Travel Discoveries/Noticings

I have some general observations from my Middle East travels to share:

1) Think the Middle East is anti-American? Think again.
My American passport was like carrying an All-Access Pass to the world. Need to get into Lebanon? No visa necessary with an American passport. Need to get through customs quickly? Oh, you have an American passport, the line isn't for you, just go to the front. Line is too long here? Make your own.
-Typical conversation with an Egyptian shopkeeper in southern Egypt:
"Where from?"
"America"
"Oh, Obama good man!" or "Obama is my cousin!"
-On the bus to Dahab last week, I was sitting next to an Egyptian about my age who could barely contain his excitement when we went through a checkpoint and I showed the police my American passport. "I've never sat next to an American before!"
-On the way from Dahab to Mt. Sinai, at every checkpoint our mini-bus driver said "3 Americans" immediately after saying where we were going and only a few times mentioned the other citizenships in the mini-bus (French, Canadian, Korean...).
-Overall, telling people you're from the US generates excitement or at least positive reactions (maybe because they expect that you're willing to spend excessive amounts of money in the case of shopkeepers and such) and we never encountered any negative feelings when we mentioned we were American.

2) Related to #1. Middle Eastern countries trust foreigners, not their own citizens. A foreign passport (especially from the US or Europe) gets only a cursory glance, whereas local IDs and paperwork warrant a closer look.

3) Birds of a feather flock together. And by birds of a feather, I mean white people. It's amazing; no matter where we travel, we find other white people: Americans, Australians, Germans... They'll just walk up and start talking to you (and we do the same).

4) Everyone speaks English and assumes you do as well. Even in Beirut, where I thought I'd be able to use French, everyone just spoke to me in English. While my French and Arabic training did come in handy a few times, for the most part it's difficult to convince people to speak to you in anything but English. Middle Easterners and Europeans from non-English-speaking countries alike all converse in English as the common language if they're speaking to anyone who's first language isn't the same as theirs. It makes Americans seem pathetic in our linguistic skills. However, it is nice to know that English seems to be essentially the universal language. Makes traveling a bit easier.


That's all for now; maybe some more later as I think of it.
Kevin