Rawal Pindi, Pakistan

[slang]

Yes, it's a very long and complicated story about this strange trip to Pakistan and NO, I'm not going to get into the details.

I went to visit Rawal Pindi for two weeks and just returned last week. The people there were very kind to me and took great care at making me safe and well fed during my stay there. I took about 400 pictures but will only post a few of the better ones here. I'm sure that everyone is glad for that, especially Mr Toad.

If you have the chance, do go and visit. It's a trip back in time, true but the weather is so much better than that of the US and most everything is cheap.

You can forget about meeting any women there, or for that matter, even seeing more than an exposed eye here and there, but it's a fascinating place to visit and they treat white Americans like no less than rock stars.

[slang]

Here is one of the more modern looking buildings on Bank road I believe.


Oh well. The attachments dont seem to be working now. I'll try back later and if anyone has any stupid or reasonable questions they would like to ask regarding this strange trip, post them.

[Undertoad]

They are probably over 100k. Reduce them in size before posting!

[slang]

I just checked the size and they are all about 20k. I'll try back again later.

Must be doing something else wrong.

[Beestie]

Originally Posted by slang

... if anyone has any stupid or reasonable questions they would like to ask regarding this strange trip, post them.

I have a couple.
Did you just show up or were your hosts expecting you?
What weapon(s) did you travel with?
What's the food like?
Were you able to converse in English with some or most?
They weren't suspicious of you?
What misimpressions did they have about America?
What "message" (if any) did they want you to carry back to America from their culture?
Safe from who?
What didn't you bring that you wished you had?
Was it business or pleasure?

[slang]

Great questions Beestie.

Originally Posted by Beestie

Did you just show up or were your hosts expecting you?

I applied for a tourist visa and it was quickly granted. When I arrived in Pindi there was a reservation there for me at the Shalimar hotel.

A Paki national negotiated a good price for the room at the hotel becuase they insist on negotiating on every business transaction there and this is the only thing about the whole culture that truly irritates me.

Originally Posted by Beestie

What weapon(s) did you travel with?

As you can imagine, me going to a muslim country without being armed was more than a little distressing. It was soon clear that nearly every police officeer, Elite Police commando and security guard was keeping an eye on me to see that I was safe at all times.

The Elite Police commando units are placed throughout the city as a precation for Al Queda (or Taliban )coming across the border from Afghanistan and blowing things up or killing people there.

Just a few years ago there were bombings within the city and President Musharaaf's limo was also bombed. This I am told was in retaliation for the cooperation with the US's policy on the WOT.

There are rockin' ready teams all over the city with AKs, MP5s and nasty looking short barreled shotguns. The Elite Police are trained in anti-terror tacktics and work in teams of 6 each troop carrier, which are positioned about every block.

After about a week there of wandering all over the streets at all times of the day and the night I had a translator tell me that the security guards were tracking my progress through the streets as I passed. There is a security guard placed at nearly every business and is normally carrying a large caliber rifle of a BIG shotgun with a short barrel.

They talk on the radio to each other to keep up with any happenings that they may need to be aware of. My interpretter says they would alert the next guard down the street that I was coming. This was for my protection as well as thier own curiousity not having ever seen a white man, much less one from the USA.

Between the Police, Elite Police and the security guards I would say I had a small army of people that would have helped me had I needed it and in fact in two minor incidences that my safety was not at risk, the security guards came out into the street to asist me

One incident was a large group of beggar kids that were quickly shooed away and the other was a man that apparently thought that I was a paki national if you can believe that. I was wearing the shalwar kameez and I guess he thought that I was one of them. His only offense was being unusually tall and standing way too close to me which really kind of freaked me out.

A guard from a store came out and shouted what I could only imagine as "you dumbass....he's an American in our clothes....dont stand so fucking close to him" because he was speaking in Urdu.

The tall man stood back and followed me repeating with a heavy accent almost everything that I said to other people on the street from that time on. I felt bad about it, seems he was just overly curious and friendly but the interpretter wasnt there at the time. It was actually a compliment after he took a step back.

So back to the question....what weapon? I didnt need one. There were many ready to come to my aid if required.

Originally Posted by Beestie

What's the food like?

Well, as you might imagine, the food is kinda scary from most of the shops and diners. I was very cautious about eating anything that came from what I would classify as a dumpster. There were many of my paki friends that did eat from the scary places though....room temp chicken lying around waiting to be cooked and all.

The food from the nice places was very good. It was very spicy hot and they use a lot of veggies and frozen cream types of foods.

My dining hosts were very amused at my putting jello on my plate with the main meal as I went to the buffet. I didnt tell them but that was my "holy fuck I cant eat this stuff, where is some kind of mixer type food" backup plan.

Fortunately, there was only one time that I thought I might hurl at the nice restaurant and that was after eating what I could swear would be short worms.

YUK! Everything else was fine.

Originally Posted by Beestie

Were you able to converse in English with some or most?

I would say about one in a few hundred there was fluent with English. Most of the people that were coming up to me had some level of English training.

Almost all of the people there recognize the importance of knowing English to doing business throughout the world. There are advertisements for schools placed through the city that teach English fluently.

Those that could talk with me in English were not only the upper class people though. Many of them had spent time in the UK and knew English quite well.

Originally Posted by Beestie

They weren't suspicious of you?

They were at first but after I started answering questions then no so much so. There were no questions that I would not answer, about me personally, American policy, and religion, anything.

It didnt take long for them to appreciate my honestly with them and what I had to tell them was not always what they wanted to hear.

Like how I regard Bill Clinton.

Originally Posted by Beestie

What misimpressions did they have about America?

They didnt really have misimpressions as much as Americans have about them. They just wanted to verify that you didnt need your parents permission to marry who you wanted and questions about porn in the US, stuff like that.

I guess the biggest misimpression was that Bush was hated in the US by the majority of the people.

I killed that one real quick.

Originally Posted by Beestie

What "message" (if any) did they want you to carry back to America from their culture?

That is an easy one.

That they are not terrorists and they are indeed honorable, friendly people.
They have spent a lot of time, money and effort to root out the suspected terrorists there and they are a more than a bit disappointed that we dont recognize that.

Their people need jobs and business. They are becoming more equipped to provide services and products that we need here in the US too. They feel betrayed that we dont do more business with them than we do.

I for one will be looking at doing just that, giving them more business deals.

Originally Posted by Beestie

Safe from who?

There were no human dangers there while I was there.

There were, however, traffic and naviagational dangers every where you look. What in the US would have a guard on it or some type of protection from you accidently stepping into a hole or somesuch was totally without alert or protection there.

If you dont watch what you are doing you could easily get hurt in a wide variety of dangerous situations from no railings on the buildings to large holes in the sidewalk that dump out to the sewer system (if you can call it that)

Originally Posted by Beestie

What didn't you bring that you wished you had?

A laptop.

For as savvy as the Indians are with computers...the pakis are not. They dont understand the uses and the functions of computers and their systems are so weak and bugged up that it was a pain in the ass to do nearly anything on the hotel computer.

I had to all but rip all the software out and reformat to get the yahoo IM and e-mail to work and the E drive didnt work so I couldnt dump the pics from my cam into the computer.

The owner of the hotel did buy another computer after seeing me fuck with it for hours at a time but then he replaced a bad Win ME OS with an impossible Win 98!!

They just dont know computers.

And when they swapped the good computer for the crappier one ( for me ) they also tossed my USB cable out...becuase if you dont know what the fuck something does, it must not be needed.

Originally Posted by Beestie

Was it business or pleasure?

This was just a vacation. The next trip this fall will be business. By that time I should have some trade set up and it will be great to have been there once to meet some real friends before every paki with a dream to be a big US business partner will surely want to have my attention.

Great questions Beestie.

[xoxoxoBruce]

This was just a vacation. The next trip this fall will be business. By that time I should have some trade set up and it will be great to have been there once to meet some real friends before every paki with a dream to be a big US business partner will surely want to have my attention.

You lying bastard, you're working for W aren't you. As a matter of fact you have been right along. I thought you were a W shill and Thief River Falls was just a training cover for the CIA or ...or ...Haliburton. :p

[slang]

No go with the pics. Push the "manage attachments" button and nothing happens.

Any suggestions?

An NO BRUCE...no CIA involvement here. None with W either, sorry.

[Undertoad]

Javascript restrictions problem?

[slang]

yeah I think so UT. How do I fix it?

[jaguar]

Interesting stuff, there's meant to be some beautiful places near there. Did you get out of the city at all?

[Undertoad]

I dunno, depends on your browser. In Firefox there is a setting in Tools->Options->Web Features

[slang]

Originally Posted by jaguar

Interesting stuff, there's meant to be some beautiful places near there. Did you get out of the city at all?

I had plans to go to Lahore with a native companion but he had to cancel at the last minute and I didnt want to go all that way alone.

I did go to Islamabad also and was very impressed with the architechture and the general layout of the city. It was much cleaner and better lit at night with many more interesting diplomat types and such there.

There is a place called "the northern area" that almost everyone wanted me to go see but I didnt go. Next trip I will have some great pics of this place. There are supposed to be wild peacocks and monkeys there that are very nice to see.

Take a look at this site www.travel-culture.com This site shows some tours and photos of this scenic area. You might even see some of my pics there, I have been in contact with the webmaster about my trip there.

[slang]

This machine has been making me crazy with the scripts, I think I know what to do. They dont work here and a lot of other places too.

[slang]

I just thought of something else the Pakistani people were asking about. I thought this was totally funny even though I didnt want to be an ass to them for asking.

They asked me if I watch and followed "professional wrestling" to which I answered a solid NO, but managed NOT to say "why in the fuck would anyone with ANY damn thing to do want to do something dumb like that*"?

It seems that there is a quite a following of our "pro wrestling" there and I saw and heard many people make references to it after they knew that I was from the USA.

There was a young banker that was particularly into wrestling that I politely explianed..."Sure, it may have some entertainment value but the reality is that not one single educated person that I know EVER watches pro wrestling....I'm not saying that it's a bad thing for you to do so but if you are talking to Americans.....I wouldnt mention that to them"

After making some mock fistpunches to the head with the footstomp on the ground for effect he chuckled and agreed with me.

* - nothing personal if you like wrestling...I am just as big of a hillbilly as you can find...but I think it's the dumbest thing since filling out a 1040 form when your employer has already paid the tax.