Iran Misunderstood
Trip Start
Apr 21, 2008
1
143
225
Trip End
Apr 20, 2009
Esfahan,
Iran
Thursday, September 11, 2008
My day only really got started at around 2 pm. I spent the afternoon visiting all of Esfahan's secondary sights. This included Chehel Sotun Palace, Hasht Behesht Palace and Madruseh-ye Chahar Bagh. To be honest, none of the sights blew me away. Thankfully it is really cheap to visit the sights in Iran. Most of the entry fees are no more than 20 cents.
While walking around the town to see these sights, I would regulalry have local people approach me and say hello and welcome me to Iran. The people are so friendly here it is unreal. They really make an effort to try to get foreigners to understand that they are very good people as they think that we think they are a bit fanatıcal. It is unbelieveable how many people back home think of Iran as a terrifying country filled with religious fanatics and terrorists. It is NOTHING like that! It is amazing how much power the media has when it comes to our perception of Iran and its people. It really ıs a mısunderstood country. We will see images on TV of women in chadors and of imams walking the streets. We immediately think that they must be fanatics and that the men treat the women like garbage. But the truth is that the men want nothing more for their girlfriends, wives, sisters and mothers to be totally free. It is the government and the horrible Guardian Council which is made up of all the powerful mullahs that force the women to wear the chadors. It is not the men. The men I have met said they feel really bad for the women in Iran. Also, the people here dont even seem that relıgıos - especıally the young ones. A lot of people I have spoken too dont fast or even pray as they are supposed to.
I did see something that bothered me today, more disturbing than a woman in a chador. I saw a tourist bus! It was filled with old people that were definitely from Europe or North America. I dont know why this bugged me but it did. It just seems like Iran is a well kept secret when it comes to travel destinations but when I see tourist buses I think that perhaps the masses may be coming back soon. For selfish reasons, I hope they dont. There arent many places in the world like Iran and therefore I would hate for it to change due to popularity.
Towards the end of the afternoon, I went to the Si-O-Seh bridge and just sat by one of the 33 arches (Si-O-Seh apparently means 33 in Persian). I enjoyed watching the women walking together all covered in their chadors. It is just something I dont see at home (obviously) so it really grabs my attention here. I never get tıred of ıt. I just know that underneath that chador ıs a young woman who wants to have the same thıngs that young women have back home (i.e. a boyfrıend). I did have a young girl rush by me today but not before she said hello to me. Unfortunately she had to hide her hello as she is not allowed to talk to men in public. It really is too bad I cant talk to the women here. I would love to know how they 'enjoy' living here. You do see them talk to foreign women though.
While I was watching the crowd of people rush home to celebrate the end of today's fast, a young local guy came over and started talking to me. His English was very good and he was interested in talking to me so he could practice given that he doesnt have many opportunities to talk to English speaking people. I was fine with this for the first 20 minutes. The problem with Iranian men though is that some of them dont know when to stop. If you dont say anything, some of them will talk to you all day long. You want to be nice and somehow get rid of them without being obvıous. This guy asked where I was going and I told him my plan and he invited himself to walk with me so we could continue talking. I think he sensed I didnt like this as he asked me if he was bothering me. Of course I said no to thıs questıon and unfortunately he believed my answer. So we walked for about 5 minutes but for whatever reason he decided to abort his idea of spending the rest of the evening walking with me and politely said goodbye. I was glad about this.
I decided to go back to the hostel at 7 pm. I was supposed to meet up with yesterday's group at 8 pm. The plan was to go out for supper again to the same restaurant we went to last night. The streets were just packed with people. Everyone was out buying supper. It is common to see these massive soup kitchens along the sidewalk. People will wait in line and buy a huge container and bring it home to their families who will enjoy eating all of it to celebrate the end of the day's fast. The soup looked really good so I bought a small container to try it out. It was good but not as good as it looked. I just liked the whole experience of being ın line wıth the locals buying the soup.
There was a much bigger group heading out for supper tonight compared to last night. We were about 10 people. Each person was from the hostel I was staying at. Sometimes you go to a hostel and no one goes out of their way to talk to people. It is not common but it happens. And then there are times when it seems like everyone in the hostel knows each other and everyone clicks. This was one of those instances. So here we were a group of 10 foreigners walking the rule-stricken streets of Esfahan. Similar to last night, the locals would stare at us and say hello. Some are surprised when they see 1 foreigner and here we were a group of ten walking together.
Unfortunately we couldnt get into the restaurant we wanted to go to. It was too busy so we settled on a restaurant nearby. We weren't too impressed with it when we first walked in but there was nothing else in the area. It was ok in the end. The highlight was when we had to pay the bill. There was some confusion with the total. We were asked to pay 10 dollars more than we should have and out of principle everyone refused to pay. We argued nicely with the manager for about 15 minutes and finally he relented and told us we could go. They couldnt explain what the extra 10 dollars was for so they had to let us leave. It was too bad as I think they thought we ripped them off but of course we didnt. None of us thought they were intentionally trying to rip us off either. It was just obvious that they were a bit disorganized and thats where the confusion of how much to pay resulted from.
After dinner, Connor and I went back to the hostel while the others went out for ice cream. It was another goodbye I had to make to the part time friends you make while travelling. Connor and I picked up our bags and headed to the bus station where we were to jump on a 1130 bus to Shiraz. Expected arrival ın Shıraz was 730 am.
Dino Vagabond
