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Which countries do you like entering? Which do you hate entering? Any good/bad experiences that are interesting?
I think my favorite to enter is Kuala Lumpur. Lots of staff, they speak both English and Chinese so easy to communicate, free entry for most, and they don't even make you fill out an immigration card you just get off the plane and process through. If we have a layover of more than three hours in KL we'll usually enter the country just to go to that mall attached to the airport for more (and cheaper) dining options.
The worst I've had for intrusiveness was overland South Africa to Namibia. It involved stopping middle of the night (and middle of nowhere), collecting passports, getting everyone and their luggage off the bus, then taking all the males away for strip searches while the ladies watched the luggage being opened up and searched. Another guy on the bus told me it's not always that bad and usually happens when there are passports from Nigeria, Angola, or DRC since smuggling problems.
Longest wait was El Salvador, they had four agents at desks processing a massive crowd of people that snaked up the stairs back into the terminal, but two of them still manages to leave to take whatever breaktime they had coming leaving it down to two. Almost two hours to get from terminal to the curb.
My only bad immigration experiences have been coming back into the United States, particularly at JFK. I came back from Brazil on a flight of probably 320 people, many of whom were Brazilians with limited or no English skills. At the same time, a large flight from China had landed, and another flight from Egypt had also. It was a massive hoard of people all headed toward immigration at one time, and mostly without solid English skills. The immigration officials were having a hard time controlling the crowd, and just began yelling at people, as if being louder would get them to understand better. It was incredibly rude, and I was embarrassed that this was the first impression these visitors were getting of the United States.
I understand the New York attitude of getting straight to the point and making things happen, but there is a big difference between that and being rude to a bunch of people who don't understand English.
Heathrow is often a really painful queue if you're not a UK/EU passport and not FastTrack. My sister travels on a Canadian passport so she pays for Registered Traveler. The Commonwealth Country flavor of Global Entry.
Santiago, Chile is a PITA on a US passport if you don't have a Chile visa. They shake you down for a visa payable in cash before you can get in the passport control line. It can take a couple of hours.
The only place I ever get hassled at passport control is Canada. I'm there often enough that they're always asking me very pointed questions about what I'm doing there. They're trolling for income tax. I occasionally get directed to an interrogation room. That's airport. If I drive, it's into Quebec and I just get the guns, tobacco, and alcohol questions.
I had one entering Argentina from Bolivia. The Argentine immigration officer decided to sleep in that day and arrive for work a couple of hours later, while busloads of passengers lined up. Strutted in like immigration was his own little fiefdom, in full dress uniform, stamped my passport and affixed a flamboyant signature that took up a whole page in my passport.
Kyrgyzstan from Kazakhstan is like crossing the New England Patriots goal line. Coming out of Kazakhstan, you go into a holding pen, where travelers are released about twp hundred at a time, to run for the Kyrgyz immigration "queues" which is just a mob scene. My French companion, younger and stronger than me, said "Hang onto my belt". He crashed his way through a crowd of people doing the same thing, me dragging behind him holding on for dear life.
South Africa was the worst. Arriving from then-Rhodesia overland, they made us deposit enough money to pay for air tickets back to America, to be "refunded" when I left the country. Of course, I little confidence that the border station would have the cash on hand going back out. We bought tickets Joburg to Canada, but had no money to pay for them (it was being held by immigration) so our travel agent had to accompany us to the immigration office and personally prove that we were using the refunded deposit to buy outbound tickets, which basically took us the whole day. Hats off to a great travel agent. It was a one year open ticket that we could fill in with flights as we went along, or use ground transport in between airports. In those days, you had to fly over places like Angola. Airlines then were were servants, not masters.
Going out from Uganda to Rwanda was straightforward, but I found out in the process that my lift to the border was on a truck that was smuggling a couple dozen refugees down to the border, to escape from the Idi Amin state. I had thought they were just workers getting transported to a job site just before the b order, but then they showed up at Rwanda immigration, soaking wet from swimming across the river.
I drove my own car from the US to Panama and back again, with no particular problem. At most borders, I just paid a few dollars to a fixer, who took my documents while I sat in the shade, and in a half hour everything was ready to go.
Santiago in Chile; we knew that as Australians we have to a pay a reciprocity fee on arrival, in US dollars in cash. It cannot be paid any other way. They had one person processing it when Qantas arrived with hundreds of us. It took hours and after a fifteen hour flight, or whatever, it was the last thing we needed.
Istanbul in Turkey also had a very long queue.
Years ago we arrived in LA, having been transferred to Air Costa Rica in Mexico City. The customs people were yelling things to the mostly Costa Rican passengers about whether they had brought their chickens with them etc.
We have had long waits at times in the U.K. But never rudeness.
Heheh - You haven't lived until you've ridden in a Mexican chicken bus.
But then again, to those LA customs agents, every Latino is Mexican.
When arriving at DeGaulle in Paris, my son (a long-haired hippie with tattoos) was pulled out of the line to an area way across the room for an intense pat-down, while my two little grandsons were left behind standing there unattended. Being suddenly separated for only 15 minutes in a somewhat chaotic mob from his boys really stressed him out & scared the kids.
Who knew French customs employed ICE agents?
When arriving at DeGaulle in Paris, my son (a long-haired hippie with tattoos) was pulled out of the line to an area way across the room for an intense pat-down, while my two little grandsons were left behind standing there unattended. Being suddenly separated for only 15 minutes in a somewhat chaotic mob from his boys really stressed him out & scared the kids.
That brings back a story. Back around 1995, I'm at CDG with a baggage trolley with a PC, monitor, and a couple of boxes of equipment I was taking to a French test lab in Brittany to get government approvals. It was a Sunday morning and Monday was a bank holiday. They told me all my equipment was going to be impounded until it could clear customs on Tuesday. I thought about it and told them that I needed to be in a French lab in Brittany at 9am on Tuesday. If I wasn't there working, I'd get fired. The response was classic. "We didn't see you." I walked out the exit door with all my boxes of gear.
One of the worst experiences was returning to the US through Miami. We waited at least 2 hours in line and they tore through everything in my luggage. Impolite and rude people while testing a can of coffee for gunpowder. Okay, I get it, but I am in my 60s and hardly look like a threat.
At CDG, 5 women, including me, were searched along with our luggage on the actual jetway although we had already gone through security. They had pulled our names from our passports. One woman was so elderly she could not get her shoes on and off (nowhere to sit) and we helped her while the "agent" rolled her eyes. A French woman was so angry she was spouting off - I got the gist of what she was saying and was afraid we would all get in trouble.
People walking by to get on the plane were just shaking their heads. Evidently they only had a woman agent available so could not search men.
RDU was the absolute best experience. Very helpful and polite people.
Heheh - You haven't lived until you've ridden in a Mexican chicken bus.
I nominate Panama and Guatemala for chicken bus champions. Sadly they are phasing them out in much of Panama, but Guatemala is still wonderful individually painted and tricked out disco light chicken bus heaven.
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