Nightfall, an old, vacant inn in the quiet countryside. In my room, I was in the shower. All goes black. I scream. In pitch darkness, I have shampoo in my hair and a bloody cucumber mask on my face and the water's become part of the distant past. I wait for 10 minutes for the lights to come back on. No luck. With a towel around myself, i trip over everything between me and the door and finally burst out to the corridor. I scream. "We've been waiting for you," they say, ghostly pale Japanese women circled my door to [View Full Entry]

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By coincedence, Japanese and Persian have identical phrases which are completely different in meaning. Hence, a little Japanese dialogue with a fellow JP tourist could result to disaster. Two Japanese women ran up to me, freaking out when a bunch of curious Iranian locals pointed at them shouting 'Shinei! Shinei!' - they were merely saying 'Chinese?' but in Japanese, this is an imperative command meaning 'Die!'. In the marketplace, some Japanese tourists and I noticed the bizarre form of watermelons on display. to this, we said the phrase 'Hendawane~' (meaning 'how odd!'). Hearing our conv [View Full Entry]

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A moment after I'd finished the sweet cups of tea that a local street vendor gave me, I suddenly realized they were definitely stashed with something. Panic struck me, although the corners of my lips couldn't get out of this ridiculously cheesy grin. Despite my horror, everything began to look like a joke. I laughed at the watermelons, the hysterically funny minarets (???), even the cops in front of me...COPS? I'd heard that the police occasionally do their rounds and give trouble to both locals and tourists for inappropriate behavior/dress etc. Even recently, a fellow female traveller tol [View Full Entry]

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I doubted my ears when I first heard a 'Careless Whisper' ringtone go off in Iran. The owner of the phone was not a lovelorn western woman, but a local man who had this uncanny resemblance to Omar Sharif (plus 30 kilograms). During my few weeks in Iran, I would hear George Michael's famous tune (polyphonic and mono) ring accompanied by a grizzly 'Bale?/Yes?' of a 40+ unshaven local. I decided to look into this, as my curiosity spasmed knowing about the western music ban imposed in the country. Was this a sony/samsung/motorola trend amongst all imported phones? No, a [View Full Entry]

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Although I am japanese (ie Asian), meaning that I can't dance for bloody hell, I still try and make the best out of it by compensating with my bellydancing skills. Whether it be NYC or Maku, i've been swimming in bling! This turned out quite promising with my booty-shaking and techno playing ipod, as like a popular cheap whore, money was thrown at me like hotcakes.I even did the 'dishwashing' and 'lawn-mowing' routine' that I learned from a gay classmate. I had the opportunity to encounter a jolly old wedding in the little town of Maku in the Western Azerbaijan [View Full Entry]

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Iranians and their hospitality shall never let you leave the country without gaining extra kilos/pounds. Locals lure the weird-looking tourists with treats such as spaghetti 'n' ice cream, iced melon, juicy kebabs and fresh bread in exchange for posing with them in photos. Such generous offers become brutal to your expanding waistline as the 22nd street vendor offers their sexy merchandise. Mmmm....that's a hot chicken sandwich you got there, mate. Three photos with you, your pal Mohammed, and your cousin Ali Reza? All right, deal. In the city of Urumieh, mosques and Armenian churches are [View Full Entry]

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I always knew my headscarf would never be approved by the government, but never thought I'd be dragged into a room by kurdish girls who'd strip me of my clothes and dress me up in local formal garb! On the way north, we stopped by a little village called Sanjud, who'd rarely seen foreigners. Let alone a mere toilet stop... Farsi is still the official language, and I asked if we could take photographs...a girl told me that all of us foreigners were invited to her little home for chai (tea)! and voila, we walked in...tho it bloody cost me [View Full Entry]

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30 bedbugs bites were worth lighting myself on fire with scotch and a zippo lighter. But alas, as i wrote in my last blog, the self-bitch-slapping became a way of life as I toured western Azarbaijan to learn about Iran (e.g. random info like why small dogs aren't popular in Iran - mullahs/'teachers' preached that life is better without toying with stupid little bitches, hence it is a rare sight to see any poodles on the street, even in Tehran). Scratching my ass in the village of Takab, I ventured off to the famous sites of Takht-e-Soleiman and Zendan-e-Soleiman nearby. [View Full Entry]

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Kurdistan. You're ready to take more sexy daily snapshots. But locals drop everything they're doing just to see you get off your bus. Their jaws drop when you light a cigarette. All school classes come to a halt as kids pour out of their classrooms to see if you're really a fellow human being. Masses of youngens approach you for your autograph while others timidly just snap out there camera phones. Only if you're Eastern Asian in Iranian Kurdistan. I've never been stared at like I had a tulip growing on top of my head, but anything's possible here I [View Full Entry]

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After feeling like dying of sunstroke in the Iranian region of Khuzestan, the friendly bus driver offered me a cup of tea...with literally a handful of bloody sugar cubes that made me assume I was going to become diabetic. Crikey, i suppose this is the local remedy for sunstroke. When I tried to refuse the sugar, I got really scary glares from dear old Amir, who looked like an angry and spicier twin of Super Mario. 50 degrees celsius was like hell, especially when the bus thermometer refuses to acknowledge heat beyond 50, so who knows how hot is was there [View Full Entry]

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