(Him: Charlie)
As much as we want to cross the border by land, the “sacred”
National Day holiday in China just would let us. Who closes their land border
for 7 days on a holiday? Oh well, so we had to fly if we want to make it to
Cheng Du by Oct 7. Ka-ching!!!
Normally, I wouldn’t write about the mundane border
crossing, especially the boring custom passing at airport, but this one is different.
It’s a crazy one – it’s one that almost got our hearts stopped and it’s one
that got our hair raised… it’s one that got me even more broke! Fuck!!
Apparently, according to the Kazakh law, a tourist has to
register at the local immigration police if he/she intends to stay within the country
for more than 5 days! (Yea, who does that on top of a stupid visa??) So the
ignorant Charlie and Joanna, who haven’t seen anything like that before, didn’t
realize the seriousness of this requirement, and continued on with the visits
in the country.
On day 7, when we came face to face with the passport
control at Almaty Airport, disaster landed upon us!!! At first, the officer
said we couldn’t board our flight because we had to go to the city the next day
to register. This almost gave me a heart attack – the images of us running
around switching flights and re-organizing everything came to mind. At this
point, we would be happy to just pay the fine and leave the country. And then,
the officer told us the bank is close now (9pm), and we would still have to pay
the day after. Shit! The same images of
“chicken-running-around-with-heads-cut-off” came to mind again… “shit, shit, shit”
we thought, but “please, please, please!” we begged!
AND THEN, after some panicking on our end and a couple of phone
calls on the other end, the officer offered a solution – a officer’s “friend”
could pay the fine for us tomorrow for a “fee” of 4000 Tenge (about $30US). With
the fine at a hefty $120US, it means we have to cough up $300US to get out of
the country.
At this point, what choice do we have? Being able to catch
our flight is definitely more important than the $300US! So we agreed, and we
couldn’t care less if the process is even legitimate – we were told that we had
to “pay” the fine discreetly by passing over the money folded in our passport!
So we moved on with the security, and handed over our money filled passport as
instructed, and halleluiah, safely boarded our flight. Voila and Ka-Ching!
We can’t be sure whether the officers took the fine as
pocket money or, maybe he was really doing us a favour and the money really
went to the government as a fine. Either way, there goes our $300US, and there
goes our expensive lesson learned from this bureaucratic country! What a
night!!
(Renown Turkistan Mausoleum, Turkistan, Kazakhstan)
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