As I got off the plane in Tehran, I realized my experience in Iran was going to be different this time. Unlike my previous three visits, this time I was on my own — no mother, uncle or aunt to step in and show me the way. This was exciting. Not only was I going to see and learn about many new-to-me areas of Iran, but I also knew I had a task at hand (while having some fun, too, of course).

The typical image most conjure up of Iran is probably nuclear bomb-hungry terrorists riding on camels in the desert with AK-47s, searching for new killings. Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s the amazing hospitality of the people, lush Vietnam-esque scenery, ridiculously delicious food, ancient sites, exquisite handicrafts and a lot more that unfortunately, people may have never heard about.

I want these posts to be about not just Iran, but any country we may have preconceived negative notions about simply because of what the media tells us as well. (There’s a lot more to a country than its political news!) I want these posts to help you dig deeper on such so-called taboo places, and possibly even travel there and discover a hidden gem for yourself.

Let’s get started!

The journey began with meeting up with my mom in Iran’s capital of Tehran for the first two days before we parted ways — me to go backpacking solo, she to spend the rest of her visit in Isfahan. We hung around the northern part of Tehran, had some good food and people-watched. I unfortunately don’t have pictures to show, but I will say this: People were so fashionable — as if they had been transported from Manhattan’s SoHo to Tehran!

Once I was off on my own, I hopped on a nice, shiny, pink bus en route to northern Iran, specifically the city of Ramsar, located on the Caspian Sea. The area around the Caspian is a popular summer and weekend destination for Tehranis and others in Iran — in fact, the Shah of Iran used to frequent here in the summers — and is known for its beautiful green scenery and pleasant weather. I went in off season, a good choice because it meant fewer tourists.

The bus I took to Ramsar. Buses in Iran are actually quite nice since they’re the primary mode of transportation between cities of long distances.

The drive to Ramsar from Tehran was stunning. It winded through and around mountains, valleys and turquoise blue streams. That said, there were a few moments when I felt we were a bit too close to the edge of the cliff.

When I got to Ramsar, I had absolutely no idea where I was going to sleep. I knew what my budget was (50K Toman or approximately $16/night). Luckily, I walked into the right kebab shop. The owner answered my question by explaining that hotels weren’t going to be in my price range, but that instead, he had an empty villa he could offer to me for my price. Out of tiredness and sheer laziness, I decided to trust the guy and hopped on his motorbike to get to the villa.

As it turns out, the place was spotlessly clean with a big kitchen, two bedrooms and most importantly, a western toilet. Hallelujah! (I love my culture, but I’m not a big fan of the hole in the ground.) The villa was located on a charming street with palm, orange, and apple trees and plenty of flowers.

Bought some groceries to have a traditional Iranian breakfast and a beer…a nonalcoholic beer that is.

Beyond the pimp villa, Ramsar itself was beautiful. The sea and lush mountains joined quite nicely. And a little factoid – 95% of the world’s caviar comes from the Caspian Sea.

After enjoying the beach and town, I headed up the mountain to a quaint, foggy village reminiscent of Harry Potter named Javaherdeh (literal translation is Jewel Village) for a change of pace. The drive was again stunning (and a bit scary with the heavy fog) and reminded me of our motorcycle ride in Mai Chau, Vietnam.

Waterfall near the village…very foggy.

There were a lot of women and their kids selling freshly baked bread on the street. So tasty.

Coming back down the mountain, my taxi driver — a seasoned cabbie who had been doing the drive up and down the mountain for 35 years — was a very friendly old man, who told me how he can drive the mountain with his eyes closed. I told him not to just to be safe. For the next 45 minutes, he proceeded to tell me the history of the different cars he’s owned during his taxi-driving years and how he financed each one of them.

And what to do after staying in a villa and visiting foggy villages? Visit a natural sulfur hot spring bathhouse, of course.

And a visit to the Shah’s summer palace. The Shah and later, his son would come here when they needed to get away from their other palaces in Tehran. Tough life.

Next up Lahijan, tea capital of Iran, and Rasht, headquarters for the famous garlicy Gilani cuisine!

We bus-ed it pretty much everywhere during our 26 days in Laos — the exception being our flight out of the country to Chiang Mai, Thailand — and the best way to paint the picture of how crazy, mind-boggling and ultimately rewarding overland transport through Laos can be, I’ll give you three very different examples.

Hue, Vietnam to Pakse, Laos or To Hell and Back. This is a long story, but bear with me. We had booked an air-con bus through our Hoi An, Vietnam guesthouse, and they assured us it would be a nice bus for the 18-hour haul. When we got to the bus station, we were directed not to one of the coach buses but to a rickety local bus, the kind you wouldn’t even want to take for a jaunt within city limits. As soon as I realized this was our ride, I started chanting, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, oh mygod.”

Then people started to push me, telling me to get up and sit in the aisle for all they cared. (I thought that was ridiculous but later learned that it wasn’t that odd of a suggestion.) Others were shouting. It was a complete nightmare. Eaman told the locals not to touch me and told me to stay put, explaining that we were getting hassled just because we were foreigners.

And that’s when the (light) waterworks came. I wasn’t actually scared; I was just frustrated. I just wondered, what the hell are the next 18 hours going to be like?

In the end, time was running out, so Eaman and Tony worked it out so Tony would forcibly sit on the falsely saved seat, giving me a spot next to Eaman.

The next adventure came when we reached border control between Vietnam and Laos. Tony already had his visa, so it was just Eaman and I as the only riders on the bus who had to go through the laborious process. (Vietnamese nationals have an easier time getting entry into Laos.) Vietnam officials held onto Eaman’s passport for a good 20 minutes, an annoying, reason-less tactic we’ve heard they employ to mess with Americans in this post-Vietnam War era. When he finally got his passport back, Eaman joined me in line on the Laos side to get our visas.

But calling it a line is generous. It was more of a giant blob of Vietnamese and Laos people huddled together, each trying to bribe the officials so they can get his visa first. (We had to pay the official $1 extra each just ’cause.) This place was crazy. One woman was even even ejected from the line for trying to smuggle through her child.

But then, all of a sudden, as we waited for our visas — the only ones from our bus still waiting — we saw our teal blue bus go bye-bye. No panic. No shouting. We just thought, “Oh, that’s nice. Very fitting.”

We did try to tell a tour guide waiting for his group’s visas what happened, but he merely pointed in the direction of two motorbikes and said, “Pakse!!” Did he mean take two motorbikes to Pakse, which was still a good 6 or so hours by bus? Whatever. We jumped on the motorbikes, hoping they’d take us somewhere with an answer. As it turns out, our bus had left for lunch and had been waiting for us at a divey restaurant. When we arrived, the driver rushed us onto the bus. No lunch for us, of course. I barely had time for a bathroom stop.

I spent the rest of the ride flicking off ants and squeezing even further into my seat as people began to sit on our backpacks in the aisles (and step all over them with their shoes, gross!). We also stopped about 583 times to drop off goods (i.e. chickens) at various shops and pick up bags of rice and boxes that eliminated any false hope of leg room. I was never sure when we were actually Pakse, that is, until the bus driver shooed us off, left to find a taxi in the dark night on a random road by ourselves. We arrived in one piece, albeit ravenously hungry.

Ban Kong Lo to Vientiane or Scantily Clad Thai Girls Dancing on Cars. Everything about this ride was pretty comfortable: clean bus, empty enough so that Eaman and I had two seats each to ourselves and few to no stops. What’s the catch, you ask? Oh! You mean the X-rated music videos our young trio of bus drivers played?

To give you some background, buses in Laos love to play Thai karaoke music videos, preferably loudly and nonstop. That’s all fine and well — I even found a couple of the songs catchy — but then one bus driver kid inserted a new DVD. On it were videos a Ginuwine-wannabe Thai singer rapping — in a strip club, of course — about wrapping some lady’s legs (that bit was in English) around him and the other was taken presumably at an autoshow in Thailand, where Thai girls in bikinis and bras gyrated on cars to Pitbull and Flo-rida songs. The worst part? I had to sit through a replay of each.

Bus breadown x 3.