Travel Horror Story’s

[jamesintheworld]

I posted this on the BFC, not getting much of a response there so I’ll try here, where the real adventures hang out.

If anyone has an interesting, funny or sad Travel Horror Story that they would like to share post it here.

This is not the worst “Travel Horror Story” I have but it is one that pisses me off the most. It happened around 4 years ago when I was living and working in Doha, Qatar. Qatar is a little no-name country in the Middle East that happens to be sitting on the largest reserve of natural gas in the world. There are also a couple of US military bases there and they are one of the only Arab countries that lets the US attack other Moslem Arab countries from there country (Saudi Arabia also lets us).

A little background on Qatar:

Take a guess what the local government did when it began to make Billions and Billions of dollars in oil and gas revenues?

-Invest those Billions/Trillions of dollars into infrastructure, education, humanitarian aid, scientific research, social security, medical care and art to better there country and citizens for generations to come?

OR

-Spend it on buying 70 million dollar yachts and a half of a Billion on houses around the world for the Emir, put every citizen in the country on welfare so they will never work there entire life, give every citizen cash and land for every time they get married (up to 4, and marrying children is legal) encouraging them to have more and more children (because every male son gets a welfare check) thereby creating generations of citizens with no skills and no work ethics?

I’ll let you guess

Anyway off my soap box and on to my story:

I was following behind a friend of mine who I worked with in Qatar (on the way to work, we drove in pars for security reasons) when a car cut him off in traffic and almost forced him into another car, my friend then honked his horn at him (only 1 short honk), the driver of the car then started screaming and waving his hands for my friend to pull over. We just kept going and then out of nowhere the guy then started to ram my friend’s car several times (from the side and rear) and ended up driving him off the road. The driver of the other car (a local Arab) ran up to my friend’s car and opened the door and starting kicking him in the face, arms and legs. After barely managing to get out of his car my friend got out and pushed him away, the guy, who was maybe pushed back 1 foot started screaming bloody murder in Arabic, this guy was going berserk, crazy screaming at the top of his lungs like something horrible happened to him, flailing his arms, jumping up and down, screeching like a woman, totally freaking out!

At the same time this was happening about 10 other local Arabs pulled over, jumped out of there cars (all with there mobile phones glued to there ears) and started to “comfort” the guy freaking out. I knew this was going to be a BS situation and I was starting to feel uncomfortable with all those guys surrounding us, so I told my friend to get back in his car and take off to the base and we would contact the police from there. As soon as we got back in our cars all of the other Arab guys ran back to there cars and immediately blocked him in, I got a half a block before I realized he was stuck and got out and walked back.

The police finally arrived, and after talking to the crazy guy in Arabic for 3 minutes my friend was arrested. I tried to explain that my friend was attacked by the crazy guy but the cop wouldn’t listen (and he spoke perfect English).

My friend ended up being charged with assault and tossed in jail for 3 days wile we tried to get him bailed out. When they put him in his cell (that had 28 other people in it) the prison guard said to the other people in the cell “this guy is American, you can kill him if you want” (a Nepali in the same cell later translated it for him). At that moment about 10 Arab guys in the cell started beating him and tried to rape him. The only reason that he didn’t end up getting beaten worse and raped was the Nepali and Pilipino guys in the cell came to his rescue and protected him until we bailed him out.

At his trial the crazy Arab guy admitted that he rammed my friend’s car and kicked him in the face, he said he had to do it because my friend “insulted” him by honking his horn and he had to defend his honor. A few of the other Arab guys that pulled over that day also testified and each had a completely different story about what they saw, everything from my friend beat the crazy guy within an inch of his life to he was yelling insults about Islam to he was the one that rammed the crazy guy off the road for no reason. I wasn’t allowed to testify because the judge said my testimony couldn’t be trusted (end of explanation). Even though all of the testimony against my friend was obviously BS and the crazy guy admitted everything to that happened, my friend was convicted of assault and had to pay 10,000. Riyals to the crazy guy (or go to jail for 36 more days), pay for the repairs to his car and apologize to him.

And after everything was finally over and my friend thought he could finally get on with his life, get back to work and forget about the whole thing, the local US embassy steps in said that my friend had “embarrassed” America with his actions (WHAT?) and put pressure on the company that we work for (a US company) and the Commander of the base we work on (a US Base) to fire him.

As you can probably guess he was fired and shipped out of the country within 2 days, so much for taking care of our countries veterans.

The thing that really pissed everyone off was we told the US embassy everything that happened (my friend being rammed off the road, being assaulted, the guards telling other prisoners that they could kill him, beaten and assaulted in jail, no one allowed to testify in his defense) we even told them that the local government seized his US passport so he couldn’t leave the country before the trial (which is US property) and all they did is request that they give it back (they kept it anyway until after the trial and he paid the fine). Basically they didn’t do anything at all. And when the Embassy finally stepped in it was only to get an American fired!

All US embassy employees are only concerned about keeping there cushy jobs (expat package, houses, servants, drivers, expensive embassy parties) and kissing ass to there supervisors and the local government. They will not lift a single finger to help a US citizen, in fact I have never even heard of the US embassy ever helping out a US citizen in trouble.

The US embassy’s around the world sucks mad cock

[Lee Ridley]

I read that story on the BFC.
Crazy stuff.
If it had been me, I would have beaten the Arab guy to a bloddy pulp and would probably have wound up with a long prison sentence for my trouble.

One of my closest friends, the guy who came to Iraq with me last year, is flying to Doha this Saturday for a job interview. I’ve showed him this story, just so he knows what he could be getting himself into.

[jamesintheworld]

Just avoid the locals and you will be fine, I actually really liked living there (besides the locals), tell him to PM me if he wants to ask me any questions.

Are you in Iraq now?

[Stiv]

Does bieng an American in Iran with little or no cash and or ways to get any and a rather hefty hotel bill count?

Best,
Stiv

[Lee Ridley]

@jamesintheworld wrote:

Are you in Iraq now?

No, I was in and out in a couple of days, as it was a last minute thing that I squeezed in while chasing nomads and PKK around East Turkey.

Was tempted to go back this year, but I’m really beginning to zoom in on an October trip to Kabul now.

For the time being, I’ll endure the 9-5 ratrace in the UK.

[RiverRat]

that gov’t services rendered are inversly proportional to the amount of taxes one pays. The balance point being 0. The only dealings I ever had with a US Embassy employee were pleasant, took place in Jakarta and the woman was Indonesian by birth, Naturalized US Citizen. Speaks volumes.

[Author]

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