21 Nov 2015
Bahrain - Visa woes

Oh, look: A text editor! What would one do with that? Why, write tall tales of course! Stories to amaze and entrance the readers, tales of distant lands, perilous journeys and wondrous people. Adventures and anecdotes of giants and midgets.

But actually I’m writing this in a well-airconditioned coffee shop. On Koh Samet, which is about as exotic as Berlin Mitte. Warmer though, with a lot more beaches. People are smiling, food is excellent. You see coconuts and palm trees everywhere. Okay, maybe it’s a bit more exotic after all.

I just spent some time looking through my photographs of this trip (~4000 so far). It’s staggering how this travel-thing distorts one’s perception of time: It feels as if many of those pictures were taken several years ago when they’re only a few months old. That’s what happens in the absence of a routine. Or when your memory is, like, really bad.

What was I talking about? Oh, right: I’m in Thailand. How in god’s name did I get here?!

Georgia to Bahrain

‘Twas a warm, sunny morning in May in Tbilisi, capital of the heartwarmingly hard-drinking Georgians…

The camera pans over a low-slung town nestled into a valley framed by a steep hill on one side. The sun lights up the roofs and the cobbled roads that lead up the hill towards the castle that looms over it. Just below the castle stands a big building with huge windows. The camera zooms in one one of the windows and spies our intrepid protagonist, who lazily rolls out of bed. He yawns, lifts his arms and stretches, his joints crackling like a bag of crisps under a hydraulic press. Slowly he trots into the bathroom to emerge a bit later looking exactly the same but smelling a lot better.

Oh, you recognized me? Excellent. It was indeed me getting up before heading off to the airport, to fly out to Bahrain. As the title gives away, that didn’t work so swimmingly.

It all started with money, the root of all evil. After getting up I went to the hostel’s front desk to ask how much money I owed them, and then stumbled down the hill to get breakfast and cash. My remaining cash paid for the breakfast and afterwards I found an ATM. It took my card and then went all “Nope! Not today!” as would any other ATM I could find. I had booked a few flights earlier that week, so it was conceivable that the card was just empty. Fair enough. Weirdly, the same happened with my debit card, which I knew for sure had money on it.

Somewhat concerned I walked back to the hostel. There, I managed to sweet-talk the staff into letting me pay my debts via online transfer instead. I also booked one more night, which I then immediately cancelled, somewhat to the surprise of the hostel staff. They did however refund me on the spot, giving me just enough money for the taxi to the airport. Grinning proudly, I got into the cab and drove to Tbilisi airport and handed over the last of my cash to the cab driver.

I breezed through check-in and security and then sat at the gate, excited to finally go to Bahrain. Eventually, this Indian couple sat down across from me and I overheard this exchange:

Her: Do you have the cash for the visa by the way?

Him: Of course I have the cash for the visa! What idiot would fly to Bahrain without cash for the visa?!

Her: Well, obviously nobody would be daft enough to reach Bahrain without cash for the visa, haha!

They may not have said those exact words, but that’s what I remember hearing. Yes. Cash. Visa. The cash. For the visa. In Bahrain.

For me, the Bahrain visa would cost about 60 USD on arrival, payable immediately at immigration. See the problem? In my experience, immigration officials are usually not the most relaxed of people. If I turned out to be unable to pay for the visa, they might ask me to book a flight out on the spot (no, thank you) or have me sort it out from a border police cell (lovely, but no thank you). So I had a moment of panic at Tbilisi airport and then messaged my friend Andrew, who had graciously agreed to my one-person host-a-hobo programme. He promised to take a look but obviously couldn’t promise anything.

So I spent a three-hour flight to Dubai thinking about immigration, borders and cells. At Dubai airport I called up my bank in Germany to ask why my debit card would not work. The result of a 10-minute, 20-Euro phone call? It didn’t work because it doesn’t work in that part of the world. Alright then.

The connecting flight to Manama (Bahrain) took another 45 minutes which I spent thinking that I was really way too pretty to spend a night in jail. After a tense flight, we finally landed in Manama. Stepping out onto the runway felt…well, hot! Sure, I knew the place was in the desert. I just never really thought about the implications. The 200m walk to the terminal was enough to leave me wondering if maybe global warming is a bad thing after all.

After turning my phone back on (wouldn’t want to crash that plane, would we?), I received a text from Andrew instructing me to contact a service desk at the airport. Luckily, it turned out to be just in front of immigration. A nice lady handed me an envelope with money from Andrew. Lovely, fresh, crisp money! Money, the solution to all my problems!

Suddenly flush with cash I walked through immigration smiling and was met on the other side by Andrew and his girlfriend Angie.

Arne’s insights

Immigration restrictions suck.

I think we all knew that one already. As of right now I’ve spent 300+ Euro for visa fees. I’m lucky enough to have European passports which are easy to travel on. And yet, you still have to deal with visa and immigration rules. This takes time, effort and money. In my mind it’s a waste of all three but there is no way around it if you want to travel anywhere outside of Europe.

Deserts can be hot.

Not all of them are. Those in the middle east tend to be. This really shouldn’t surprise anybody but I wasn’t prepared for the sheer physical sensation of being grilled in the open air. Also, I’m quite clearly not built for that kind of climate.

Money is nice.

Traveling without access to cash (even temporarily) is an unnverving experience. I felt incredibly ill-prepared and exposed. Not a nice feeling at all. Before this particular anecdote I had been carrying around a cash reserve in US dollars for tough spots like this. Stupidly, I had at some point run out of cash and decided to exchange my dollars for Georgian Lari because the closest ATM was further away than the currency exchange. So when I needed the cash reserve I had already spent it.

The actual tragedy here was that I walked past a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop at Dubai airport and had no cash…