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Bakpakhistan
Hammered out on | April 6, 2008
Oh my gawd. For a full 5 minutes, I was stunned as to how I have never heard of a country called Bakpakhistan, and worse, couldn’t find anything on it online. All the while I was thinking to myself, how much would it cost to get there? (I obviously can’t wait to take my next trip again.)
Of course, during that full 5 minutes, I was:
(1) Googling frantically
(2) found the weblink suspicious because other countries had lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/[country name]; this was only lonelyplanet.com/bakpak
(3) (getting suspicious)
(4) checking out Wikipedia
(5) checking out CIA World Fact Book
(6) wondering what a stupid name HikinBoot is for a capital
(7) (getting even more suspicious)
(8) reading the Bakpakhistan write-up
(9) realizing the HikinBoot day tour costs: “From BK2.1 million / US$0.99 per person”
(10) thought it super unreal…
then I looked back at the date.
Shoot me.
But it’s okay, we April Fooled many too. :) And I think it’s a great time to marvel at the creativity at some of the jokes going around by the big boys.
April 6th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Hi Gwendolyn, Yyour post made me laugh. A classic. It was not that date that alerted myself but when I read the name out aloud… Back-Pack-A-Stan. Not bad. Of course HikinBoot was too obvious. They should have been more subtle.
You should actually blog about your ‘last visit’ to BakPakhistan!
Cheers,
John.
April 6th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Hi Gwendolyn. It’s a sad day for the people of Bakpakhistan, to be sure. Nobody likes being called a ‘joke’, even if your country is poor and little-known.
On behalf of Bakpakhis worldwide, I think you owe them an apology.
PS: And if you want to make fun of city names, why pick on poor impoverished Hikinboot? Why don’t you pick on Monkey’s Eyebrow, Kentucky; Cheesequake, New Jersey; Hot Coffee, Mississippi; or Ding Dong, Texas instead!
April 6th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
John: Yeah! HikinBook was too obvious. But I didn’t realize the “back-pack” part of Bakpakhistan. :P Silly me.
Good idea, I should have constructed a fake travel entry about a one week jaunt there! FOR FREE! Because I won some contest or something. Next time!
April 6th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Scott: HAHA! An apology indeed. I think THEY owe me one instead for causing me such Googling pain. Trying out various mis-spellings of Bakpakhistan and all.
And I actually found Monkeys Eyebrow and Hot Coffee on Google Maps! But not our dear, impoverished, small, HikinBoot/Bakpakhistan. Way too small for Google Maps eh? ;)