Maḩalleh-ye Ahrāb

One thing that always strikes me with travel (especially from Australia) is how it really just a series of 'waits'. Waiting to go through security, waiting to board, waiting to take off, waiting to land, waiting to disembark, waiting for security checks, waiting to be assigned a gate, waiting to board... and repeat for each flight. As it was 3 flights to get here, I have definitely mastered the art of waiting over the past 30 hours of travel.

I flew through Doha to get to Tehran. Doha's airport may be covered in a perpetual layer of grey dust dulling its shine but it proudly claims to be state of the art technologically and environmentally... in stark contrast to Imam Khomeini which feels like an unloved 80s ghost. There were so few people at the airport that my wait for the visa on arrival was only slowed down by the pace of the officials who liked to wander around a lot with only occasional interruptions of any activity. From my flight there was a grand total of 4 of us getting visas which turned out to be far simpler and less rigorous than I'd been lead to believe. After securing my entry, I sat in the empty, echoing airport to wait for Tom's flight which was 2 hours after mine with just as few people getting visas, which severely cuts down on the wait time with no queue for passport checks or customs.

We took a taxi into Tehran as we had a few hours to kill before our next flight. What with bags, Tom's self inflicted tiredness from too much Romanian fun and my woebegone exhaustion from jet lag and sleep deprivation, we were reasonably hampered so all we did was head to the Teahouse in the central City Park (Park-e Shah). It was a good introduction to Iranian life... like the airport, the pace was relaxed, we experienced the famed Iranian hospitality for the first time when a woman sitting with her Shisha and tea insisted on me having a cup and refilling it, and we were chased by the waiter for absconding on the bill because of our currency confusion.

The currency would (and, I'm sure, will) befuddle me at my sharpest, which given the aforementioned sleep deprivation and jet lag, this was not. Not only is it all in such high numbers it becomes meaningless (ie 1 AUD is roughly 25,000 rial), there are two different currencies in active use, both use the same coins and notes but are quoted differently when asking the price. There is an official currency - rials - and there's an unofficial currency - tomens. So if you go to pay, you're quoted the price at, say, 21 which you then confirm means 21 thousand, and everyone agrees. Only when you hand over 25,000 expecting change, the guy looks at you as though you're trying to take the piss... only to remember he quoted in tokens, you're paying in rials so you need to give him 250,000.

We both keep mucking it up, causing consternation and suspicion. The only upside to all of this is that for the next week on a humble budget we are both billionaires!

Really this is just a long winded way of saying that Tom and I successfully found each other in Tehran and we've got where we need to be. Today we'll start to explore the area...Read more