Re: welcome to Pakistan
In Karachi, while having a stop over I was being driven around by a friend. For the fist time I saw a large man hole in the middle of the round about since someone had stolen the cover, probably to sell and make money. It is the poverty that drives people to that extreme. Strange thing is that eveyone was avoiding it and the traffic was moving pretty smoothly. I am sure some poor unsuspecting folk had fallen into it and gotten hurt. But thats Karachi for you.
In Islamabad I saw that almost all the stairs and pathways around supermarlets were broken and thats the way they had been for a while. Unused and torn down concrete block were stren about on the grassy areas. Steps were uneven and unless you are really paying attention you could easily trip on them . NO one seemed very busy.
Ah in Lahore. The scenes in Lahore never end. In lahore, as KashmiriRainDrops has said above, almost at every traffic light there was about 3-10 beggars at the windows of the car immediately. Most of them making sad faces on purpose and some really handicapped. I am sure the sad faces had quite a bit of truth to them also. And if you give them anything less than Rs. 10 then they dont even thankyou. In fact I saw one guy just frown at me and look at the money and walk away.