On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 5:40 AM, eckinator <[email protected]> wrote:
> LOL... > However, nothing beats Joe Hughes from Queens, NY whom I met in > Avignon, France, ... I think I can top that. Worst I've seen was an Englishman in Afghanistan, back in the mid-70s when going there was not suicidal, actually fascinating. We'd been staying a in a hotel in Herat. Manager was a good guy. Young Afghan, just finished his compulsory military service, managing one of dad's many businesses. Spoke decent English, played with our two-year-old. When I bought a knife in the bazaar, he insisted on teaching me knife-fighting technique and did not kill me when a clumsy move on my part left him with bleeding knuckles. After about a week there, we were ready to roll on to Kandahar, a day's drive away. We set off, elderly VW van with me, wife, two-year-old and the English/Aussie couple. An hour or so out of town, Roger realises he has not got his pouch. It contains both passports and all their money, which they are carrying in cash since that gets a somewhat better exchange rate than traveller's cheques. He stashed it under the pillow while they slept, forgot to get it in the morning. Turn around, roll back and find no-one in the hotel office. Roger checks their room -- it is an open compound with all rooms on ground level and no locks -- finds the bed made and pouch gone. There's an elderly gardener at work in the compound. Roger tries yelling at him in English. The old boy ignores him. Eventually, the manager turns up. He explains that his cleaning staff found the pouch, so he went downtown to see if he could spot us having breakfast, and when that failed, he got on the bus to Kandahar to find us there. Then he spotted our van coming back, so he got off the bus and hitched back. "Here's your pouch. I've taken 10 pounds for my expenses." By Afghan standards of the time, 10 quid is a lot of money, quite likely two or three times the actual expenses. On the other hand, there was 1000 or so in the pouch, so I reckon Roger should be distinctly happy. Roger is not happy, claims the guy is robbing him. Wants to call the police. I tell him he's being an idiot, and anyway the chief of police is the manager's uncle. You should be thinking about how much more to give him, not bitching about 10. My wife is more direct. "We are leaving. Do you want to shut up and get in the van? Or should we dump your luggage here?" He got in the van, then explained to me that, since I wasn't British, I didn't understand how to deal with natives. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
