Chak Chak and the Caravan

Before Islam arrived here, there was Zoroastrianism, which is the world's first monotheistic religion that have apparently gone onto influence Islam, Christianity and Judaism in their later forms. There are just over 300,000 Zoroastrians that live in Iran, most of them based in the Yazd area. It is more or less more tolerated than other minor religions in Iran. One would find another sizable population in India, of which many religious refugees had fled to during the revolution.

The desert road out to Chak Chak was absolutely mind blowing. Imagine driving from the built up dusty city onto a never ending highway, and onto flat desert plains where houses disappeared one by one. And suddenly, out of nowhere, craggy mountain mud hills appear so tall and towering, first a few, then a whole mountain range. Some of it dusted in snow, others just brown and barren. As we arrived at Chak Chak, the mountain range which housed the Zoroastrian Temple, the pollution haze cleared a little to reveal a beautiful clear sky. Brown and blue cut into each other so sharply but so naturally.













This is such an unusual temple. A spotlessly polished silver gate opened up into a natural stone cave that had a man-made marble floor, and the 'foyer' around the altar was also partially man-made, furnished with simple seating, and a few religious symbols and pictures hung around the top as if its like a family lounge room. Natural spring water is splurging from the top of the opening of the cave and washes through the walls of the cave. Drips of water rains down into the cave, and carefully caught by metal bowls strategically placed under the droplets, each making a clear soothing sound - and so a lovely rhythm is built up making a very natural, continuous meditative tune. In the middle of the shrine a gumtree brunch is incensed and smoke slowly being released out of it, whirling up the cave and into the opening at the top which a beam of sun ray casts in.

According to legend, Sassanian princess Nikbanou was fleeing Arab invaders in 640 AD, and had fled to these mountains. She threw a staff at the wall and water cam pouring out, and had been dripping ever since. Chak Chak is basically the onomatopoeia of 'drip drip' in the local language. This sacred site has been one of the most important Zoroastrian pilgrimages ever since. The water is 'recycled' by the thinking modern followers, and transported to a tank and available through taps just a few meters and our driver Lorian, who is a Zoroastrian himself, tells us that the spring water has medicinal purposes for his sore back.



Its so chilled out here. While I admit I am a little out of tune with spirituality these days, it is an absolutely fantastic spot to relax and think here. The view into the desert from such a high vantage point is vast and awesome. The cool breeze that blows over these cliffs rolled past my face, and birds dance through the branches of the eucalyptus trees that line the steps to the temple. I took out a small envelope of thin short hair from my pocket, unwrapped them and blew them into the air, making a wish. I could gaze into the desert like this forever, I really can.

We drove passed a Zoroastrian Village on the way back in, Lorian stopping the car to greet a few elderly locals that must have been relatives. They were dressed in elaborate colourful but still long and covering attire, with head wraps that are significantly different to their Muslim counterparts. The older lady's eyes were suffering from cataract and her wrinkles so deep set from the desert sun that it looked like a landscape itself, her smile cracked like a long thin river...

Yazd & dual cooling the Oasis

The night melted into dawn as I drifted in and out of Travel-Calm induced sleep aboard the Ya Hussein! bus that is strapped with disco lights on the front and painted with giant wings spitting fire on its side. The TV above the driver is blank and black. The purple-themed Iranian art-house movie about a man finding love after his young family perished in a car crash seemed to have closed in a very melodramatic end. The passengers on the bus slept like babies, and the soft dawn light warming on their faces made them look even more calm and content. Through my sleep dusted eyelids, the landscape was like a caramel river of a lumpy soft brown sand, some small hills dusted with snow on top of the peaks, and a pinkish orange dawning sky sat low and drifting on the land, densely but softly like a mist, or like strawberry and peach whipped cream drizzled but not stirred onto this luscious sweet tasting plate of wondrous never-ending indulgence.

Concrete buildings and murals of the Iran-Iraq War martyrs appear on the sides of the road again as we pulled into Yazd.

Yazd is a town deep in the ‘livable’ part of the desert wedged between the vast Dasht-e Kavir desert in the North and the Dasht-e Lut in the East. It is claimed to be on of the oldest living towns in the world, ie. it has been apparently continuously inhibited for about 7000 years. With its strategic position in the desert, it thrived as a major commercial centre as generations of camel caravans would stop by here for refreshments and trading in its caravansaries. A very vibrant carpet weaving heritage and industry developed (both historically and presently) and later became a major stop on Marco Polo’s Silk Route linking central Asia to the Middle East.

The Yazd old town is a mud-brick built maze that is unique in its look, feel and appeal. It really does amaze an outsider to think that material clumped with mud, water and straw and sun-dried, and pretty much like ginger-bread, could last 7000 years – but it has because it is geographically and climatically perfect for it. The lanes wind around and around, sometimes turn into tunnels under arches, sometimes leading to public courtyards or gardens shared by the townspeople. There are door ways randomly opening everywhere. Some are elaborately carved wooden gateways, some are rusty painted metal frames, some are openings leading down dark stairwells to qanats – the underground wells which connect to a complicated underground irrigation system (see below). Its not hard to climb up to a high vantage point and admire the hundreds of badgers – the large wind towers rising above the domed roofs that reminded me of graceful ancient Greek pillars.


This desert town has, for all those thousands of years, used (and still uses) this fascinating and clever dual system of qanats and badgirs to support their livelihoods in such a harsh desert environment. I know I have an unhealthy penchant for Wikipedia, but this great link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat and diagram really does explain the system very well. The badgirs act as self cooling device for both the desert houses and the qanats that provide the household, the town and its agriculture watered. It really is the perfect and most environmentally friendly way of surviving the desert weather. The qanats are vastly networked with the irrigation system of several adjoining towns and they can be up to 50kms long. But with the changing climate and rainfall and also the ability and willingness of the modern generations of keeping them clean and networked, the qanats are waning very quickly in Iran.

We relaxed Hotel Vally and later Silk Road Hotel, typical traditional desert houses (khan-e sonnati) in this area that is elaborately decorated and architecturally designed to suit the hot summer and cold winters, and to work with the qanats and badgirs. Typically it is a square shaped house with an open air court yard with a pool in its middle linking to the qanats, that cools the yard. In the winter large canopies would be erected to cover the top as a temporary ‘roof’, which prevents central heating from leaking from the court yard. The sides of the yard is furnished with large day-beds, sort of flat couches lined with carpet and big comfortable pillows where you can sip tea, eat meals and smoke a shisha while admiring the pool and the botanies planted in gorgeous clay pots around the garden
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Later in the afternoon we met up with Saeed, a middle-aged man we met in Tehran who invited us to visit him and his garment factory in Yazd.
Saeed kindly invited his English teacher, a young Iranian guy to help him show us around town first, but it was a stereotypical lost-in-translation/cultural difference sort of situation where we really struggled to follow the commentary as we visited one place to another. We experienced what it might have been like to be a woman in Iran, out and about town with male relatives, completely excluded from ‘male conversation’, and expected to be ready in waiting, as Saeed and his friend engaged in very long conversations with the master/host of the bathhouses and hotels we were taken to, but of course out of politeness we sat patiently pretending that we were OK.

We drove quite a while to Saeed’s factory, just in the edge of town. It was an intricate and very compact medium scaled factory, of approximately 30 or so staff during the day, and manned 24 hours a day. The complex had an array of functions of threading, dying, weaving, pressing and packaging. The thick long rolls of material that is finally produced were mainly for couch and cushion covers, and is part of Yazd reputation for being the region’s central garment and silk production.

Saeed actually plans to set up Persian teaching courses in Europe in a few years time as a ‘side project’, so to thank him for making such a huge effort and taking time out during his busy day, we’ve promised to write him a few poems. (He’s into poems.)
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(Day Trip out to Meybod - another nearby oasis town)










(a pic of me a the bottom of an ancient ice-house - ie. giant fridge of the past, basically an upside down igloo)

Cowgirls at the Fire Temple

In Iran, Cowgirls climb hills, shoot pidgeons, shake minarets, mock cowboys that tries to teach them the right way to pose for photos, and disobey lots of laws. They sweat, they swear, they spit, and they piss standing up, all while wearing black headscarves.

Esfahan III - A Wild Teenage Joyride

So we were walking around near Khaju Bridge, completely mesmerized by the romantic glows and shadows of this unusual and ecstatically beautiful scene, when out of the blue there was a bit of a kafuffle on the boardwalk above us about 10 meters away. A few cops were yelling at someone in a parked car. Down near us, three girls in their late teens looked at the scene with dread in their eyes, and retreated towards the bridge. We tried to ask them what the scene was all about, but the language barrier proved to be too much. They gestured to us that it was OK and there were nothing to worry about.

The girls became quite curious about us, and we started an extended conversation mostly based on signing and basic Farsi vs basic English. We established things like age, country of origin, and occupation (“Typist” was quite adequate for me for the time being, and “Beautician” and “Students” were established as theirs) and why our skin were the colours that they were. “Hot in Thailand yes? Lot of Sun? Oh Iran is so cold and I hate my headscarf!”. One of them pretended to tear her headscarf off in a bit of theatrical frustration showing perfect white teeth.

They were quite excitable young women, shrieking at every answer they were able to get out of us. They were very ‘loudly dressed’ in Iran terms, the ‘head-girl’, Marideh, 18, the Beautician, was in leopard printed headscarf. Arizeh, the youngest one at 17, was in multicoloured checkered scarf, and Razia, Arizeh’s big sister at 22, who was getting married next Monday ‘to a very nice man’ (that took about 5 minutes to establish) was in a bright yellow scarf so small in width that only covered half of her head.

“Come Drive With My Caaaaaar!” Marideh announced. “Come Driyyyyyyyve!!” She gestured with an imaginary gear stick. “Money from Beauty Bar!!”. They were probably from upper-middleclass families, and she lived very generously. So it wasn’t hard to convince us that they could show us a fantastic time.

So off we went squeezing into her little silver two-door car (a KIA I believe). The eye contact Shanti and I exchanged just as we hopped in was rather quite priceless. It was doubt, excitement, and anticipation all rolled into one. We were verging on risking our lives just for a very random thrill of riding in a Teenage Iranian Girl’s car.

We took three or four loops around town, Marideh speeding, hooting, and yelling out stuff out the window, crunching on the gears and the breaks almost sending us flying a few times. Typical Iranian driving etiquette I suppose?



“Iran Goooood! Thailand Gooooooood!” (yes I know she was meant to say Taiwan)
“We loooooooooooovveee boooyyyyyzzzz!!!”
“Eeeeeeeee yaaaaaah!” “Hoooot hooooot hooooooot!”
“Iran Very Very Good” “Veerrrry very very very verrrryyyy gooooooood!”
We couldn’t stop laughing and occasionally joining int - it was such a bizarre situation full of unpredictable outbursts.

She then parked the car behind a group of boys around a very flash sports car on the side of the road. All of them wearing tight t-shirts and smart cut jeans, their hair smeared in grease. They checked the girls out flirtatiously and the girls hooted at them, giggling. Then without further interactions (don’t they swap numbers here, for example?), we drove off again. What the point of that exercise was I had no idea.

We stopped again next to a line of fast food joints, and we explained that we had eaten. But the girls insisted on getting us something, so two of them got off leaving one to ‘baby sit’ us, and came back producing bags of potato chips and some pastry. “Goooooood Goooooood!” Marideh licking her fingers gesturing us to eat (and I checking her pupils to see if they were somewhat diluted…) We munched on, expecting another announcement of some sort.

“And now, 9 o’clock P-M, must go home, my mother worry.”
And with that, they dumped us back at the bridge where they picked us up and drove off again. The sound of the accelerator bumbling into the traffic. Somewhat speechless, but mostly amused and exhilarated, we walked home to the hostel.

Esfahan II - Half The World

Esfahan is a breath of fresh air after the smoggy, congested and wee-bit-suffocating feel of metropolitan Tehran. The city centre is busy but not closely built up, and there are push bikes on the roads and the locals wander without the stress that’s much more apparent on the faces of the Tehranians. While the pace is a lot more relaxed here, one can tell that people are more conservative here, too. There are more women wearing full chadors (although in the whole time in Iran we never saw full-on veils over faces that covers even the eye area with a mesh like weaving, the most restrictive are just these black chadors that exposes the face) and even those without a full chador are in very dark colours, unlike many of their more flamboyant counterparts that roam the metro in Tehran. There are also many more clergymen here in their designated religious attire walking along the streets, and would occasionally disappear into small mosques dotted through the winding streets. And we certainly go a lot more attention for being foreigners, a lot of it unwanted from the young men and touts that hung around the tourist spots.

















Esfahan a is a delightful concoction of both grand celebrated heritage palaces and mosques, surrounded by the most simple down to earth small-town life of modestly kept housing and traditional trades, supported by traditional markets (I’m trying to avoid the word ‘ghetto’ here…) and quirky little teahouses. (Here is inside the Azadegan Teahouse – the most indignant thing is that we were made to sit in the ‘backroom’, away from the men)


Esfahan is undoubtedly the ‘Jewel of Ancient Persia’, and earned the title of ‘Half the World’ simply because there is so much to see here, and it is now a UNESCO Heritage Site. There are a number of the Persian world’s best monumental stuff that’s built and kept here, including the beautiful (but these days slightly derelict) Chehel Sotun Palace with the amazingly elaborate wall paintings, and a collection of painstakingly designed and decorated mosques such as Jameh Mosque within the Old Town/ Bazaar area, the Imam Mosque, and the Sheik Lotfollah Mosque set out in the broad, open, majestic and geometrically well calculated Imam Khomeini Square, which leads towards the opening of the Bazaar, with an impressive wall painting depicting the mongol war on the main entrance. This is mostly thanks to Shah Abbas I, who reigned from 1587, transformed the Persian empire, with Esfahan as its capital, and built or planned most of its major monuments that still stands today. He also invested in carpet weaving techniques that had been passed around the Middle East and Europe because it was so advanced at the time. There will be an exhibition from 19 February 2009 on Shah Abba's world at the British Museum if anyone’s in London and interested.


Another major draw card to Esfahan is its ancient bridges that lie across the Zayandeh River. In the early evening we strolled up the neon-lit and busy shopping strip of Chahar Bagh Abbasi to the beautifully lit Si-o-Seh Bridge (meaning Bridge of 33 Arches). In the dark the lit arch’s reflections in the water glowed mystically, the reflection lighting the dark water like candles that flickered in a light breeze. It was the time of the evening where people are out and about for strolls before the Iranian late dinner. Teenagers ducked in and out of the vicarious arches (any railing would have completely ruined its aesthetics), their silhouettes dashing across the glowing background like an Indonesian shadow puppet show.










The second one along, the Ferdosi Bridge towards the East is a modern styled vehical bridge lit with blue light. Khaju Bridge, the third one from Si-o-Seh, which acts as a dam, was in similar style as first bridge, but had walled middle sections which were more elaborately built, and larger barge at the bottom, where pedestrians can also walk in and out of. A man was standing inside the arch, singing a wistful slow song. There was a small gathering of people on the steps, and of course we were unsure of what the nature of the meeting was, but the speaker was a very young women, most likely a university student, her voice passionate and resonating.

Nothing was going to prepare us for what was about to happen next…

Esfahan

still going well and finally getting a bit cold, Esfahan is a lot more laid back than Tehran of course and finally feeling like I'm on holiday. Getting a little tired of my 'black is the new black' attire and increasingly skint, but otherwise the morale is high. v slow and limited net access and gladly no evil facebook so will update later.

A Traveller's Prayers

Before you cross the road, say “Insha‘Alla” – (ie. God willing) a phrase to involve God’s blessing before you take on a dangerous venture.

After you cross the road, say “Masha’Alla” – (ie. God has willed it) a phrase to thank God for blessing you in completing the task

A Turbah - a clay piece which Shiite Muslims use to press their foreheads on during the daily prayer. We often found these placed inside hotel rooms, a bit like how the more traditional hotels in the West would hold a copies of the bible in the rooms.

A Political Culture Shock

On our last evening we walked past the “US Den of Espionage”, the former US Embassy in the middle of one of the busiest commercial areas in Tehran – now a training centre for various military units. Its a large brick compound with 3 meter high barricades on the outside, with guards patrolling every few meters. The US emblem that was suppose to be sealed out on the side walls had been torn off the bricks, but its pretty obvious what had been there before.. This was where 52 American Embassy staff was captured and held for 444 days between 1979 and 1981 at the hight of the Iranian Revolution. The outside walls were painted with some extremely interesting, fascinating, quite good quality but blatantly disturbing propaganda murals with anti-US and patriotic propaganda (I didn't dare take pictures, but here are some), such as a paintings of the Goddess of Liberty as an evil skeleton, several ripped USA flags and various picture of Khomeini in heroic poses, with a clear and concise ‘Down With USA’ in English painted on the very front door. This is just like the public mutilation of a dead enemy’s carcass after a victorious battle, looted and then hung on display, all hatred of a nation dispensed upon it, compulsorily. Gratification? Revenge? Indifference? Debt? Inheritance?

We were booked on the overnight train to Esfahan, and we spent an hour or so in the station waiting lounge waiting for our train to get there. The wide-screened television was broadcasting an image I am not completely unfamiliar with, but became suddenly weary and intense about: A Palestinian city in chaos, grey clouds of smoke rushing into the sky, debris across the street, ambulances shriek about. The people I saw in there suddenly looked like everyone else that’s sitting around me, and everyone that I’d rubbed shoulders with in the last few days in Tehran: handsome lean young men in sweat-shirts, jeans and sneakers, middle-aged women covered in hijab and long coat, small children wide-eyed and vulnerable, skinny old men with silver moustaches… suddenly displaced on the dusty street, some lying in pools of blood, screaming, some hurrying the injured onto ambulances, others crying over a dead loved-one on a stretcher. Then came the tightly wrapped body bags in an angry public funeral procession, little bundles, big bundles, white bundles, green and black and red bundles. These images are one sided, as one would expect, but refreshingly so. Graphic, unforgiving, the closest camera screens to tragedy I have ever seen... children's severed limbs, a dead man's eyes piercing the screen, the haunting sound of wailing. Then familiar nouns flash across the bottom of the screen in English, – bombs, death, condemnation, Israel, guns, soldiers, Hammas, rockets, food, aid, blood... Gaza. and then the slogans appeared across the bottom of the screen - US DOES NOT STOP ISRAEL. ABBAS HAS NO HOPE OF LEADERSHIP. OUTRAGE FOR GAZA BROTHERS. JUSTICE TO MURDERERS OF GAZA'S CHILDREN. DESTRUCTION TO ISRAEL!

Sitting here in this crowded waiting lounge, it just felt far too close to home. It can happen right here, right now, and I wouldn't be surprised. I looked around here into hundreds of pairs of enraged eyes. The station roof may as well have come down now.

All good

Hi Folks

Quick message to say that Shanti and I are both well in Tehran, having a blast, slightly crazy times but hey, there's nothing more thrilling than rolling downhill in angel gear.

WaWa

Not Without My Ticket

We went on a horrendous wild goose chase today, one that’s only able to be represented by a surreal short film akin to something like Run Lola Run meets The Amazing Race. Our objective was more or less along the lines of getting out of Iran in any way, shape or form in approximately 1.5 week’s time and before either of our visas run out. Although neither of us are quite as desperate as the characters in Not Without My Daughter, and our enemies are filthy, incompetent airline agents and taxi sharks. ,

The reasons why we’ve had to do this mad dash is because we found out that the same train back to Van has been sold out, and much of the rest of the domestic trains and flights that we need to get around with could only be booked inside Iran. And yesterday being Friday, the Islamic holy day of the week, of course nothing was open or available for any of this to be done. What we didn’t expect was a total administrative nightmare, because there is no such thing as a ‘one-stop travel agency’ in Iran (and Tehran, the capital of all places). For example, domestic flights/trains has to be booked at different offices to international flights/trains, and you can’t book trains and flights at the same place. In some cities, you can only get trains that depart from that city when you get there, and in other cities, you can’t get the train ticket at the train station, you have to go to a travel agent. And in other cities you can’t go to a travel agent to get the train ticket, you have to go to the train station. And the train station can be so tiny that its only open an hour before the train departure. Intercity buses are slightly different however, because its semi-privately run, and there are a thousand different ways you can get them, and there are a thousand different people that will try and sell a bus ticket to you. And of course everything had to be paid in cash, and you can’t get cash just anywhere, you have to go across town to a specific bank and then come back. So we tried booking online, and guess what? Finding an internet café proved to be the biggest nightmare of all. Its not that they don’t exist, its just that no one knows how to explain to us exactly how to find one. And lets not bring up the airline that won’t refund our ticket even though it said on the ticket that the only place we can get refund is the HQ in Tehran. RRRRRHHHHHHAAAAAAAA!!!!

At the end of the day however, I did manage to figure out why I come across like an enraged energiser bunny all the time: I spend 30% of my life working, another 30% sleeping, and another 30% wriggling my way through incompetent bureaucratic set ups, and that is why I need to live to the max at 120%.

Two Millionaires in Tehran

We checked into a room in a dingy budget hotel in the panel-beaters area near Imam Khomeini Square, (as we subsequently found out, every city’s main square and main road and any major landmarks such as airports, hospitals, schools, parks etc are all named after the dictator.. ). At the only bank in the precinct where we can change money, we exchanged just over 3 million Rials each with the equivalent of just over 200 pounds. Shanti balanced the wads of note with both pride and amusement in the photos. 14,000 Rials is worth about a pound at the moment, and while everything is dirt cheap compared to the UK, it’s the thought of spending over 1000 of anything on the smallest thing like an orange or a bottle of water just is a scary mind-blowing concept. And the surreal idea of having 3 million to spend in the next week and a half is just quite an unusual situation, I suppose.

It’s a sunny, beautiful day, a total contrast to rain and snow stricken Turkey. Tehran sits comfortably under the magnificently snow dusted Alborz Mountain range, and today the peaks just glowed astonishingly majestically under the winter sun. Its perfect strolling weather apart from chocking fumes. The streets were busy and crammed with mostly rusty-down-stricken vehicles that would have gone to the waste dump twenty years ago. But the city is fairly modern and commercially quite active, full of busy small family-run style shops with rusty door frames, flashing signs big and small all in Arabic, mostly with young men who are smart-casually dressed and smiling to show content urban lives. I expected to see a little bit more poverty than it had seemed to be presented here, and a bit more of a traditional Old-town look but it was just a stereotypical busy city resembling parts of Delhi, Bangkok or even the old Taipei of my childhood.

We walked towards the University to get to the Art Gallery. Along Ferdosi Square and North-Eastwards the city becomes even more vibrant and glossy, and quite liberal. We walked past a cute little ‘lovers’ park’ on a side street where young couples would sit together with their backs against the street to squeeze in that little bit of privacy forged outside a private home. This seems to be the area where the young and beautiful gather for drinks and chats after lectures. They are all so gorgeous looking here - the young men are pretty well groomed, but quite monotonously dressed (until you get to the art gallery)… many of the girls are in colourful headscarves that would slip half way down their head, skinny jeans and funky sneakers defying the dreary look their more conservative counter parts are encouraged to take. The quite glamorous girls covered their faces in heavy makeup, the eye-liners and mascaras and blotchy lipstick completely covering the presumably young tender skins that lied underneath, and huge combed back fringe (think Crystal of BigBrother04 in Australia…) they resemble Amy Winehouse in a Bridget Bardot outfit… or does Amy Winehouse resemble them?

In the speedy but crowded metro station, heaps of locals voluntarily approach us and help us out, we obviously just looked so helpless with the language barrier. We were absolutely amazed by the amount of curiosity and helpfulness, especially from the women, but also level of English spoken as compared to say Van in Turkey. The best thing about the Tehran metro is that there are women’s only carriages at the front and rare of the train, and not only is it less crowded, its just a fascinating way to see women interact without the presence of men – an entirely female space of community and networks that’s hard to observe elsewhere. We got approached a few times, without men glaring at them the women are more confident and warm. On one occasion when we asked one girl where the best place to eat around the area was, the entire carriage ended up giving a range of advice and several different animated conversation ensured about the best place to go, and we ended up with several maps and written instructions to find the best dizi in town. They were also very helpful with our dresscode – one warned shanty that her coat had ‘rode up her pants’ and one other told me that I didn’t have to wear my scarf so tight and so low down my forehead, unless I wanted to be considered a religious zealout…

In the rush hour the traffic is horrendous but the neon lights come on and the atmosphere is almost festive, people out and about in snack bars or tea houses for a social gossip over a cup of tea and a puff of shisha before they all disappear home for the evening meal. Apart from on and off duty soldiers in uniform everywhere you go, busy corners of traffic cops everywhere, stopping from crossing the road or flagging down a taxi when its perfectly safe to do so but they just want a power trip, reminding me very much of Beijing.

After our evening meal of kebabs and salad, a light Hong Kong martial arts movie played on TV with Persian dubbed over, can you imagine how hilarious it all turns out? I approached reception with a few kong fu punches as a joke. This created much amusement for the boys crowded at reception to watch TV, who decided it was a good idea to prank call us for the rest of the evening. Live and learn…