Singapore Passport - Tak Boleh! Getting Stuck at the Border Between Turkey and Syria

I know how it feels to be in detention- it’s ultra-boring, and worse, when you do not know when you will released. I had my first taste of this at the border between Turkey and Syria.

We arrived at the border station at 12 noon, with our heavy backpacks, and our specially taken “tudung-covered” photographs, ready to cross overland from Turkey and Syria, for our final leg of our trip.

It was indicated in the Lonely Planet that for countries which do not have a Syrian embassy, the visa can be made at the border. Alternatively, the visa can be made in Istabul at the Syrian embassy but it was closed during the weekend when we were in Turkey.

We were asked to go into the office to meet the officer-in-charge. He understood little English, but there were a few staff who could speak some English.
“Which country you from?,” asked one of the border officer.
“Sing-gar-pool”, we replied. He scoured through his list of countries in Arabic language, and frowned.
Sing-gar-pool”, he repeated. Maybe it was the wrong pronounciation. We tried again, “Singa-fura”. Still, he frowned. More officers came into the room, and others curiously peered into the office. We were once again, surrounded by the group of men strangers, but this time round, in a completely different setting.

One of the officers explained that they would send our details to the capital, Damascus and would need to get a reply fax from them before they can approve our visa. “So how long, do we have to wait here? One hour, two hours?”, we asked. “Maybe, by 11pm, maybe tomorrow, maybe maybe, it depends,” replied the officer as a matter-of-factly. We were told to check with the office every hour on the status of our fax.

Wei Chean managed to get her visa with her Malaysian passport within the two hours of waiting. Malaysia is a Muslim country and Mahadir had visited Syrian about three years ago. I think it’s high time we alert Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Minister George Yeo to go shake hands with the Syrian government.

”It would probably take a few hours, at most,” I thought to myself. During the first three hours of waiting, Wei Chean, Arlina and myself were still joking with one another, went shopping at the duty-free shop and chatted with curious drivers from Kuwait and guides from Turkey who were waiting for their tour groups.

By 3pm, the experience was not funny or refreshing anymore. It was very boring and frustrating waiting and not knowing how long more to wait. Everything was not within our control and the Singaporean passport, for once, is more a hindrance than an aid. We wished we had the Malaysia passport.

We told Weichean to make her own way to Aleppo and find a guest-house to stay and rest first. I sent Weichean off the station and bade farewell to her. “So sad, bye bye,” she pouted her lips and left.

It was a torturous and endless wait and Arlina and I were tired of entertaining ourselves. There were no internet cafes anyway in sight, no beautiful sights to see and no strangers to befriend as the night darkened. Our numerous attempts to check on the status of our return fax from Damascus remained futile. We could not even return to Turkey as the passports were kept with the custom officers.

“There is no system here. It is normal to wait. Some people wait for about two days,” said the Customer Service officer, one of the rare Syrians who could speak English fluently.

“Waiting for hours and hours for the fax,” that was scribbled on the counter at the border, probably by a foreigner visitor to Syria. My sentiments exactly I’ve walked through the border station, from left to right, front to back, listen to all the songs in my MP-three player and was still waiting. Arlina and I started talking and dreaming about going to Greece or Cyprus if we couldn’t get our visa into Syria. The mouse-eating scrubby-looking cat made frequent checks on us, and for a cat-phobic like me, it wasn’t welcomed at all.

It was around 7pm and there was still no good news. Arlina and I decided to have dinner first at the restaurant just across the road, before coming back to the station to wait again. We were the only women in the restaurant, as usual. There are several customers and workers in the restaurant. The dinner was US$4 per person, but it was a surprisingly sumptuous spread and a very pleasant surprise instead. My set-dinner came complete with freshly baked nan (bread), a bowl of piping hot beef stew, with potatoes and carrots, rice with two pieces of tender, succulent chicken pieces. Arlina’s chicken kebab set came with 5 pieces of juicy chicken parts and a bowl of fresh salad. We were happily enjoying our meals and took the chance to charge of handphones and MP3 player.

Suddenly, a Russian man walked over. His body was retching with the smell of alcohol and he wanted to invite us to his table for some drinks. We kindly rejected his offer saying it was alright as we had our own water. 15 minutes later, he made eye contact with Arlina and tried to persuade us to move to his table. We smiled and said no as we carried our backpacks and made our way back to the border station to check on our visa status.

“Aren’t they tired of seeing us, the two gals from morning to night? We must pretend to be very pathetic and cough aloud to attract their attention,” I told Arlina, and quickly started coughing louder than it was necessary as a border officer looked up. We were so bored, we started exercising and prancing around the station and used our teeth to shape the continents of the world using the nan (bread).

At 9pm, we went to the office to check on the fax again. On the way in, we met an English guide from Syria, “How are you ladies?” “Not good”, I said. “But why?, asked the guide. I told him the problem with our visa and the number of hours we’ve spent waiting at the border. He said that the station officer was a good friend of his and he can help check for us. He said that sometimes it helps if we can give for instance 5 US dollars per person to hasten the procedures as it was ridiculous to wait for so many hours.

I told Arlina that since the officers had said that they would give us a final confirmation by 11pm, I’m not willing to part with my 5 US dollars for bribery. It’s a matter of principle. If we had known that we can skip these usual procedures through bribery earlier, we would gladly oblige, but not after more than 9 hours of waiting. I would rather wait for another two more hours to see the outcome through the proper channel.

Besides our hourly checks at the officer, we had “sent” many additional representatives into the office to try and intervene. These are English guides, drivers, customers who could speak English and have approached us to chat. Maybe that had irritated the officers a little.

Finally, at 12 mid-night, we saw the light at the end of the tunnel. The border officer asked us to change US $34 for our visa and get the stamps from another station. A taxi-driver appeared from nowhere, at the counter, and said, “Syria, Aleppo?”, we said yes, and asked him how much it would cost,
US 10 dollars per person he said. That was the standard rate and we quickly said yes. Within 10 minutes, we received the visa and the pink form and made our way to Aleppo in the taxi.

It was a very interesting experience at the border station. Though it was 12 hours of our youth wasted, we had received much hospitality, well-wishes and free ride offers from complete strangers. Two Syrian drivers, with their limited English, offered to drive us to Aleppo for free, guides gave us their contact numbers to us, and told us to contact them if we encounter any problems in Syria. One Turkish driver even offered us a free ride back to Turkey.

My advice to all travellers- get your visa in Istabul, it will save you a lot of hassle at the border!