El Andalous - Sorting Out Visas

How Most People Feel at the Visa Office?
(actually, it's a King Kong Sculpture at Sand City, Hurghada)

When I first arrived back into El Andalous maybe a month ago, I had some immediate admin to attend to. The most important thing was to get my visa.

The visa situation over here seems to have clarified a bit, although I have heard that there have been instances where the “rules” haven’t been applied. Generally, for most people, it seems possible to get a 6-month visa extension after you’ve got the airport visa and at the same time (for a cost) you can apply for a re-entry visa, which will allow you to go in and out of the country. If you don’t have the re-entry visa, going out of the country invalidates your last visa and you have to purchase a new visa at the airport each time. If you want to stay a year, you have to apply for a second 6-month visa, but you can’t get a re-entry visa for those last 6 months. After a year, you have to leave the country for one overnight and then start all over again.

Since I was leaving the country after only two weeks, I needed to get the visa sorted as soon as possible. Fortunately, it went fairly smoothly and was organised, although the system is a bit convoluted. You have to queue to get the form to apply for the 6-month extension. I asked for the form for the multi-entry too. However, I think the guy misunderstood me as asking if it could be for multiple family members, so he said it was included on the form.

Then you queue again at the same place to hand in your completed form with your required documents and they give you a slip to take to the cashier. This is when I found out that my re-entry wasn’t included because I happened to know that the price they were charging on the pay-in slip wasn’t enough to include multi-entry.

For the form for the multi-entry visa, I was told to go and queue in a different office (where they have to check that you’ve only just come into the country), then I had to fill out that form, queue again at the original counter to get my other slip for payment of my re-entry visa. Then you queue at the cashier to pay; they give you a receipt which they advise you to photocopy. You go to another place to get it photocopied and then you queue again when you go back to your original counter to show that you’ve paid the cashier. Then they tell you to come back the next day. And then the next day you queue to get your visa and passport back.

It helped that I knew roughly what the process was and that I managed to catch that they hadn’t charged me for the re-entry. Some other person applying for the visa latched onto me while I was there and asked me to explain the process because she didn’t really know what was going on and how to get the re-entry visa and where to get the forms. She also did not know what the rules were regarding re-entry visas (how long they last, when you can get one, etc). It felt quite strange to be someone who actually knew something!

However, I got it easily enough and I was really happy about that. I’m just so pleased that the re-entry visas are back at last!

I had a bit of a confrontation with my taxi driver, which is unusual, because my taxi fare this time was more than double what I used to pay. In the end, I think I just hadn’t realized that Esmat now charges if the taxi waits for you. Before, they would wait for free so as not to lose the business for the return fare. Also, the fares have gone up with petrol prices having risen.

As usual, there’s always something that’s a bit of a shock on returning!