[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.