Haanism

I shall forget all silly stuff about work, and enrich my blog with nice travel-related posts.

Last Friday, as usual, my lunch was together with the engineering and developer guys in my company. One of them, Jaeson, is going to Pakistan soon, and we talked about this topic. SK, Kwan and I visited the country before.


When I told them about my extended stay in Islamabad (this hyperlink is photo album), and my friends there brought me around, their responses were - "huh, how come you have friends in Pakistan as well?"

This is because of couchsurfing. Prior to my departure, few people had offered me a place to stay, and were willing to host me. That's already not my first time surfing at people's couch. Among all, I chose to stay with Shahla and Peter. All the others were local Pakistani guys, where some of their "very welcoming" emails actually scared me a little.

There was one already claiming me as his "good friend" while sending email to me via couchsurfing website. Another one, kept texting me and asked, how I felt about their country, Pakistan... I really ran out of idea of how to answer him.

Finally, after my colleagues left Islamabad (back to Malaysia, Hong Kong and Karachi respectively), I went to Peter and Shahla's place. If you look at their couchsurfing profile, you will find this "occupation: travellers". How cool is it!! During my stay there, we talked about travelling. They travel mostly on bicycle, and plane is what they hate the most. They didn't have much ideas about Malaysia, but they knew there are a lot of great dive sites in Malaysia.



They are also holding citizenship of 3 countries (Pakistani, Canadian and English - if not mistaken). During my time in Pakistan last year, they were trying to earn more money to continue their journey. Nowadays they are in Chengdu, China. Prior to China, they had conquered India.

Shahla's dad was a doctor in Pakistan, but is now residing in Canada. The place I went was her dad's house. They hosted a lot of backpackers from all over the world while being requested. Most of the backpackers stopped by Pakistan to settle their visas to India.

I remember I arrived at their place while feeling unwell. When they brought me to dinner, I had no appetite at all, hence taking some orange juice and fries only. Who knows, I threw up before we finished the dinner. Shahla passed me some pills and I had an early and sound sleep that night. The next day, I woke up feeling energetic again.

"It's okay, almost everyone came to our place with an uncomfortable stomach." they said.


I could not imagine how would I be if I was not with them. At the guest house I stayed with colleagues, the staff there did not really understand English.

Recently, I received an email from them, telling me about the updates in their website, Culture Quest. Personally, I feel the layout of the site and presentation of articles can still be improved to enhance reading pleasure. However, the contents are unbeatable.


They are not very much older than me, but I don't think at their age, I'd have traveled as many places just like them.

"Our journey still goes on and now we are back on bicycles. Peace."

This was how they ended the email.

P/S: There are nice places in Pakistan. I read from books before, and Shahla and Peter also have their Pakistan & India photo album here.