[Dr_tldr]

While speaking a common language usually (but not always) helps, being a US citizen is the way more important part of the story.

Police in the United States are used to generally treating everyone (including foreigners) with impunity, while cops in other countries dealing with US citizens are more wary of causing a diplomatic incident. There's also the novelty factor: people from high status countries are seen as interesting, and the more uncommon your presence is there, the more friendly interest officials take.

He's making a mistaken inference by assuming that how the police treat US citizens also reflects how they treat locals.

[CobrastanJorji]

> There's also the novelty factor: people from high status countries are seen as interesting, and the more uncommon your presence is there, the more friendly interest officials take.

My in-laws were in Iran during the revolution. He's American and she's Thai. They have a long story whose climactic confrontation with guards is suddenly resolved when they decide that the Thai lady with the fuzzy hooded coat must obviously be an American Eskimo and that this is the most amazing thing he's ever seen.

So the two of them have a story about the time they got out of a terrifying situation, and there's an Iranian somewhere who has a story about that one time, for reasons he will never understand, an American Eskimo wandered through his guard post.

[uola]

In my experience police / border guards in the west threat people worse in normal situations. In most of the rest of the world they are just local bureaucrats who are trying to get through their day without trouble. If you do something wrong it's mostly a bureaucratic process and you're not suddenly a suspected terrorist. Of course in less normal situations that might imply jail time or getting beaten up I'd take the western version.

[drpp]

Everything you say is true. I fully acknowledge that. I hope it's not implied otherwise.

[Dr_tldr]

I still think it's a great story that's funny and well told while being respectful to the people involved. It's definitely indicative of a meaningful part of the culture that's very different from the western/american bureaucratic mindset.