intake. Oh so that's why....but I kept wondering why rubbing alcohol, colognes and hand sanitizers were also prohibited. So they don't use alcohol, colognes and eau de toillettes here? We need 70% ispropyl alcohol for hygiene in the clinic. I will miss having a cologne. What could substitute for alcohol?

I was wrong. We had alcohol. It was packaged this way:

\

That was how small the swab was

We had colognes but packaged this way:

All colognes were with a spritzer

Why the packaging? Go figure...

Only in the Kingdom.