Passing through immigration always produces some anxiety. You never know what they might want – accommodation you haven’t booked, exit flights you don’t have, questions you may have difficulty answering.
VISA INFORMATION
IATA Service Centre is the best general resource for visa rules and forms. When COVID was an issue, the IATA was the most up-to-date resource for vaccination rules, test requirements and quarantine status. Is a hotel reservation or exit flight required? The IATA site is the website checked by airline check-in counters. It is virtually always up to date. There are usually links to the visa website and health forms.
Look up the actual visa rules of a country on their website. Ignore all the visa companies that advertise their services as they are almost always unnecessary, and expensive, require sending away your passport and can use up a lot of time. They sell their product even when VOA or an e-visa is available.
Determine if you need a single-entry, double-entry or mulitple-entry visa.
Immigration rules are in a constant state of flux.
No visa required and Visa on Arrival (VOA) are the easiest to navigate. Look up the VOA rules about accommodation and exit flights.
E-visas used by many countries are increasingly common. Many may be difficult to complete. Most require files of certain types and sizes. All my travel documents are resized in one folder (passport cover, passport bio page, passport photo, COVID vaccination record, health insurance) which is easy to do with a Word document. Sign in Preview.
• Ethiopia discontinued their VOA and instituted an e-visa in November 2022 but their official website didn’t say this. I arrived for my flight and was denied boarding, lost my flight, spent three days in the Istanbul Airport waiting for the e-visa, gave up and went to Egypt instead.
• Iraq. I had joined a group for a tour starting in Basra. All four on the tour flew into the Basra airport. The IATA site stated that a reservation for seven days at two specific hotels in Basra was required (a very unusual visa rule that existed only for Basra in all of Iraq). Our guide said this was a scam and not to worry.
However, Qatar Airlines at the Cairo airport enforced the rule. Neither of the hotels had a website or could be booked on any website, I was denied boarding and lost the entire tour and airline ticket. Complaining to Qatar Airlines only got “You should have checked the rules.” The three women on my tour flew on Emirates. They arrived safely as Emirates didn’t enforce the rule.
FAKE FLIGHT TICKETS for a visa or onward travel
Expedia.com allows you to cancel a flight within 24 hours and can be useful in providing an exit flight on short notice. But beware, not all airlines will cancel for free and on some you lose the entire fare (see South Sudan and Tanzania below)
• South Sudan to Nairobi. This required an exit ticket from Kenya. I bought a flight on Expedia.com at the airport that I cancelled within 24 hours. However, Kenya Air charged a 50% cancellation fee. That’s why fake tickets are the best.
• Tanzania. I entered overland on a bus from Mombassa to Dar es Salam at the Lunga Lunga Border. Supposedly this requires an exit flight, but no accommodation or exit flight were required, just US$50. I had foolishly booked a flight on Expedia.ca for the exit from Tanzania. Unfortunately, the rule states that cancellation has to happen on the day of the booking, not simply 24 hours. I made the booking at 4 am Kenyan time, 8 pm in Canada and thus only had 4 hours to cancel. So I was stuck with a flight that hopefully I could make.
Fake Tickets. Many visas require entrance and exit flights and fake tickets are the best way to deal with this. The best is onwardtickets.com – it is fast, the ticket is real and can be verified and the document produced is very realistic. The cost is $16 for a ticket that lasts 48 hours and more for longer durations.
• Panama to Costa Rica January 2010. This flight required an exit flight. I had to buy a flight at immigration, didn’t know about fake tickets and eventually ate the flight.
• Surinam January 2023. The e-visa for Surinam allows only flights but not overland trips on the visa application. I went overland from G\uyana to Suriname and used fake tickets to get the visa.
• Afghanistan to Islamabad flight. June 2024. This required an exit flight from Pakistan. I was going overland by the Korakaram Highway but that wasn’t accepted. I booked a fake flight on onwardticket.com for $16 lasting for 48 hours. The tickets produced are real tickets and can be verified. To hold tickets longer, the price goes up. This fake ticket site is the best I have used and is astonishingly fast.
CONTROL YOUR PASSPORT
If you leave the decision of where they put your visa stamp up to the immigration officer, they will invariably put it in the centre of a new page. If travelling for a long time, saving space in your passport is crucial. Full-page visas and the associated entrance and exit stamps consume a lot of space. This is important for the tiny Canadian passport with only 29 pages available for stamps.
Use a large paperclip to prevent access to your empty pages. Many other travellers use sticky notes which are cumbersome. If there is a choice, pick a male officer. Women object to being told what to do and invariably get pissed. This may sound sexist but conduct your own poll.
Tell the officer “I am travelling to many countries. Would you please stamp here.” and specify the spot close to an edge or corner. If there is a full-page visa, ask for any stamps to be put on the visa. Watch as he stamps to correct his location.
If in a place where they don’t speak English, ask them to stamp the ‘Observations” page or the ‘Do Not Stamp This Page’ page. This is a great place for full-page visas. Doing this gives me a 31-page passport.
Thank the immigration agent effusively, give a thumbs up and smile.
I frequently get 8-9 stamps on a page.
Another trick is to check if the stick-on visa is loose or not. I have been able to move visas several times to cover up stamps or move it onto the Observations and Do Not Stamp this Page pages. This is always possible with the Egypt sticker as if not pressed down thoroughly, it can be easily lifted and put somewhere else.
• St Vincent & the Grenadines April 2024, When leaving, there was a $50 departure tax that I didn’t know about. I started talking to the officer about controlling your passport. He bet me the $50 that he could find a place in the previous pages for a stamp. I was pretty sure there wasn’t as each page was full. He stamped in a small area overlapping three other stamps. He won the bet and I had to pay the tax. I only had a $100 US bill and they didn’t have change. He drove me about a kilometre to some shops and got change. We talked a lot. He was a big guy and had been a 100 m specialist in track.
This was my friendliest interaction with any immigration officer.
CARE FOR YOUR PASSPORT
Because of the difficult renewal process for a Canadian passport, losing my passport ends my trip. Without a passport, you can’t stay in a hotel or take a flight. As a result, it is my most valuable possession when I travel. A basic travel rule is to put things in the same place 100% of the time. It is always in the same pocket as my thin wallet. I seem to be always checking for it. I should keep it in a waterproof protector but don’t.
• February 2016 Israel. If you get the photo on the Canadian passport wet, the picture disappears. I took a shower dumping my clothes on the floor several metres from the shower. Somehow a stream of water found the pants and my passport. A few stamps were smeared and half my photograph was gone.
I subsequently went through 22 immigrations. I had a colour copy of the passport bio page and a driver’s license with a photo. There were no significant problems.
RUNNING OUT of PAGES
Once, I ran out of pages in my passport. I had 6 countries left, thankfully none of the six had a full-page visa. Some countries have embassies that provide quick passport renewal. Canada is not one of them. It requires sending the passport back to Canada and takes over four weeks. The only choice is to remove full-page visas. Find the visa with the thickest paper, test the quality of the attachment and carefully remove it. Most visas are thin and tear or leave thin remnants of paper. Use nail polish remover to completely remove any glue residue.
• November 2015. I was in Cambodia and went to the Australian Embassy representing Canada in Cambodia. My only option was to renew my passport. For Canada (with the worst renewal process in the world) this took 4-6 weeks. I had no desire to spend more time in Cambodia.
I removed the India visa easily as the paper was very thick. This unfortunately left a suspiciously empty page in the middle of the passport.
Cambodia/Vietnam border. The next day, I crossed into Vietnam on a bus that was continuing into Vietnam. The officer would not give me a stamp as he realized what I had done. I kept whining and pleading as the bus was waiting. Finally, after 20 minutes, the driver whispered in my ear “Give him some money”. I put $10 in the PP and got the stamp immediately.
Unfortunately, I admitted this was a “damaged” passport when I got a new passport and it wasn’t returned. This is unfortunate. It was a great passport as every possible nook and cranny had been used.
Make Sure the visa stamp is dated. Some countries date their stamp. If the officer forgets this step, then you must prove when you entered the country.
• Indonesia. This happened in Indonesia. I had thrown out the receipt and boarding pass for my flight. My only proof was a flight record on my phone and the stamp from the preceding country. I almost missed my flight.
Make sure the duration of the visa is correct.
• Bangladesh. On entry, the immigration officer asked how long I was staying in the country. I guessed 12 days and that is what she put for the duration of the visa!!! I left on day 13 and had overstayed my visa by one day. What a mess. I avoided a fine by whining a lot. This is crazy as the duration of the visa was 30 days,
Make sure you have a stamp. This sounds crazy but it has happened to me – twice.
• Pakistan/Afghanistan immigration. I came from Peshawar and passed through the busy overland Torkham border post on the Khyber Pass.
I tried to get a shared taxi from Peshawar but there were none. Supposedly costing 2000 PR, on arrival, he wanted 6000!! Taxi drivers are all the same.
Whoever wrote all the EPS reports on Afghanistan lived in a different world than what I experienced. Jump the fence!!!!!! What a crazy idea. 1. Show your Pakistan visa at least three times. 2. Declare your money. More than US$1,000 is not allowed? I showed my Euros and US dollars and took a photo of the declaration.
To get to the actual immigration officer was a long walk through a corridor fenced with wire. We pushed our way past hundreds of others – big carts full of sacks of rice, massive boxes and luggage, a bed – you name it, and many in wheelchairs. Why were so many going to Afghanistan, a country with the Taliban and lots of problems? I think this showed how bad the Pakistan economy was. The whole process took about two hours. It was shaded but still very hot and long.
I had met Abdullah in the visa office in Peshawar. Born in Dubai of Afghan parents, he lived in Germany. By luck, we met again at immigration and we navigated the gauntlet together. He was being met at the border by his brother and two cousins and he generously offered me a ride to Jalalabad.
The place was mayhem with long lines at the two immigration windows. The window was above eye level and you had to stand on a cement block. I gave the officer my passport with the Afghan visa and Pakistan visa. He scanned them, took my photo with the tiny camera and I saw him stamp, just not in my passport!! I didn’t realize it as things were so harried. After immigration, we were checked by intelligence officers twice who photographed everything and filled in all our information but didn’t check for a stamp. We also filled out a long form, supplied a PP photo and had our passports checked at another office. They didn’t check for a stamp either,
Just before Kabul, there was a major Taliban checkpoint. No one could find the entrance stamp in my passport. This was the first I realized I had no stamp. He brought the boss and they went to a higher boss. The threat was that I would have to return to Torkham, 5 hours back with a good car. After pleading my case, they finally let me go “Don’t do that again.” Crazy.
In Kabul, I tried to get a passport stamp as I needed it to travel around Afghanistan. I spent two hours at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I then had a 5 km roundabout walk to the border police. They said the only option was to return to Torkham. Besides being more than 5 hours each way, it would also use up my Pakistan visa. I said that I would leave Afghanistan and not return. He seemed surprised I would miss seeing his lovely country and gave me another option. I had to go to the Ministry of the Interior near the airport and get a letter. With it, I could travel around Afghanistan.
The translator who accompanied me wanted a tip. He suggested $50!!!!! (5 days pay for 2 hours work). I gave him $20. So much for being a nice guy.
At the Ministry of the Interior, after endless security and waiting, I was eventually provided with a letter allowing me to travel anywhere in Afghanistan without a stamp.
On my second day in Kabul, I went down to the bird market to eat at Bacha Broot, a tiny restaurant famous for its chanak, a lamb stew. I left the restaurant and within 5 minutes was stopped by an Afghani intelligence officer. He checked my passport and immediately recognized I didn’t have an entrance stamp. I had left the letter back at my hotel as I didn’t think I would need it.
“No problem. I need to check your passport”. The Taliban always say no problem when you know you have a big problem. He gave my passport, phone and his big handgun to his young confederate. We walked 20 minutes through markets and passed a commercial district. He kept stopping for street food. We arrived at a restaurant and had tea. Two scary army guys with a lot of guns wearing balaclavas arrived. I was given a very thorough frisk. We got into a Land Cruiser and drove 15 minutes to what I presume was intelligence headquarters behind big blast walls and an array of barricades and turns, I was blindfolded but memorized every turn to give to the CIA.
I was clumsily led up some stairs and taken to an office. My blindfold was removed. When you can’t see, your mind goes into overdrive. The fat Taliban official and his buddy couldn’t speak English. I tried to explain why I didn’t have an entrance stamp. It was very unusual, and they didn’t understand. They got tired of my whining. They emptied my pockets and put everything in a plastic bag in a drawer of a desk. I was a little concerned about my passport and thought confiscating it was a possibility. I was theoretically in Afghanistan illegally.
After about one hour, they handed me a phone and a guy said in English “Two or three hours.” The office was a busy place. Many came and went. Eight arrived and sat around chatting. Some prayed. Food arrived and they ate. Now three hours after the Bird Market, we left the main intelligence compound to see the “chief”. Surprisingly, I wasn’t blindfolded and could confirm my route for my CIA report. We drove for 20 minutes and arrived at a compound with a lovely garden. I was put in a lovely room with carpets, cushions and pillows. Nothing was said to me. Prayers happened. After a nap and an hour, twelve Taliban entered, all looking at me funny. The chief spoke good English. He looked at my travel permits and passport. He then said “You need to learn to understand Afghanistan culture. You must have an interpreter if you go anywhere. Using Google Translate and Maps is no way to see our country.” He gave me back my passport and possessions so I was free to leave.
If I had had my wits about me, I should have said “I wonder if the Afghanistan you had created is the country’s true culture? I have visited every Muslim country in the world and you have created a fundamentalist Islamic state more severe and unlike that of any other Muslim country. Your economy has collapsed. Unemployment is high. People are starving. I haven’t read the Koran but it doesn’t say anywhere that women should not be educated. You do not even follow the five pillars of Islam. If you had charity for the Afghan people, you would allow more freedom and women to be educated. Foreign aid might resume to help your people.” In the circumstances, I could have gotten away with it. It would have taken some nerve.
I was back in the Land Cruiser and they drove me 30 minutes to the Khyber Hotel.
• Bulgaria / Turkey border, April 2019. I crossed from Bulgaria into Turkey by land in my VW California van late in the evening. There were no others at the border post. The Turkey officer angrily told me to park and come with him. He led me to an officer at the far back corner of the border post. I gave him $50 and he gave me a receipt. I returned to the front of the post and a woman in a hijab gave me an illegible stamp. I had been to Turley before but had forgotten that the visa was a small rectangular pink stick-on-paper.
When I exited Turkey, the immigration officer asked where my entrance sticker was. I showed him the stamp, obviously not the visa. It was impossible to explain what happened as it was so bizarre. He finally waived me on.
What was interesting about this incident is that it required three officers to work together to do the fraud. It helped that I was from North America and might not realize what a real Turkey visa looked like. They had done this several times before – late at night with no other customers. And I always thought that I could trust women in hijabs.
• Turkmenistan visa and the Uzbekistan/Kyrgyzstan border. October/November 2015. Turkmenistan is one of the least-tourist-friendly countries in the world. Even if you get the 5-day transit visa, most can’t use it as it is date-specific and often takes at least 2 weeks to get. Trying to time everything is difficult.
I applied for a 5-day transit visa in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The transit visa doesn’t require a letter of invitation or an expensive tour. I then went to Uzbekistan on a 14-day visa that was also date-specific and started when it was issued.
With 8 days left on my Uzbek visa, I left Tashkent to see the rest of Uzbekistan.
I arrived in Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan, and the closest town to the Turkmenistan border post I had put on the visa application. This is Uzbekistan’s most depressed region around the destroyed Aral Sea. The Savitsky Museum is the only thing worth seeing but it was closed.
Since having my wallet pickpocketed, I had no source of money in this black-market money country. I had only US$150, possibly not enough to go to Turkmenistan even if I got the visa.
There were severe penalties for overstaying the Uzbek visa. I would have to get to Tashkent to exit Uzbekistan and I couldn’t fly as my MC wouldn’t work.
On my second last day of the Uzbek visa, the Turkmenistan visa had still not arrived. Even if the notification had arrived, the visa takes all day to get – arrive between 6 and 7 am to get an appointment, return at the appointment time to leave your passport, go across town to a bank to pay and then return at 4 to pick it up – that is if they decided to cooperate. If everything worked, I would leave on the last day of my Uzbek visa with only 3 days to transit to Turkmenistan.
I had a delusional optimism that things would work out. I used the very posh VIP lounge in the Urgench Rail Station for 33¢! and bought some groceries for the train trip – 2 tomatoes, 2 bananas, a litre of milk, a pack of smokes and a large chocolate bar for $3.20 – few countries are as cheap as Uzbekistan. I took the 3:30 pm train from Nukus that arrived in Tashkent at 10:20 am saving a night in a hotel.
When I arrived in Tashkent, I checked my email and the Turkmenistan visa had arrived (15 days after applying) but now I couldn’t use it anyway. I was in Tashkent, not Nukus near my entry point. A flight (even if I could book it) back to Nukus arrived at 8 pm but the border closed at daylight making crossing impossible. If only I had gotten the notification 26 hours earlier.
With less than 10 hours left on my Uzbek visa, I took a share taxi to Andijon in the Fergana Valley to cross at Osh, Kyrgyzstan. I didn’t know when the border closed. After the usual bargaining and waiting for the share taxi to fill, I was finally on my way at 2 pm for the 6-hour drive.
I ended up with the slowest, most cautious driver in the country. A passenger told me the border closed at 8 but I decided to try anyway. I took another taxi 40 km to the border. I arrived at 9:30 pm to a completely dark, obviously closed border in the middle of nowhere. A soldier was shining a flashlight, so I went up to the gate and explained that my passport expired in 2½ hours. He asked my name, and I said Ronaldo (nobody understands Ronald) and he opened the gate. Six Uzbek immigration officers arrived 1½ hours after the border closed and processed me through Uzbekistan customs! Uzbekistan has the most thorough search of any immigration. They even checked many files on my computer. That is why they need six officers.
They let me out in the dark “no man’s land” between borders. I waited for 15 minutes and started yelling. A fat guy arrived, opened the gate and kept saying “Money”. It was one hour later in Kyrgyzstan, now 11 pm and I had woken up the agent. “You must never do this again. You woke me up. What present do you have for me?” I gave him a large (probably fake and heavy) piece of turquoise from Tibet that I didn’t want anyway. He accepted it, gave me a stamp and I was in Kyrgyzstan! There was even a taxi at the border and for the exorbitant price of 7$, I got a ride into Osh. Someone was smiling down on me. I don’t believe in God, but this confirmed that things always turn out. I have great luck.
In Osh, the streets were packed and apartments empty. There had been an earthquake to finish the day with a bang. I finally dragged myself into bed at 1 am at Osh Guesthouse. I was the only guest.
• Jordan/Israel. February 2016. I crossed the land border from Aqaba, Jordan to Eilat, Israel. Israeli border immigration was known to be difficult. They thoroughly check your passport for any forbidden stamps.
Here the problem was leaving Jordan!!! I had travelled the Silk Road and had a few dodgy visas including Afghanistan. The guy repetitively asked me “Why did you go to Afghanistan, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran?” (this confused me as I didn’t go to Iran), and on and on. He made 10 phone calls, took copious notes and finally let me cross after an hour. What was he going to do – deport me?
I realized later that he probably wanted money and was waiting for me to offer. But I didn’t even think about it.
I half expected to be not allowed into Israel. I was asked to sit and expected a several-hour interrogation. On the bench was a woman my age from Anaheim California who had been there for 5 hours and had been interrogated five times. She hadn’t eaten all day so I gave her my food.
Israeli immigration took 10 minutes to process my entry. Surprisingly, they even stamped my passport. I thought they never did that as most travellers don’t want an Israeli stamp. It can cause problems entering many Arab countries. They hadn’t asked.
• French Guiana January 2023. This is a French territory known for the Space launch site and Devil’s Island. I was on an overland transit through Guyana, Surinam and French Guiana on my way to Brazil.
Cross the Moroni River from Suriname to St Laurant, French Guiana on a boat. There was no immigration, no signs, no agents and no office. I didn’t understand and was concerned about entering without a stamp. I got a share taxi. The only formality was about ten km down the road at a road checkpoint. They checked my passport and waived us on.
After two days in French Guiana, I left by boat crossing the Oyapock River to Brazil. I had not checked out at any immigration post as there was none. Weird.
The ports were Saint-Georges, French Guiana; and Oiapoque and Ponta dos Índios, Brazil.