She is the Pearl of the Orient with 7000 beautiful islands. She was once connected with land bridges across SouthEast Asia. Indians, Malays, Chinese freely crossed these land bridges and settled into her lands. The Spanish discovered her from the seas, pillaged her, claimed her to be their own while abusing her. She was Sisa in Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere.
I am back in the USA pensive, reflecting and processing my recent travels to the Silk Road.
This travel had been a bit more challenging compared to all my other travels. Certain thoughts and emotions have been triggered crossing borders of Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey and then coming back to the USA (where once again, by a fluke of getting randomly selected for “higher security inspections”, I felt violated with my privacy invaded. I can’t help telling off TSA officers: “If you are going to uncover, unpack and remove every single item of my belongings, can you at least provide a more private space somewhere rather having it out in the open for everyone in line to see? This is humiliating and embarrassing!” I did not have a butt plug or dildo or anything like that, but still… No other country has yet made me feel the way USA aggressively had in all 54 national borders I’ve crossed to date. That this happened at domestic, not even international, security check made it even worse. But that’s a different topic altogether…)
This is really more about what I learned from crossing borders of my fellow Asian countries…
Russia is atrociously expensive at $160USD for a transit visa and $340-950USD for a tourist visa. Our research was misinformed. We thought we did not need a visa transiting via Minsk, Belarus. The transfer desk won’t let us through. Then, the Belavia lady remembered something. With her help, we managed to get through because of the sheer luck that there was the Minsk-hosted European Games. Russia offered a visa-free program for anyone who has bought tickets to the games. Belavia transfer desk helped us with that loophole by helping us buy a ticket that only cost $6 each for a shooting event the following day, to get through our transit. Of course, that we were headed for Samarkand, and yet had a ticket for an event in Minsk the next day, created some confusion in exiting Minsk, and entering Russia. At Russian customs, they helped us get through despite issues. The ticket, we found out, needed to be registered in their system. They helped with that, entering all the necessary information using the Cowboy’s phone online registration. It was nail-biting. The system was taking time to update and kept having errors. They asked us to wait. We waited and waited. And waited. I was getting anxious every minute that passed. With 15 minutes left before boarding, a senior customs officer eventually decided to escort us to boarding and had our passports stamped with same day entry-exit. That team effort of a few officers, getting out of their way to help us, touched me. It made me want to visit Russia someday.
Uzbekistan was more painless. It allowed me free entry with my Aussie passport, whereas it required online application fees for my American companion. I can’t help thinking, well…tit-for-tat I suppose.
Turkmenistan taught me a lot. It is still a relatively closed country. I heard that it’s the second hardest country to enter next to North Korea (haven’t fact-checked so don’t quote me). While it’s a former Soviet communist country and predominantly Islamic, it’s very strict about allowing entry from those same kinds of countries. Others don’t get in easy as well. A fellow Dutch traveller crossing from Iran to Turkmenistan said another Dutch got rejected an entry, while he almost got stuck with unexpected additional fees, money he didn’t have on hand and was only lucky to borrow from another traveller. (They don’t accept credit cards, and he didn’t have the acceptable currencies. There was no way to change currencies while in customs.) Uzbeks don’t have it easy either, despite allowing Turkmen to cross their border easily. That surprised me. As for me, to secure my visa, I had to find a local guide as required (which took extensive hours of research) who then had to send me a Letter of Intent to visit which I had to present at customs. Once there, the guide met us and helped us fill up form after form, transferring from one customs counter to another, not really understanding what’s going on, and finally paying around $150 for both myself and the Cowboy — all for the privilege of getting into the country for only a couple of days. I guess we could have been smarter by extending our visit but we didn’t have any more time. My passport did not get the strange reactions that the Cowboy did… they looked at his USA passport, looked at him with a sly looking smile and said “Americaaa!”
Turkey is the most efficient… win-win! It’s easy to get in with online visa processing, but at a cost — which to me was fair enough, a brilliant revenue generating scheme for the country. Aussie – $60USD, USA – $20USD, 90-day multiple entry. After insisting upon check-in at the Urgench airport bound for Istanbul that I don’t need a (pre)entry visa, I realized I actually needed one — so it’s handy that the application only took a few clicks here and there — with flexible payment options, including Alipay and WeChat. How progressive and inclusive is that!??
I am grateful — and do not take for granted — that I have a privileged Aussie passport. I cannot imagine having successfully crossed borders the way I did this time had I used my Philippine passport. I can only imagine the pain…
Which led me to wonder… why is the Philippines easy access, free entry to the nationals that make it hard for Filipinos to get into their countries?
Why can’t it be more protective like Turkmenistan or efficiently revenue-generating like Turkey? It doesn’t have to be as cost-prohibitive as Russia. Turkmenistan is not even nowhere near as popular as the Philippines when it comes to travel, yet they are ‘protective’. Philippines doesn’t have to be that protective but it can at least be selective like Uzbekistan. After all we’re all in the same continent — never mind Russia (although partly Asian, they’re way out there literally and figuratively anyway), but how come these Central Asian countries can afford a more restrictive approach compared to Southeast Asian countries when it comes to border crossing?
Was there an element of national pride and self-esteem?
Philippines “openness” somehow reminds me of a low-esteem person who is beautiful and attractive, yet doesn’t recognize her/his value, and therefore has very low standards entertaining whoever shows interest — readily opens up its arms and legs, and then gets no reciprocation of love in the end. This triggers for me that Philippines is still like Rizal’s Sisa from Noli me Tangere. The metaphor for me has evolved from Spanish subjugation, to modern time inequities that become so painfully obvious when crossing borders. (And not to mention the horrors of Kafala for Filipino migrant workers in the middle east).
Why do we make it ‘more fun in the Philippines’ for foreigners while they make it painful for Filipinos to go visit them?
On the way back to USA, I finally got to watch Captain Marvel in the plane. I did not like her the very first time I saw her in Avengers – End Game. I thought, “Pffttt…where was she the whole time while the whole world was suffering?” But after watching Captain Marvel, I fell in love with her strength, self-assurance and sassiness — and her journey of self-discovery.
Maybe someday, I might be blessed enough to work with the Bureau of Immigrations in Philippines, using whatever amunition I have acquired as professional/expert in transformation combined with lessons learned from travelling. Maybe, just maybe, I could help reinvent Sisa with inspiration from Captain Marvel. She may have a superpower yet waiting to be uncovered and then… rewrite Herstory. She’s the Pearl of the Orient after all.
Alalahanin mo, bayang magiliw… perlas ka ng silanganan!
