Muslim countries require a special clothing, some are more restrictive and some are less in terms of a dress code and behaviour.
Even if the country or place is open (despite the religion), as a woman, it is worth taking e.g. a scarf to cover yourself to feel better in some situations. You can of course, like myself, wear a bikini and realise on the beach that it would be better to have something with more fabric on, while trying to stay cool… However, it can be quite embarrassing 😛
I used to feel very sorry for women who had to cover themselves completely, but my friend and experience showed me that not all the women want to take them off. Now, I don’t judge. I am only sorry for women who do not want to cover themselves but are forced to do it.
Generally, a woman’s dress code in a Muslim country should look like this:
- loose clothing (not showing body shape)
- covered arms
- covered legs
- some knee-length tunic
- covered hair
Depending on the country and customs, the above guidelines may change for women and tourists in general. Of course, these clothes have their specific names, I defined them so that everyone understood.
Men should not wear shorts.
Iran is a country where you must comply with all the guidelines according to the law, or you may be arrested. You don’t have to wear a hijab but a tunic and headscarf (which can be colorful). Many women there, however, are not satisfied with this law… How do they deal with it? They make a hair-bun and put a scarf on it, which means that you can see the whole head, there is only a part of scarf hanging at the back of a head on a bun 🙂 Women are smart, you have to admit 😉
Not all the countries require from tourists to wear such clothing, but there are situations when, being “normally” dressed in our perception, we draw attention that we do not want at all. Once I was traveling on various Indonesian islands for a month in my regular clothes and at the end of the trip in Jakarta, I was forced to leave the train by women… Everywhere before it was fine and I did not have to cover myself, but in the capital I experienced an unpleasant situation.
We entered metro with my partner and after a while we noticed that there’s something wrong. A young girl came over and said it was a compartment only for women and showed us the sign. It was a pink graphic of a woman with long hair, so we didn’t come up what it means . All the women we saw there wore scarves and hair neatly covered. My partner went to the next compartment, where I was not allowed to come in and the police who stood in the passage informed me that is only for men. Women were talking to me things I couldn’t understand, but I knew it is something unpleasant and wanted me to leave… I was very stressed and stuck, I did not have a phone, but my partner saw that something was wrong and we both got off at the next station. Actually, he got off, I was kinda kicked out … We started exploring the city by taxi 🙂
Malvina Dunder 
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