My husband and I were teaching in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1995. We decided to spend our first winter break in country. Our travel agent booked us in a "5 star resort." Folks who had been in Pakistan for a few years laughed telling us there were no 5 star resorts anywhere in Pakistan. We traveled there anyway.
We arrived in Islamabad where we were met by a driver who took us on a harrowing drive up the mountains. We arrived in a smokey town to the equivalent of a Hotel 6. They played Kenny G Christmas music for us our entire visit.
Long story short. One of our drivers wanted us to meet his brother who had lived in the US and spoke really good English. He drove us to an alley, blinked the lights, and left us sitting there. I was mortified, assuming we were being kidnapped. Instead, we spent the evening in an Afghani's home, dining on a lovely lamb dinner. The women never showed their faces, not even to me. The guys examined guns while I spent the evening trying to teach a little girl some English while she tried to teach me her language. The driver took us back to our hotel. The town was Abbottabad, the town where Osama bin Laden was captured. Serendipity, indeed.