An amazing yet misunderstood country. Where do i start?
Prologue
I told you that I had so many things to share about Iran.. but how come its not the same about Iceland? See the difference is that, to talk about Iceland, I'd only have to say that Iceland is beautiful with out of this world landscapes in so many different words, but the central idea is the same, the allure is in its nature, and if i wanted to go a little further, i'd probably talk about the geographical formations.. but that's it. and anyway, showing pictures of Iceland was enough to show all about the country, although even the pictures couldnt do justice to how beautiful Iceland's scenery is in real life. also, i didnt really have any contacts and culture experience with local Icelanders.
But for Iran, there's the culture, architecture, history, people and their life, and politics and regime, the young and the old, and last but not least, Syiah.. which interests me as a fellow muslim and particularly as a Sunni. there's so much we can discuss about.
As always, there's only a handful of people that I told about going to Iran, that includes my family. The typical first question is, why Iran? what's in Iran? isn't it dangerous? you better be careful, its a syiah country, they'll convert you.. or, the syiah's hate the sunnis. something along those lines. you were one of the few who didn't respond in this manner, thank you for that. first of all, i personally think these are ignorant questions, but maybe its not really their fault for having these perceptions of a country that's always reported in a bad light in the media.. btw, i got the same "isnt it dangerous" response when I went to South America in 2011, the central worry being about drug gangs and slums. i for one believe that Iran is not a dangerous country at all, because Kimal has been there before and i trust him with my life when it comes to traveling, and ive read enough travel blogs by couples and solo women travelers alike who all said that Iran is safe, even safer than my own country.
ok so some parts might be mundane, this is probably like writing a diary.. some minute details might find its way here (as far as my useless brain can recall) this is going to be a looooooonggggggggg email so hope you don't mind or get too bored. ;p
Itinerary planning
i actually totally forgot about my iran trip until about less than 2 weeks before my flight out. i spent one full day working out the general itinerary and scanning places of interest to go at each city and also prioritizing to plan how many days is adequate to stay at those cities within the limited time frame. seriously 11 days seemed too short. so I fly into Tehran, and the order goes: Tehran-Qom-Kashan-Abyaneh-Esfahan-Yazd-Shiraz and back to Tehran for my flight back to KL. the first thing i had to do was buy a domestic flight ticket from Shiraz to Tehran. and i had my first taste of Iran even before leaving Malaysia. lol. I couldn't use my credit card to buy those tickets online, only Iranian-issued debit/credits are allowed for any transaction... hahahaha i should've known this was going to be the case, with the sanctions in place and all. But we're so used to not having such restrictions that I didn't really think about it. I was going for Mahan Air, so I told my cousin, who then said she will ask her former Iranian student named Amir (more on this later) to buy the tickets for us. At the same time, I told her to ask Amir to check tickets for Iran Air as well, to compare the prices. He got back to us and said Iran Air was cheaper, and told my cousin to go to the Iran Air office in KL to buy said tickets. and so finally we managed to secure them.
Amir also had an Iranian friend in KL who gave us really good rates to exchange RM and IRRs (Iranian rials). My budget was about usd 350 dollars max for ground expenses for 11 days, but i only exchanged usd 250 first. I wouldve spent 200 ringgit more if i used the official money exchangers with current rates. Im not sure if this was an illegal or black market transaction hahahaha. i think of it more like a mutually agreed and beneficial business transaction between two parties ;p
Accommodation planning
Next up was accommodation. My plan was mostly to couchsurf (CS) in Iran (you know how couchsurfing works right?) mainly because Kimal did that in Iran as well, and also it was not so easy to find accom in Iran from online sources.. those with information and means to be contacted are often the more expensive ones or are mentioned in Lonely Planet which means their rates are already marked up because they get a lot of foreigners already (btw I rarely use LP for any of my travels). I've also had some prior experience couchsurfing, i'll save that story for next time (if u remember to ask ;p)
My cousin was a former lecturer at Universiti Sains Malaysian (USM) in Penang, and she had an Iranian student that she was friends with. His name is Amir Talebi (btw Talebi means watermelon in Farsi hehe). Amir did his Masters in USM, and now doing his Phd there as well. He had invited my cousin to Iran long time ago and many times and had always offered his family's home in Tehran to stay at. However, this end of year 2015 he did not plan to go back to Tehran for holidays, but he already told his parents about us coming and they welcomed us to stay at their house in Tehran while we were there. So accom in Tehran settled. and here i thought, how opportune that my cousin wanted to join on what was supposed to be a solo trip.. coz i dont know any Iranians prior.
Qom and Abyaneh was going to be a pitstop, For Kashan, i got a reply on the room rates from one of the hotels there, but it was kinda too expensive for my budget, USD 60 per night for a double bed room. so i didn't book it. Initially i wanted to look for CS hosts in only Esfahan and Shiraz coz I planned to stay at these places for more than one night. I don't really wanna trouble potential hosts for only 1 day. I also tried to look for female hosts first.. the first person I contacted in Esfahan couldn't host me saying she had guests in her house (im guessing her relatives), but luckily her "fiance", which i found out later is only her boyfriend not fiance, agreed to host me instead, lucky!
For Yazd i contacted 2 hotels and only 1 replied, usd 40 for a double bed at a traditional guest house, which was still relatively expensive by my standards but i took it anyway, seeing i am already saving 3 nights of accom expenses in Esfahan, and i thought it would be nice to experience a traditional guesthouse, whatever that was. it turned out to be a building with a square in the middle with fountains and a nice place to hangout and the rooms are all around it.. the dining room was also in the square.
I contacted 3 different hosts in Shiraz but all of them declined me, the first a lady who didnt give me any reasons,the second a guy who first said maybe and then declined and also didnt say why, and the third declined and said he was already hosting other people on the same dates that I requested to surf and wished me well on my trip. btw these correspondences with the Shiraz hosts happened when i was already in Iran.. a day before my flight to Tehran I contacted the hotel in Kashan again to book the expensive room but i didnt get any reply until the end. And as a last resort, i contacted a CS host in Kashan. and then I flew to Tehran with only accoms in Tehran (Amir's parents) and Esfahan (CS host-Somy + Mohamad the fiance) and Yazd (traditional guesthouse) confirmed. Kashan and Shiraz were still up in the air.
Tehran
Day 1
I arrived at Imam Khomenei Interational Airport late at night, i wasnt sure how strict Iran was on women's dressing, so i wore a black abaya with black scarf, and my long coat was also black. lol. arranged and paid for my visa on arrival at the airport. after the immigration, i tried to look for a local sim card but there was none to be found. went outside and haggled my taxi price, once i got the price i wanted (ended up sharing a taxi w another passenger). During this ride, my first experience with the friendliness of Iranians. The taxi driver couldnt stop talking and asking me questions, and all this he did in Farsi, he didnt speak english, the typical case of a duck talking to a chicken, but we understood each other perfectly fine, the usual questions of where im from where im going in Iran yada yada.. at one point, he pointed to every single object around us, outside and inside the taxi, and thought me the Farsi word of those objects. think i learned close to 30 new words in Farsi that night, all of which of course ive forgotten by now ;p . and btw, he drove like a MANIAC. in fact, everybody in Iran drives like a maniac. and i thought ive seen the worse of it all, having seen the traffic and drivers in Hanoi and Cairo and New Delhi, which are also over the top CRAZY.
By the time i reached Amir's apartment, i saw a guy which turned out to be his father already waiting at the front steps of the building, he mustve seen me coming from the window. A fair man and good enough spoken english for us to have good and interesting conversations. My cousin arrived earlier in the morning (we took different flights), was still out sight seeing but was already otw home, she arrived about 10 minutes later. The first thing i noticed about the apartment that there were a lot of figurines, like seriously all around the house, displayed in glass cabinets and on tables etc. there were also many paintings of people and stuff, you know like what you'd see in Italy or those famous during the Renaissance period. I was a bit surprised by this, since its very unislamic. I found out later that Amir to my cousin that his mother is a practicing muslim, i did see her pray, but Amir was silent about his father.
we had a great home cooked dinner by Amir's mom. OMG so delicious. She cooked for us ghorme sabzi and zeleshk polo and brewed tea. I ordered these dishes much later in Shiraz at a restaurant, but they weren't as good as Amir's mom cooking. Amir's mom, Farida doesnt speak english. Anyway during dinner the usual greetings and questions were asked, and then we talked about carpets. Yes ive always know Iranian carpets are of high quality and expensive, but omw when i found out the prices of the carpets in that house, i was blown away. some even cost up to 5000 us dollars!. i learned a few things about carpets, the composition and knots and quality and differences between handmade and machinemade and all that stuff. it was all very interesting. Farida showed us of a book published by Amir in malaysia (it was actually just a compilation of journal papers about.. environmental topics, like water treatments and stuff like that, related to his studies obviously, hahaha sorry i dont remember), you can see how proud the mother is. Amir's sister lives in Germany w her husband and kid (their only grandson for now), and Amir's brother lives and works in America, he has a double degree (one in engineering, another in accounting), he was back for the holidays but was leaving for the states again in 2 days time. Amir's brother who was out wanted to take us out that night to hangout, we said ok but we ended up sleeping by the time he came back to fetch us, i guess we were so tired by the whole journey.
Tehran was COLD. low singles deg celcius.
Ghorme sabzi (dark brown), and zeleshk polo (chicken w rice, berries on top)
Day 2
The next day, after Iranian style breakfast (arab bread, walnuts, feta cheese, cream, butter and tea) we headed to Tochal.. its a mountainous area just behind Amir's house, which was purely coincidental that it was so near. we walked to the entrance gates and took the telecabin (what they call cable cars) up to the second highest station (5th station) at about 2850 m asl. the highest station are only allowed for skiers and snowboarders. omg it was so beautiful, on the way up there and also at the top. snow covered mountains and with clear blue skies, once in a while the cloud would cover until visibility is zero, then the clouds would pass and the view was incredibly beautiful. and this just a stone's throw away from Tehran. we also hiked for half hour in the snow before heading back to town later. Being a mother, Farida had already packed for us fruits and bread, so we also ate those while just chillin sittin on the rocks and enjoying the view. and again, it was freakin cold, like subzero. even Iceland wasnt this cold (at times). It being a Friday (weekend in Iran), the queue was very long to get on the telecabin. All the while i was queuing, i was checking out all these handsome Iranians, feast for my eyes really! it was too cold for me to even hold a conversation with my cousin, so the next best thing was to people watch hahahaahah. There were alot of people who also hiked from the first station all the way up to the 5th station. amazing feat, im thinking maybe next time if i ever go to Tehran again (which will not be in winter), i'd do the hike up. At one point while we were up there, a couple of guys approached us, correctly guessing that we are Malaysians, my cousin left me to my own devices as she went to the toilet, so these guys were telling us they're going to Malaysia in a couple of weeks time, and asked about hotel prices and what not, some questions about Malaysia and KL, are we muslims or not (somehow we get asked this question a lot eventhough we were wearing proper hijab, unlike most of the Iranians who typically show some hair at the front) then the killer question, how much is the price of beer? LOL. he said the price in Thailand was about 4 ringgit per bottle i think. hahahahhaha, i honestly dont know how much beer costs in Malaysia really, but i think it should be more expensive than our neighbor in the north. He took my facebook id and said he will add me later when he gets home when he will have access to VPN (facebook is blocked in Iran).
Tochal
Tochal
later back in town, we met with another Iranian friend of my cousin who was the first ever student from Iran in USM, and whom later worked in USM after he finished his bachelors and masters there. Now he's doing his Phd in Singapore. Hamoon, is his name, and he's a delight really, he speaks really fast, very metro and fashionable (which I concluded from the pink color pants he was wearing that day), he came with his friend, and she's like sooo pretty. he speaks very highly of Malaysia, and speaks very poorly of Iran. LOL. its funny really. He says Iran is weird and he doesnt understand his own country. we went for coffee and later barbecue dinner and then coffee again, by the time we came home it was around 9 or 10pm i think. His thesis topic is something about the role of women in islamic Jihad. As part of his research, he has been to countries like Turkey and Jordan and Lebanon etc, went to refugee camps and interviewed a lot of women, including ISIS defectors. it was sooooooo interesting. although i didnt have time to ask more about this, but i will if i meet him again next time. I'm going to singapore soon, maybe we can meet up for a chat..
TBC
Prologue
I told you that I had so many things to share about Iran.. but how come its not the same about Iceland? See the difference is that, to talk about Iceland, I'd only have to say that Iceland is beautiful with out of this world landscapes in so many different words, but the central idea is the same, the allure is in its nature, and if i wanted to go a little further, i'd probably talk about the geographical formations.. but that's it. and anyway, showing pictures of Iceland was enough to show all about the country, although even the pictures couldnt do justice to how beautiful Iceland's scenery is in real life. also, i didnt really have any contacts and culture experience with local Icelanders.
But for Iran, there's the culture, architecture, history, people and their life, and politics and regime, the young and the old, and last but not least, Syiah.. which interests me as a fellow muslim and particularly as a Sunni. there's so much we can discuss about.
As always, there's only a handful of people that I told about going to Iran, that includes my family. The typical first question is, why Iran? what's in Iran? isn't it dangerous? you better be careful, its a syiah country, they'll convert you.. or, the syiah's hate the sunnis. something along those lines. you were one of the few who didn't respond in this manner, thank you for that. first of all, i personally think these are ignorant questions, but maybe its not really their fault for having these perceptions of a country that's always reported in a bad light in the media.. btw, i got the same "isnt it dangerous" response when I went to South America in 2011, the central worry being about drug gangs and slums. i for one believe that Iran is not a dangerous country at all, because Kimal has been there before and i trust him with my life when it comes to traveling, and ive read enough travel blogs by couples and solo women travelers alike who all said that Iran is safe, even safer than my own country.
ok so some parts might be mundane, this is probably like writing a diary.. some minute details might find its way here (as far as my useless brain can recall) this is going to be a looooooonggggggggg email so hope you don't mind or get too bored. ;p
Itinerary planning
i actually totally forgot about my iran trip until about less than 2 weeks before my flight out. i spent one full day working out the general itinerary and scanning places of interest to go at each city and also prioritizing to plan how many days is adequate to stay at those cities within the limited time frame. seriously 11 days seemed too short. so I fly into Tehran, and the order goes: Tehran-Qom-Kashan-Abyaneh-Esfahan-Yazd-Shiraz and back to Tehran for my flight back to KL. the first thing i had to do was buy a domestic flight ticket from Shiraz to Tehran. and i had my first taste of Iran even before leaving Malaysia. lol. I couldn't use my credit card to buy those tickets online, only Iranian-issued debit/credits are allowed for any transaction... hahahaha i should've known this was going to be the case, with the sanctions in place and all. But we're so used to not having such restrictions that I didn't really think about it. I was going for Mahan Air, so I told my cousin, who then said she will ask her former Iranian student named Amir (more on this later) to buy the tickets for us. At the same time, I told her to ask Amir to check tickets for Iran Air as well, to compare the prices. He got back to us and said Iran Air was cheaper, and told my cousin to go to the Iran Air office in KL to buy said tickets. and so finally we managed to secure them.
Amir also had an Iranian friend in KL who gave us really good rates to exchange RM and IRRs (Iranian rials). My budget was about usd 350 dollars max for ground expenses for 11 days, but i only exchanged usd 250 first. I wouldve spent 200 ringgit more if i used the official money exchangers with current rates. Im not sure if this was an illegal or black market transaction hahahaha. i think of it more like a mutually agreed and beneficial business transaction between two parties ;p
Accommodation planning
Next up was accommodation. My plan was mostly to couchsurf (CS) in Iran (you know how couchsurfing works right?) mainly because Kimal did that in Iran as well, and also it was not so easy to find accom in Iran from online sources.. those with information and means to be contacted are often the more expensive ones or are mentioned in Lonely Planet which means their rates are already marked up because they get a lot of foreigners already (btw I rarely use LP for any of my travels). I've also had some prior experience couchsurfing, i'll save that story for next time (if u remember to ask ;p)
My cousin was a former lecturer at Universiti Sains Malaysian (USM) in Penang, and she had an Iranian student that she was friends with. His name is Amir Talebi (btw Talebi means watermelon in Farsi hehe). Amir did his Masters in USM, and now doing his Phd there as well. He had invited my cousin to Iran long time ago and many times and had always offered his family's home in Tehran to stay at. However, this end of year 2015 he did not plan to go back to Tehran for holidays, but he already told his parents about us coming and they welcomed us to stay at their house in Tehran while we were there. So accom in Tehran settled. and here i thought, how opportune that my cousin wanted to join on what was supposed to be a solo trip.. coz i dont know any Iranians prior.
Qom and Abyaneh was going to be a pitstop, For Kashan, i got a reply on the room rates from one of the hotels there, but it was kinda too expensive for my budget, USD 60 per night for a double bed room. so i didn't book it. Initially i wanted to look for CS hosts in only Esfahan and Shiraz coz I planned to stay at these places for more than one night. I don't really wanna trouble potential hosts for only 1 day. I also tried to look for female hosts first.. the first person I contacted in Esfahan couldn't host me saying she had guests in her house (im guessing her relatives), but luckily her "fiance", which i found out later is only her boyfriend not fiance, agreed to host me instead, lucky!
For Yazd i contacted 2 hotels and only 1 replied, usd 40 for a double bed at a traditional guest house, which was still relatively expensive by my standards but i took it anyway, seeing i am already saving 3 nights of accom expenses in Esfahan, and i thought it would be nice to experience a traditional guesthouse, whatever that was. it turned out to be a building with a square in the middle with fountains and a nice place to hangout and the rooms are all around it.. the dining room was also in the square.
I contacted 3 different hosts in Shiraz but all of them declined me, the first a lady who didnt give me any reasons,the second a guy who first said maybe and then declined and also didnt say why, and the third declined and said he was already hosting other people on the same dates that I requested to surf and wished me well on my trip. btw these correspondences with the Shiraz hosts happened when i was already in Iran.. a day before my flight to Tehran I contacted the hotel in Kashan again to book the expensive room but i didnt get any reply until the end. And as a last resort, i contacted a CS host in Kashan. and then I flew to Tehran with only accoms in Tehran (Amir's parents) and Esfahan (CS host-Somy + Mohamad the fiance) and Yazd (traditional guesthouse) confirmed. Kashan and Shiraz were still up in the air.
Tehran
Day 1
I arrived at Imam Khomenei Interational Airport late at night, i wasnt sure how strict Iran was on women's dressing, so i wore a black abaya with black scarf, and my long coat was also black. lol. arranged and paid for my visa on arrival at the airport. after the immigration, i tried to look for a local sim card but there was none to be found. went outside and haggled my taxi price, once i got the price i wanted (ended up sharing a taxi w another passenger). During this ride, my first experience with the friendliness of Iranians. The taxi driver couldnt stop talking and asking me questions, and all this he did in Farsi, he didnt speak english, the typical case of a duck talking to a chicken, but we understood each other perfectly fine, the usual questions of where im from where im going in Iran yada yada.. at one point, he pointed to every single object around us, outside and inside the taxi, and thought me the Farsi word of those objects. think i learned close to 30 new words in Farsi that night, all of which of course ive forgotten by now ;p . and btw, he drove like a MANIAC. in fact, everybody in Iran drives like a maniac. and i thought ive seen the worse of it all, having seen the traffic and drivers in Hanoi and Cairo and New Delhi, which are also over the top CRAZY.
By the time i reached Amir's apartment, i saw a guy which turned out to be his father already waiting at the front steps of the building, he mustve seen me coming from the window. A fair man and good enough spoken english for us to have good and interesting conversations. My cousin arrived earlier in the morning (we took different flights), was still out sight seeing but was already otw home, she arrived about 10 minutes later. The first thing i noticed about the apartment that there were a lot of figurines, like seriously all around the house, displayed in glass cabinets and on tables etc. there were also many paintings of people and stuff, you know like what you'd see in Italy or those famous during the Renaissance period. I was a bit surprised by this, since its very unislamic. I found out later that Amir to my cousin that his mother is a practicing muslim, i did see her pray, but Amir was silent about his father.
we had a great home cooked dinner by Amir's mom. OMG so delicious. She cooked for us ghorme sabzi and zeleshk polo and brewed tea. I ordered these dishes much later in Shiraz at a restaurant, but they weren't as good as Amir's mom cooking. Amir's mom, Farida doesnt speak english. Anyway during dinner the usual greetings and questions were asked, and then we talked about carpets. Yes ive always know Iranian carpets are of high quality and expensive, but omw when i found out the prices of the carpets in that house, i was blown away. some even cost up to 5000 us dollars!. i learned a few things about carpets, the composition and knots and quality and differences between handmade and machinemade and all that stuff. it was all very interesting. Farida showed us of a book published by Amir in malaysia (it was actually just a compilation of journal papers about.. environmental topics, like water treatments and stuff like that, related to his studies obviously, hahaha sorry i dont remember), you can see how proud the mother is. Amir's sister lives in Germany w her husband and kid (their only grandson for now), and Amir's brother lives and works in America, he has a double degree (one in engineering, another in accounting), he was back for the holidays but was leaving for the states again in 2 days time. Amir's brother who was out wanted to take us out that night to hangout, we said ok but we ended up sleeping by the time he came back to fetch us, i guess we were so tired by the whole journey.
Tehran was COLD. low singles deg celcius.
Ghorme sabzi (dark brown), and zeleshk polo (chicken w rice, berries on top)
Day 2
The next day, after Iranian style breakfast (arab bread, walnuts, feta cheese, cream, butter and tea) we headed to Tochal.. its a mountainous area just behind Amir's house, which was purely coincidental that it was so near. we walked to the entrance gates and took the telecabin (what they call cable cars) up to the second highest station (5th station) at about 2850 m asl. the highest station are only allowed for skiers and snowboarders. omg it was so beautiful, on the way up there and also at the top. snow covered mountains and with clear blue skies, once in a while the cloud would cover until visibility is zero, then the clouds would pass and the view was incredibly beautiful. and this just a stone's throw away from Tehran. we also hiked for half hour in the snow before heading back to town later. Being a mother, Farida had already packed for us fruits and bread, so we also ate those while just chillin sittin on the rocks and enjoying the view. and again, it was freakin cold, like subzero. even Iceland wasnt this cold (at times). It being a Friday (weekend in Iran), the queue was very long to get on the telecabin. All the while i was queuing, i was checking out all these handsome Iranians, feast for my eyes really! it was too cold for me to even hold a conversation with my cousin, so the next best thing was to people watch hahahaahah. There were alot of people who also hiked from the first station all the way up to the 5th station. amazing feat, im thinking maybe next time if i ever go to Tehran again (which will not be in winter), i'd do the hike up. At one point while we were up there, a couple of guys approached us, correctly guessing that we are Malaysians, my cousin left me to my own devices as she went to the toilet, so these guys were telling us they're going to Malaysia in a couple of weeks time, and asked about hotel prices and what not, some questions about Malaysia and KL, are we muslims or not (somehow we get asked this question a lot eventhough we were wearing proper hijab, unlike most of the Iranians who typically show some hair at the front) then the killer question, how much is the price of beer? LOL. he said the price in Thailand was about 4 ringgit per bottle i think. hahahahhaha, i honestly dont know how much beer costs in Malaysia really, but i think it should be more expensive than our neighbor in the north. He took my facebook id and said he will add me later when he gets home when he will have access to VPN (facebook is blocked in Iran).
Tochal
Tochal
later back in town, we met with another Iranian friend of my cousin who was the first ever student from Iran in USM, and whom later worked in USM after he finished his bachelors and masters there. Now he's doing his Phd in Singapore. Hamoon, is his name, and he's a delight really, he speaks really fast, very metro and fashionable (which I concluded from the pink color pants he was wearing that day), he came with his friend, and she's like sooo pretty. he speaks very highly of Malaysia, and speaks very poorly of Iran. LOL. its funny really. He says Iran is weird and he doesnt understand his own country. we went for coffee and later barbecue dinner and then coffee again, by the time we came home it was around 9 or 10pm i think. His thesis topic is something about the role of women in islamic Jihad. As part of his research, he has been to countries like Turkey and Jordan and Lebanon etc, went to refugee camps and interviewed a lot of women, including ISIS defectors. it was sooooooo interesting. although i didnt have time to ask more about this, but i will if i meet him again next time. I'm going to singapore soon, maybe we can meet up for a chat..
TBC
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