I went to Jordan the other day, saw Wadi Rum and Petra, stayed a night in the desert and in Aqaba.
We were held for several hours at the Israeli/Egyptian border, and most of us were questioned and our passports were taken for a while. Luckily for me, they didn't stamp mine. Unluckily for pretty much everyone else, theirs were stamped. Poor Dan had his stamped after he filled out all of the appropriate paperwork, too. Simone's was the only other that wasn't stamped, so two out of seven isn't bad, right?
On the way back, my bag was searched at the Israeli/Jordanian border. They found Harry Potter 3 in Arabic, and that necessitated a questioning. Suspicious reading, Harry Potter.
Honestly, though, that wasn't so bad and I feel like it's just part of the experience. The real thing was the scam in Egypt. Our friend had to pay 200LE to get through because some scammers were working with the police that were stamping passports. Scammers and police are synonymous in Egypt. I'm not joking. The guy went and told the cop not to stamp her passport, and she had to pay for them to write her a letter of permission to enter the country.
What a joke. I mean, really. I enjoyed the border tax scam, because I didn't have any stamps, so I didn't have to pay the tax. The guy wasn't too happy about that, especially since I was being obnoxious about it. He knew I had stamped another piece of paper, but couldn't prove it. That was fun. Dan told me that he crossed with Simone a time before and they didn't have stamps, so while she was eating Israeli brand chips the Egyptians were fuming because they couldn't prove anything and thus couldn't scam them this time.
Seeing Jordan only reinforced my views that Egypt is a blight on the Arab world.
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"Egypt is a blight on the Arab world" priceless haha. I love how you outsmarted them, but I was confused as to the significance of getting your passport stamped.
ReplyDeleteI'll take a stab at the stamping. Most of the countries over there hate each other, and especially Israel. So if X country sees a stamp from Y country, they will make life difficult for you. Ideally you would not get any country over there stamped on your passport, so no one would know where you had been.
ReplyDeleteIs that right?
Mostly right.
ReplyDeleteSyria and Lebanon won't admit you into the country if you have an Israeli stamp on your passport. Israel will give you a hard time if you have either of Syria's or Lebanon's stamps.
So ideally, avoid stamps.
ok here's how you hack it. Put double stick tape on you passport page that would get stamped. Put a page that's the exact size over it and then use something to color it the exact color. Get it stamped and then after your in the country take the page off and repeat. This might be illegal for some reason...so just be careful and make sure you make it look super real.
ReplyDeletealso an interesting solution would be to get a second passport copy, one for Arab countries and another for Israel. Maybe that would work haha
http://www.wisegeek.com/why-are-passports-stamped.htm
ReplyDeletenever mind apparently defacing it renders it void. However this website suggested getting a separate add in for additional stamps. Maybe you could "add" it in to get stamped and then take it out again when you cross borders...