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Read my Travel Diary and other articles from a six week trip to Syria, Jordan & Egypt during October and November 1998

The Middle East

Si_lad
2004-03-26 20:27:02

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do something). The first place we tried was closed until 9:00, so we had breakfast in a nearby café. When we returned we eventually found a visa extension room, but the official just wrote down an address and told us to go to the "central" immigration office, as they could not do it there.

It took about 10 minutes walk to get to the "central" office – which was big and extremely busy – complete pandemonium.

After searching for a while, we found the correct room for visa extensions, and paid an official S£25 in return for a form. The form was in French and we had to get the help of an Arabic girl (who studied French) to help us fill it out! We then had to go outside to a small stall and buy three more forms (also in French and almost identical to the one we just filled out) and a revenue stamp – S£12. We filled these out & attached the stamp to the main form and returned back to the office we started in.

We eventually got the attention of one of the grim faced, chain-smoking officials, who took our forms, and three passport photo’s, and looked them over. He then scribbled some stuff in Arabic and told us to go to the General’s office.

We found this, on the top floor, and after waiting in line for a while, we were told to go in – one at a time. The General’s office was a large room, piled full of books and paperwork, complete with a fat bloke in a uniform (presumably the General). He took the papers, had a quick glance at my face, and signed them off with a simple squiggle!

We headed back to the original office, where they took the papers & our passports and told us to come back at one o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Phew! What a run-around, just to extend our visa by a few days. An interesting experience none-the-less.

After an hour or so spent in immigration, I bought a phonecard and phoned Dahbo. I got five minutes for S£500, which was ...