HUBBERS DOT COM BLOG

No shower cos accommodation is so budget.

Walked 2kms with pack to Pakistani consulate and got there at 8am. Was told that a month ago the Pakistani Government changed the rules and now the Zahedan consulate does not issue visas to non-Iranians any more. Talked them into asking Tehran if they might make an exception. They left me outside sitting in the sun for two hours. With typical Iranian hospitality the local police who guard the embassy brought me tea and a radio and chatted until their English ran out. When another more senior person from the consulate came out I told him my predicament. I have next to no cash. I cannot get more cash in Iran and myIranian visa is running out. He said it was my fault and there was nothing he could do. So I tried another tack and told him that tourism was good for Pakistan and that I would be bringing lots of foreign currency into his country and that this new policy was foolish. Well apparently that was the wrong thing to say. He just started screaming that it was me who was foolish (partly true I should have double checked) and what right did I have to call his country foolish (I called the law foolish) and that Pakistan didn’t need tourists like me (tourists who question silly laws). He even threatened to have me arrested (presumable for breach of the Calling Pakistan Foolish Act of 2004). Well there was no getting any sense out of him after that so I left him to his righteous rage and lugged my pack back into town.

How I feel right now it’ll be a cold fucking day in hell before I spend a single tourist cent inside Pakistan. Ever.

For anyone who was in Africa with me this incident was far worse than the time I called the Zimbabwe border official a ‘difficult bureaucrat’.

At this point my total cash assets in the whole world were:

• About two quid in local (enough for one meal)
• A US tenner that no one will exchange because it is missing a tiny part of onecorner. (probably useless)
• Five quid I found in my jeans a week back (woohoo found money!)
• Twenty Euro

I went to every bank in town and tried everything to get cash on my cards but every single one of them refused to help in any way whatsoever. Jerks.

I was about to give up hope and catch the 24 hour bus to Tehran when a local guy in a travel agency bought me a flight to Tehran. He was a lifesaver and I plan to pay him back with interest once I’m home.

Once into Tehran I looked into the flight and cash situation. There is some hope yet.

Had a good look online for the Pakistani border visa information and found nothing. I wonder how many other foolish tourists are getting caught by this trap.

Missed another AB test. Tried to listen to it but the internet cafe I was in closed half an hour into what was shaping up to be a cracker of a game. Wales were up 8 – 3. The perfect end to the perfect day.

Was planning to visit the town of Bam before I leave. Bam was hit by a massive earthquake on the 26th of December 2003. Twenty-six thousand people were killed as the ancient town literally collapsed. International aid has had a lot of trouble getting in and some of it even ended up for sale on the streets of Tehran. Apparently there is still no central government plan to help the people of Bam. Today the only people helping the citizens of Bam are the few Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) who have not been refused entry to Iran. Foreign journalists sometimes report on the situation there but if they are overly critical of the Iranian Government the NGO that was their source is immediately asked to leave the country. Unfuckingbelievable. A year later the people of Bam are still living in tents. The desperate situation has lead to a huge increase in crime and it is no longer safe to go out at night. I am skipping Bam now and heading straight to Pakistan.

Left only an hour to get to airport since it is just out of town. Somehow ended up in the nicest cab in town and the driver took it real easy as he drove me to the bus station. You may ask me how this happened. I said ‘airport’ he said ‘yes’ so I said ‘airport?’ and he said ‘yes yes’. So I got out at the bus station and took another cab. The second cabbie really gave it heaps after I told him ‘airport yella yella’ but his car was a crumby old rust bucket so we barely broke 100kms. Finally got to the airport fifteen minutes before my plane left. Stressful.

Not sure how many border crossings I have failed to get on the first attempt on this trip but today was another.

Flew to Zahedan. Caught a 84km taxi to the border for the same cost as the family of four in the back. It was a rip-off and it cost me ever last Iranian dingbat I had but it didn’t matter because I was leaving. Got through Iranian side okay. But was politely turned back by the Pakistani side because you can’t get a free visa on the border like the Lonely Planet said you can. Can’t really blame LP for this one as my edition is three years out of date and I should have checked because these things do change.

Luckily the taxi drivers were able to get me a special tourist only rate back into Zahedan. When I said I had no local money one of them ‘helped’ me by giving the worst exchange rate I have had in nine days in Iran. Nice.

A thought for any good Muslims out there. Make sure you die in a fiery car crash so you have a vehicle in Paradise, because there sure as hell wont be any fucking taxi drivers there.

Stuck in border town of Zahedan until tomorrow morning. Slightly worried since I have virtually no cash or access to it and I may need to pay for an expensive visa tomorrow.

Have roughly six quid to get visa and get back to the border in the morning. Spent a third on accommodation. A third on food and left a third for the 84km taxi ride to the border once my visa is sorted.

Bit disappointed there was no old guy at the end of my bed. Will have to ask for a discount. Went to breakfast and came back to find my room had been unlocked for no good reason. Had a very serious talk with management about this. They give me the creeps. I wouldn’t recommend this place.

LP says if you only visit one city in Iran make it Esfahan. They are not wrong. Esfahan is a gorgeous spacious old city with tree line streets and beautiful parks, mosques and palaces. It’s the sort of place you could easily chill out for several days. As you’d expect I am dashing through here like a headless chicken.

Had a fantastic day strolling around town drinking chi (tea) soaking up the atmosphere.

One other factor set Esfahan well above every other city in Iran. They have a proper coffee shop. Buzzin’.

Every day you see a couple of people with bandages on their noses. Coughloadsofnosejobs.

Loads of young women here have monobrows. It’s a bit different. It’s unusual.

Ran into Jeremy Wiles again. Think he may be stalking me. He doesn’t stand a chance using the buses.

Walked Shiraz town with Jeremy. Saw every major shrine and mosque in town except the really good one that non-Muslims are not allowed into. Why?

Met a third solo Kiwi backpacker in Shiraz. What are the chances of that?

Met an Eastern European couple who are backpacking and writing a story on the city of Bam (more on Bam later). The EE girl was absolutely mauled by an excited crowd of Iranian school girls who wanted to touch and talk to her. They bought her gifts and took turns taking photos with her. Jennifer Lopez would have struggled to create more of a frenzy. Although that could be because J-Lo’s music is banned here. It is unclear if this is for religious or taste reasons.

Driving here is nuts. The roads are like some crazed dance where road users (cars, motorbikes, trucks, buses, livestock and pedestrians) continually jostle each other for position. Roads that are marked with two lanes are driven three abreast. Roads with three lanes are driven four abreast. Intersections are nothing less than highly competitive games of chicken where the waiting cars creep forward until a driver heading in the other direction buckles and then the vehicles in the stationary lane all dive in. Doing u-turns on motorways works in a similar fashion. This is common and they even have regular gaps in the medium barrier for it. Tooting your horn can mean ‘hi’ or ‘hurry up’ but usually means ‘I hope you know I am coming because I AM NOT SLOWING DOWN OR GIVING WAY UNDERANY CIRCUMSTANCES’.

The official stats say that an Iranian is killed on the roads every 24 minutes. Not bad going for a country of seventy million. While in Iran I saw four actual accidents. Everything else was one long series of near misses.

Most of their old taxi fleet here are a make called Paykan. I already know that I am the only person who finds this funny.

You take your life in your hands every time you cross the road. I often find myself perched on the side of the road for a ages, my face etched with fear, waiting for a gap that you could almost squeeze a stick of celery through only to have a local a few feet further down calmly step straight out into traffic like there are no vehicles on the road at all! It’s humiliating normally but it really smarts when its a woman dressed in a black tent carrying a baby at night time. To start with I did my j-walking in a series of panicked runs whilst trying not to scream like a child.

Flew to Esfahan. Shared a taxi into town with a German who kept his Air Iran airsickness bag to sell on Ebay. Those kooky Germans.

Am starting to get some funny looks from the lower class of backpacker for my use of advanced backpacker transportation techniques (flying).

Staying at Amir Kabir Hostel which is great if you are a guy but if you are a girl you might wake up with and old guy inside your locked room standing at the end of your bed. True story.

Shared a cab out to the ancient Persian ruins surrounding Shiraz. If you love ancient ruins, and I do, then you’ll love a day exploring Naghsh-e Rostam, Pasargadae and the awe inspiring ruins of Persopolis. Well worth it for ancient history buffs or even people who just like big stones.

Jeremy is doing backpacking the old fashioned way taking his time to take in the scenery and meet the locals. He even still uses ‘buses’. Primitive. I am so glad those days are behind me.

He has had some interesting experiences with the locals and thinks that the young all want to leave the county. In one notable incident a local girl in his taxi screamed ‘I hate this country I hate this country I want to leave’. It’s a pity I don’t have more time to explore the truth of this matter myself.

A few (but not all) of the female backpackers have said that the local men here were extremely offensive with their obvious sexual advances. One woman who had a particularly rough time even said she couldn’t wait to get back to a country where it is less offensive like Egypt!

I theorised that the ultra-strict rules for how they treat their own woman meant they had no basis of an adult non-sexual relationship with a western woman. One backpacker suggested that maybe they have these strict rules because maybe they were poorly behaved to begin with.

Probably the biggest black mark on Iranian society is that they don’t have a coffee culture. Unforgivable. Subsisting on the occasional cup of instant but overall just bitterly bitterly disappointed.

Musshad has the most important holy site for Shi’ite Muslims. The Holy Shrine of Emam Reza is worth 70,000 pilgrimages to Mecca (but still far less than one visit to a bar to worship Bob). This whole complex has 2 mosques, 4 museums,12 halls, 6 theological colleges, several libraries etc. And it’s beautiful. Sadly some of the best parts are off limits to non Muslim heathens like me. Another bummer is the no camera rule. And there is no chance to take sneaky pictures because you have to have a free guide. The good news is it’s all free and you even get all manner of free pamphlets and you get to choose two free books. I chose ‘The Last Message Imam Khomeini’ and the hard hitting ‘The Truth About Christianity’ (I knew they were hiding something). I am looking forward to both.

The main museum was also excellent. Amazingly well wishers have donated everything to the museum from Alexander the Great coins to gold medals from various games. They have received so much stuff over the years they can only display one fiftieth at any one time. Even better the head curator invited me to his office for tea and an a chat. He was incredibly interesting and I even offered to send him some New Zealand stamps when I get home (so that’s how he does it).

Here are some of his thoughts. At 32 I am far to old for marriage in Iran. Bugrit. Kids here usually get married before 23. The government even gives them one thousand dollars if they do it before they finish uni. This way they are less likely to have ‘illegal sex’. His words. Yes sex outside marriage here is illegal, it’s even a capital offence if the man is not a Muslim. They even sentenced a German guy to death for it a couple of years back. He got off on appeal.

Spent all day going to things that were closed because it was the end of Ramadan.

The most interesting thing that happened all day is I was sort of arrested for taking a photo of a mosque. Two soldiers escorted me to a little room where another soldier made me delete the photo and show him everything else I had taken. Luckily they were very good about the whole thing and I wasn’t beaten to death, as sometimes happens here for the crime of ‘photography‘. But you do have to wonder what the point was.

Flew to Musshad like the new age backpacker I am.

Spent all morning taxiing around Tehran’s five star hotels looking for one that had a satellite sports package. Sadly the best they had was CCN and BBC with no sport. Gutted. This will be the first AB test I have missed in years and years

Went totally against my backpacker roots and have booked four internal flight to see most of Iran. This had to be done to make up time because I need to be in Mumbai in India in fifteen days. They only cost twenty quid each and it will save me around 53 hours of wasted bus time.

It’s the Muslim holy month of Ramadan where they all fast during daylight hours. As a tourist I am not expected to fast but the food places are mostly all closed so it’s academic. Have managed to find plenty of fruit and nuts which is lucky if you like living off foods that you can normally forage for in the for jungle.

Saw the National Jewels Museum which rivaled the collections I have seen in London and Moscow. They have a very impressive globe with 51366 precious stones on it. It would have been even more impressive if the eejit who made it had included New Zealand.

Walked past the German Embassy which has a memorial outside to the Iranians who were gassed by Saddam during the Iran Iraq war. Apparently the Germans supplied the gas to Iraq after the war had started. I wont type the whole thing but the last sentence reads ‘Iranian people who have been continuously witnessing the martyrdom of their beloved sons who had been victims of such lethal weapons shall never forget the German government’s complicity and undeniable role in this atrocious crime’. They don’t mince words here and they don’t forget or forgive quickly.

The building formerly known as the US Embassy but now known as ‘The US Den of Espionage’ is far more entertaining as it is covered with rabble rousing murals. Here are a few examples:

• We will make America face a severe defeat.
• On that day when the United States of America will praise us we should mourn
• United States of America after ghods occupier regime is the most hated statebefore our nation
• and the old classic Down with AmericaThere are other images showing America as warlike and corrupt as well. Well worth a look.

Had to read and listen to the ABs v Italy. The audio commentary over the internet by a group of guys at http://www.tvnz.co.nz/ was very funny. I emailed the show about how I had tried every five star in Tehran and they read it out on air to the whole wide world. My ego nearly exploded.

Changed some money on the street because the banks are closed. During the day the street value and the bank value is nearly identical. At night it’s a different matter. I found a guy and negotiated 35000 local for my forty dollars. When I counted and only found 25000 I asked what the deal was. He looked at me seriously and said one word ‘commission’. I gave him two of my own words and went to someone else. Money changers are one small step away from taxi drivers as far as I am concerned.

After dinner I caught the metro home. I’ve caught the metro in several countries now so I pretty much consider myself an international metro expert. Tehran’s metro is very new so it was easy to sort out. Firstly I checked the map and sorted out where I need to go. Then I bought a ticket for about 5p. I was cool. I had it under control. I walked down to the platform and wouldn’t you know it a train was waiting with its doors open. I didn’t run. I’m no metro beginner. As I calmly stepped onto the train I was smug in the knowledge that I truly am an international metro expert. I was performing a quick backup check to make sure there was no mistake when the conductor pulled my shoulder and signaled for me to step off the train. Eh? What had I done? What could possibly be wrong? And then I had an epiphany. As I stepped off I looked back over my shoulder and sure enough the carriage was full of women – and only women – all looking at me like I was a Muppet (or whatever they have here instead of Muppets because The Muppets is probably banned). How was I to bloody know the bloody tube in bloody Tehran is bloody segregated.

There were very few women on my mostly full 737 to Tehran. On boarding the flight only one had a head scarf on. By the time we landed in Tehran they all did.

Just in case you had any doubts about how Iran feels about Israel and America they have posters at passport control that show soldiers shooting at images of Palestinians with blood dripping onto a broken Star of David. The English part read ‘Down with Israel Down with America’.

The airport taxi guys were the usual bunch of overcharging lying (you pay 400 percent cheap cheap, your hotel no good, I know better one) tossers. It’s nice to know that some things never change.

Watched some local TV but couldn’t decide between the ‘praying dude channel’ or the ‘music video of soft focus violence against Zionist occupiers’ so turned it off.

Sleep at 5am.

No time to waste. Up at 9am.

Headed to Ghazvin where I could head out to Alamut and the castles of the assassins which are apparently very beautiful. People were very helpful one guy even gave me a lift to the local bus station on the back of his bike and wouldn’t take any baksheesh. Sadly despite my best efforts I did not make it there before dark so headed back to Tehran. Should have just taxied the whole journey from the beginning.

Interestingly one of the buses I caught was segregated. All the boys sat at the front and all the girls sat at the back. When I was eleven my intermediate school’s bendy bus was also segregated because there was too much pashing and stuff on the back seat. Coincidence?

The dress code for women in public here seems quite simple. Anything black that looks like a tent and covers your entire body will do. Even crossing the road at night and even in the baking midday heat.

There was a huge march in Tehran today to protest against the Zionist occupiers (Israel). They even had effigies of Bush, Blaire and Sharon. From the news it looked like many thousand turned up. They really hate Israel here.

All through Eastern Europe I wore shorts, even when it was a bit nippy. I got many odd looks for this. Now that I am in warm country I am wearing long pants and long sleeve shirts. Is it me that is nuts or is it everyone else?

Surprisingly my most recent good travel buddies, Adrianne and Jeff have been tree hugging, druiding, vegetarian/vegan, computer game playing, role playing, non-drinking, non-drugging geek hippies from LA. Despite all that they were excellent value.

Flew to Istanbul on Turkish Air with my Swiss army knife in my hand luggage. They even served the meal with metal knives and forks. Some airlines are more worried about cockpit invasion than others it seems.

Noted that part of the advice for avoiding a painful death by deep vein thrombosis is to avoid alcohol while flying. Further proof that the medical community just don’t get it.