Speaking of visas, is it just me or do fewer and fewer countries require visas these days? It' seems like it is becoming a rarity that you actually have to send your passport off for one. Even countries that do require them often let you buy them at the border.
I like sending my passport away, though. I am not naturally a plan-everything sort of person, but I do like having my little visas lined up in my passport to admire for a while before I leave on a trip. Plus I have a slight horror of being visa-less in a country that requires them. Which is, come to think of it, also odd, because I am quite laid-back about everything else do do with travel. I never bother owning the right traveling equipment, for example, or knowing what time my flight leaves. (What? I always know what DAY it leaves, and the general, you know, portion of the day. Like morning. Or evening. So far I've made it on every flight.)
The Samuel Doe years might have affected me a bit, there in the paperwork department. Woe betide the person who did not have the correct paperwork going into or out of Liberia in the 1980s, or so it seemed to me as a kid standing eye level with the counter and repeatedly told, "DO NOT say anything when we are at the counter. Just be completely quiet and let Mom and Dad do the talking." It seemed like my parents had a much harder time with immigration and customs back then than my experiences in adult life have been. I mean, I once talked my way into Tanzania for the third time on a single entry visa, thanks to a very nice immigration officer who had sympathy for the fact that I was a broke student just looking to catch my flight out the next morning. (No, literally. I did not have the cash for that visa. I would have been permanently stuck at the Kenya-Tanzania border if he had not taken pity on me.)
I like sending my passport away, though. I am not naturally a plan-everything sort of person, but I do like having my little visas lined up in my passport to admire for a while before I leave on a trip. Plus I have a slight horror of being visa-less in a country that requires them. Which is, come to think of it, also odd, because I am quite laid-back about everything else do do with travel. I never bother owning the right traveling equipment, for example, or knowing what time my flight leaves. (What? I always know what DAY it leaves, and the general, you know, portion of the day. Like morning. Or evening. So far I've made it on every flight.)
The Samuel Doe years might have affected me a bit, there in the paperwork department. Woe betide the person who did not have the correct paperwork going into or out of Liberia in the 1980s, or so it seemed to me as a kid standing eye level with the counter and repeatedly told, "DO NOT say anything when we are at the counter. Just be completely quiet and let Mom and Dad do the talking." It seemed like my parents had a much harder time with immigration and customs back then than my experiences in adult life have been. I mean, I once talked my way into Tanzania for the third time on a single entry visa, thanks to a very nice immigration officer who had sympathy for the fact that I was a broke student just looking to catch my flight out the next morning. (No, literally. I did not have the cash for that visa. I would have been permanently stuck at the Kenya-Tanzania border if he had not taken pity on me.)
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