Iran Travel Diary 2018

There are actually a lot of things that everyone doesn’t know about Iran, but now let’s learn about Iran with this travelogue. Here you can follow the editor to see this place. Is this the place in your mind?

At seven o'clock in the morning, Muhammad woke me up. After washing up, he took me to the road outside and took a bus to their school.

The school is not big, and some places are covered with grass or piles of gravel. Although it is a university, it doesn't look like my elementary school. My arrival naturally became the focus of the school, and my classmates would always ask Muhammad a few questions. Muhammad said that his teacher was good at English, and he brought me to school to see if the teacher could help me with my passport problem. He took me to the office, and after a few minutes of communication, I realized that his teacher’s English was not very good, and he had no idea about my passport.

Coming out of the office, Muhammad took me into the classroom. The classroom was small, with about fifteen or six people sitting, all of them boys. There is a small blackboard in front of the classroom.

Not long after, a tall and thin teacher walked into the classroom and started teaching. This is an advanced mathematics class. The students seemed to have no textbooks. They all had 16-page notebooks, in which they densely recorded knowledge points and exercises. The teacher first drew a complex figure on the blackboard, then began to explain and occasionally asked some questions. The students took notes meticulously, and I felt like I was back in my high school classroom. The atmosphere in the class was very active, everyone was vying to answer questions and was full of curiosity. This is a question about calculus mixed with a little linear algebra. I haven't completely forgotten it, but because of the language barrier, I didn't fully understand it. However, in order to maintain the good international image of Chinese students who are diligent and studious, I managed not to yawn, and occasionally responded with an understanding smile, which brought the excellent quality of Chinese students to pretending to understand to the extreme.

I finally got to the end of get out of class. According to yesterday’s plan, I was going to Bam Ancient Castle. Mohammad still had classes, and he asked Sanwa (the very sturdy young man who smoked hookah together last night) to accompany me.

I said goodbye to Muhammad and thanked him for his care. After that, my contact with him was limited to likes and comments on Facebook. His English was limited, except for those modal particles, and I later discovered that he had learned "Ilove

you".

He said "Iloveyou" to me. I'd love to tell him that "I

loveyou" really can't be used easily between two grown men, but I feel like it would be a struggle to explain. It would be nice to understand his intentions. He said he would study English well.

Sanwa took me a taxi to Bam Ancient Castle. She didn’t let me pay for the fare and even helped me buy tickets. The entrance fee for Bam Ancient Castle is 150,000 rials for foreigners, and only 20,000 rials for locals. I was really too embarrassed to ask him to buy it, so I forced myself to pay for it.

This is the largest air-dried adobe building in the world, with a history of 2,500 years. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by an earthquake in 2003, killing nearly 30,000 people, and is now uninhabited. Walking through the vaguely identifiable streets and courtyards, the broken walls and ruins all around make people sigh.

After visiting the ancient castle, I treated Sanwa to a piece of ice cream, and he sent me to a taxi back to Kerman. It is about 180 kilometers from Bam to Kerman, and the fee is 110,000 rials (about 22 yuan). The taxi was stopped twice on the way, but no one checked my passport.

After lunch in Kerman, I went to the station and bought a ticket back to Tehran. While waiting for the bus at the station, I became the focus of people around me again. There was a very handsome man sitting in the row in front of me with three or four women. He turned to me and asked for a photo. I agreed to his request. When taking the photo, he made a gesture of kissing me, but he didn't touch my face.

This attracted a police officer (or station security). My heart was pounding, and I had a premonition that something was about to happen. Sure enough, he asked me to show my passport. I told him that I only had a copy, but he only recognized the original. I explained to him for a long time, but he ignored it.

I was helpless and let him take me away. Like a criminal caught red-handed, I was taken into an office with everyone watching. I explained a little to the people inside, and they understood. Then one of them said a few words to the policeman, and the policeman let me go. After being acquitted, I flew back to my seat like a freed bird. People around me expressed sympathy in their eyes, but they no longer asked me to take pictures.

The bus back to Tehran was a white Volvo bus with very comfortable seats. I originally planned to have a good sleep, but I ran into big trouble near twelve o'clock in the evening.

When I arrived at a checkpoint, a police officer got on the bus to patrol and asked me to show my passport. I could only give him a copy of the first page of my passport and the Iranian visa page. He didn't speak English, so I couldn't explain it, so he was taken out of the car.

It's cold outside. I was taken to a hut at the checkpoint, which had an electric stove, and the people inside came out. I tried to explain to him, made a futile speech to them both, and finally begged them, but they remained stone-hearted and indifferent.

Many minutes passed and I saw that the Volvo bus carrying all my luggage had already started moving. I pointed anxiously at the white moving object and almost jumped up. They reassured me and told me the driver just pulled over and parked on the side of the road. Sure enough, the car stopped.

However, I still feel that I am in big trouble if I am thought to be a spy. After another strenuous exchange, I finally understood that although I had copied the homepage and visa page of my passport, I had not copied the renewal page, and they would think that I was staying illegally.

Someone in the room picked up the phone, probably to check my records or ask for instructions from a superior. I waited anxiously. Half an hour passed and they finally told me it was a misunderstanding.

I quickly rushed to the car and apologized for wasting everyone's time. They sat quietly and made no complaints. If this kind of thing happened in China, I really don’t know what kind of commotion it would be.

After I sat down, several young people next to me talked to me about what had just happened, and then asked me to take pictures. When I stopped to use the restroom, an uncle in the car called me aside and told me to be wary of those young people.

"They make friends with you first, and then steal your money." The uncle said to me seriously, not as if he was joking.

I think the uncle is overly worried, but I still thank him for his kindness. Among those young people, there was one named AminRahim, the youngest. Later, when I was in Jordan, I also received a Skype video from him. He asked me if I was still in Iran. The whole family wanted me to be their guest.