All about Pakistan--By Yee

My impression to Pakistan is very good, I love this country.

People

I think it is not that dangerous as people think in Pakistan. Most citizens live in the city just like you and me living here. You do find army in some important area (e.g. US embassy), but there were no fighting/gun shooting/bombs…… on the street.

Actually this happened a lot in our trip, in Karachi you seldom see foreigners (including Westerners and other Asians) on the street as it is not a tourism city, and as the place we visited are places that tourists seldom go, it make people more interested on us.
But they were not staring at you, instead they seems so happy to see us. The reason behind maybe is because we are Chinese. The relation between Pakistan and China is very good, and Pakistani love Chinese people. One typical example is that one of the CCP (Cetacean Conservation Pakistan) team member Shoaib told us that when he was small he looked a bit like Chinese, and his classmates like to called him “Chinese’, and he told us that he loves this nickname! On the street many people asked if we can take a photo with them, or shake hands…. Just like POP STARS!

People were are very nice. They would not stare at you, smiling is the language. By the way Urdu and Sindi are the common local languages. However, as Pakistan was a British colony, and English are taught in school. Many people actually know English that can communicate with you quite well.


Food
Food, curry seems not that common as we think. (I did not have any curry in my whole trip!!!) People there usually have meat cooked with spice that are a bit spicy, served with fried rice, or Pakistani bread, or even plain yogurt(Yes, yogurt, it matches the dishes that are salty in taste, one time I had half a big cup of yogurt with the chicken dishes, taste good!) There are many different kinds of bread that we didn’t tried all of them. The most common one is Roti, that bread made me feel full when I just had half of it. Local restaurant also provide some Chinese dishes! We had tried them before, it seems like Pakistani dishes rather than a Chinese dishes…but they are nice! There are also some international restaurants like Mcxxx, KXC, and Pizza Hxt. As it is a Muslim country, neither pork nor alcohol could be consumed in the country. And beef is also not very popular as there are some Indus in the country. Chicken is the most common dishes, as lamb are expensive and fish are limited to the coastal area. By the way, their BBQ are very nice! The desert Kulfi is a must try if you love desert like ice-cream.

Having dinner

My favourite--Kulfi, an ice-cream like

Clothes
Men are free to wear anything they like. Traditional clothes, t-shirts, shirts, jeans, suits… all kinds of thing. But for women they can only wear traditional clothes with scarf around their head. (it depends on their own to see if they really want to cover their whole head or face.) so one funny thing you can see in the market is that it is dominant by men’s clothes. (by the way, my clothes which are a bit boyish, and my short hair without covering made many people think that I am a guy……)

Vehicles
Every vehicle is a piece of art work. People painted their bus/lorry/truck with picture and many different color, it is interesting to look at them one by one. One more thing that made it special is that people really mad every very good use of their vehicles. They tried to put as many people as they can into a bus, so it is very common to see people hanging out the bus or sitting on the top of the bus. (noodle and I love watching these when we were traveling on the WWF vehicles on the street.) Trucks are also full of goods. You can find that they have really good skills in packing their goods onto the truck, they won’t waste any space.

People ride on a bus

A truck that full of bananas

Language
Urdu is a national language in Pakistan. Another local language Sindhi which is a bit less common in Karachi.

A lot of people in the city know English, at least they know some simple English wihich you can communicate with them quite easily. English actually is the official language in Pakistan and so people learn English in school since they were small. Actually the use of English as an official language may relate to the history as Pakistan was a British colony and became independent in 1940.

Some simple Urdu
'Assalaam Alaykum' - Hello (literally meaning 'may peace be on you')

‘Kia Haal hain?’- How are you?

'Shukria' - Thank you

'Khuda Hafiz' - Goodbye (literally meaning 'may God take care of you')