OK. A word of advice if you travel outside of the country. Don’t try and take pictures of the US embassy. They, meaning the local security force that is the first line defense around the compound, don’t like it (sort of). Paul and I decided that it would be cool to get some shots of the Embassy, which has a very impressive sign out front. It’s large with gold lettering and would make a great photo.. Another shot we wanted to get was the jeep out front with the machine gun mounted on the roof. Like nearly all commercial vehicles it had a “How’s my driving?” sign painted on the bumper with a phone number to call. We got a great kick out of this. Paul was going to Photoshop “How’s my shooting?” onto the bumper.
Well, we where walking towards the front gate and Paul raised his camera and got off one picture. Immediately there was whistles and shouting and a couple of uniformed guards started running towards us. In broken English the first guard to reach us asked us if we were taking pictures. We told him that we were and that we were U.S. citizens, upon which he asked us to show him our passports, which we did. During our entire conversation he was smiling and very pleasant. He kind of indicated that he needed to take us inside and ask us some questions. He lead us to the main guard house which had an inner office that had steel doors and thick bullet (and presumably bomb) proof glass. He motioned to someone inside and said that he needed to talk to his supervisor. When he did they both were laughing and his supervisor waved him on indicating that he should just fill out the paperwork and everybody laughed. He took down the our information on our passports while one of the guards from the jeep outside, which turned out to be Philippines Special Forces, strolled in to check us out. After about 15 minutes or so, he let us go.
Paul and I figured that he just wanted to get out of the heat for a little bit, which was why everyone in the guard house was laughing when he pulled these couple of gringos in.
We actually thanked the guards for doing such a good job and told them that we appreciated them protecting our embassy.
We never did get the shot of the jeep.
Small price to pay for a great story.
Leave a Reply