Have you ever noticed that no lesson in life is ever free? As we gain wisdom, it usually seems to come at the expense of something else. We may have paid with our time, such as a missed opportunity that resulted in a long wait. We may have paid with the loss of something valuable, such as jewelry carelessly left in a hotel safe. And of course, there are those lessons that cost us money. Our latest acquisition of wisdom cost us just that: cold hard cash.To get into Saudi Arabia you need a visa, pre-authorization to enter and stay for a specific amount of time. Without a valid visa you can't get into the country, ...or OUT of it either!
On March 22nd we were heading to the airport with our bags packed for two weeks of travel in China and HongKong. On this particular trip we would be leaving out of Bahrain at around midnight, requiring us to leave Saudi and drive across the causeway. Our excitement and anticipation level was quite high; we'd been dreaming about this trip for several years already, well before coming to Saudi.
It was apparent that there was a problem at immigration on the Saudi side rather quickly. The normally languid official in the booth roused himself from his boredom-induced stupor and began speaking rather animatedly to our taxi driver in rapid Arabic. After a brief exchange, our taxi driver told us that our visas had expired and we would have to turn back. Excuse me, turn back? TURN BACK?!? Didn't he know we had a plane to catch in three hours? After talking with a supervisor and learning that there was no way we could get new visas on the spot, we had no choice but to go back home. And then the waterworks started...
You see...because it was already 9pm with no flight to catch, there was no reason for our exhausted boys to stay up. As we were putting them to bed they naturally had some questions. When would we be leaving? When could we get the visas? Would we be able to afford the very last minute airline tickets to replace the ones we were likely not going to get a refund on? What about all the hotels, tours and transportation within China for which we had already paid in full, and was past date of even a partial refund? Were we going to China now AT ALL? We had to leave them to drift off to sleep without any answers, for we had none at this point. What a mess, or more accurately, what a nightmare!
In a nutshell, Steve was able to get the visas the next morning and our amazing travel agent in Khobar found us four affordable seats on a flight leaving that afternoon. We only had a 15% cancellation charge on the tickets we cancelled two hours before the flight. We got to Beijing only one day late, but quite a bit more than a dollar short!
We were lucky, incredibly lucky . The wisdom we gained cost us thousands of dollars less than we were anticipating when we went to bed that sleepless night. So as not to tempt fate in the future, we've had our visas translated by a co-worker (even the numbers are in Arabic) and the dates kept in our travel planning folder. There are plenty of other lessons to learn without relearning this one!
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