Friday, July 20, 2007

Exit Vias

So there we are at the Doha International Airport. We had our boarding passes, our luggage was checked, we were on our way to Bahrain for the weekend. Well thats what we thought! When we got to the Passport check out we found out something very important. If you come to Qatar on a buisness visa (sponsored by whomever you are working for) and you stay for over 30 days they need to get you an Exit Visa. Without this you can not leave the country. So there we were in the airport finding out about this for the FIRST TIME. Don't worry the appropriate people will hear about it. So there we are in Doha airport with No car, No hotel, No luggage, No exit visas and now denied boarding passes. The plane we were supose to get on to go to Bahrain had our luggage on it and per new safety/security laws is not allowed to take off with the luggage on it. ok that rule actually makes some sence, i wouldn't want someone just putting luggage on a plane then not wanting to get on that plane. So that plane got delayed and our luggage removed, but we were not able to pick it up untill the next day! Luckily there are 50+ taxis outside the airport. So we grabed a cab and drove to a hotel-Sheraton. Luckily they had rooms available. We were able to cancel our hotel/car/plane tickets to Bahrain with no fees! Thats another funny thing. I have never in my life bought refundable plane tickets. I was online at my apartment using my pre-paid internet card. The card is for dial-up which goes at 40.6 KB speed (very very slow). I was having issues buying the tickets, every time i got to the check out page it kicked me off. So on my 4th attempt to buy plane tickets i forgot to remove the check box that would have made my ticket non-refundable. I was cursing the internet at the time, but thanks to it i saved about $500 in tickets! Sometimes you don't always get what you want, but you may just get what you need!
We are in the process of getting our exit visas. But we will not be able to go to Bahrain now. We have tickets back to the United States for monday....wish us luck!

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