This was exactly what I was thinking. All of them have been very nice and with this blog are likely to get into trouble. He could have told the same tale but anonymized things and definitely not post a photo of Irlan when he requested not to.
It appears that this adventure happened ~6-7 years ago. Folks bent the rules for him, but its not like their bosses haven't ALSO done the exact same thing (and probably more so) throughout their careers. I seriously doubt anyone is getting "in trouble".
Bribing and twisting rules is "a thing" in some places that is part of the normal functioning of society. Is anyone _REALLY_ going to be shocked in Khazakhstan?
The article is a nice contrast to his dehumanizing police experience in SF.
This is crazy because I did not get this impression at all. Being rational and clean-cut and descriptive does not an asshole make. I mean seriously, if THIS is your definition of "asshole..."
But I can't help but now wonder if his mere being just triggers vastly different things in people unfortunately (such as instant hatred of "tech elite" by SFPD cops in the San Francisco piece he wrote).
Try spending even a night in a U.S. jail, or worse yet, any considerable amount of time in a US jail while awaiting trail, and ONLY THEN can you appreciate how easy he got off. Before reading the article, my gut told me that he was going to get it much harder in Russia. I was surprised to find out how humanely he was treated compared to the way we treat suspects/inmates in the U.S.
He's actually a really nice and interesting guy around a lot of SF communities. He has definitely traveled a lot and has tons of other great stories too.
The "situations" in the first part of the story, I felt like he was just acting strategically and smart (impressive even, I'm not quite that forward-thinking). Because he did't know yet if these people are helpful or just trying to screw him out of as much $100's as possible and then let him hang.
But after the rest of the story, those guys helping him, drinking with him, showing him a good time (probably because life can be boring there and hanging out with a foreigner was an enervating experience for them too?) and greasing a few wheels for him (the "lenient judge" and possibly some other things he doesn't know about), I felt a bit different.
He was carrying $160 all the time, while Irlan paid for everything (probably not very much in dollars, but still). Some guy needed a spot for $6.5 to carry him to the end of the month, that says something about how far $160 goes in that country. At the end when Irlan said "it's gonna be boring without you", he knew he was free and could have wired himself another $200 later with relative ease (or maybe not? I'm not sure). I think at the very least he could have given Irlan some money/tip for all the effort, lunch, coffee, drinks? I mean, now that you know you're no longer in a complex negotiation / bribing situation with this person (so the cards are more open), he did go the extra mile, spent his own money even (while in the end, the author spent .. $0 ??? or did I miss something, he did say he got the $100 back). Say $50, that he'd otherwise spend on a single night out in SF, would mean a LOT more to this guy, so why not just do it? He'd earned it yes?
Could be some kind of cultural differences though. The author seems to know the culture of the area really well, so maybe it's something obvious. Maybe Irlan would be insulted getting such a large sum for just being hospitable. OTOH maybe Irlan hoped all this extra effort would earn him the $100 deal he couldn't fulfil earlier. Or maybe during all the "bonding" the author had been hinting he was a stranded student with zero money left and therefore they felt pity on him, so he didn't dare to break that character and suddenly producing $50 cash to give away (but Irlan knew he still carried that $100 at least).
Or maybe, the author's bottom-line thinking about this was, I did my best to stick to the (admittedly, draconian) rules, bad shit (aka adventure) still happened, so I really oughtn't face any consequences at all (except the part where he got free lunch, drinks and a tour).
At least he deleted the pictures of the girl. To share her story (edit: I removed some details here) along with her (hopefully fake!) name can already put her in danger, considering the extremely conservative environment she is likely still in. But to include pictures of her - I am at a loss for words at this level of insensitivity.
Here's hoping the pictures won't show up in archived versions of the article.
Hopefully any higher up officials can recognize this just gave what is probably on average a fairly affluent tech class on HN a more positive outlook on Kazakhstan. Its positive advertising for the country to hear that you don't end up in a gulag for having your passport lapse.
Yes I'm sure those in charge of Kazakhstan are just foaming at the mouth to win over the hipster web dev crowd. I think you're really overestimating your own importance.
The article states that they didn't want him to rat them out to their superiors about the nice treatment and the help. Being allowed to take a pic doesn't mean he was meant to sell them out on the Internet. The guy who will particularly be screwed is the one that accepted the bribe.
I honestly (as a brazillian native) think that working with the GIVEN rules and CULTURE of a given place is NOT being an asshole;
Yet, I really wish he didn't posted pics nor gave real names.
Bribe culture is bad, but it's not something to dismiss in such situations, eg, here, it would get him into way MORE trouble just to put up a firm NO about bribing and social skills.
Being out of your main cultural context is pretty much about "going with the flow" and social engineering rather than enforcing your own beliefs onto an already established and deeply rooted status quo.
Sometimes highlighting the problem can cause a bigger problem than the original was.
Do you think that this post will make a dent in corruption issues in Kazakhstan? That it will fix anything? The only thing it may cause is repercussions for the good people in this story. Which will leave the system even worse.
There is this concept of responsibility when publishing the story. I have a feeling that it's often forgotten.
No. Bribes are part of a culture, and carry consequences into behaviour of society. It's weird (even alien) if you're not familiar. To me as well. But the US situation with tips, service staff and their separate minimum wages is just as weird and alien to me. Doesn't mean the people living that culture are not good. I understand that tips are basically mandatory in the US or I'll be screwing people out of their needed income (I got great use from the tipping % calculator app that happened to be in the burner phone I bought for the trip). The way it's often solicited is distasteful (to my Dutch cultural norms), flat-out passive-agressive messages on the receipts, occasionally pushy servers (just a few though) trying get rapport, while I'm just there to eat. But I understand these people aren't being bad either, they're just being people manoeuvring in the cultural environment they are part of.
I can disagree with this, or think up improvement, fixes. But at the end, I'm still a tourist, a guest in this country. I'm there to experience the culture, not to tell them they're doin' it wrong. That would be activism, not tourism.
Addition: experiencing other cultures has taught me things as well. Having to barter in Turkey, I probably got screwed but did learn a few lessons that are applicable at home (particular from watching other tourists handle it) (though sometimes they were dicks). All that tipping in the US, coupled with the fact that listed prices are never what you pay (because they're pre-tax) (this is not the case in the EU, it feels very weird not being able to calculate the final sum before checkout--a little exercise I often do in NL to keep my mental math sharp) I took home a bit more fluid idea of prices, and this makes for a lower barrier to tip in NL as well (but I still feel 20% is just crazy :p).
