American Immigrant
Approach to Ulaanbaatar. Flying is the Easy Part
When I left Mongolia in the middle of July I thought my effort to ward off the legal difficulties of my previous two trips had paid off and that the visa for my return had been arranged. It was, I thought, just a formality to mail my passport to the Mongolian Embassy in Washington DC and, because I was planning to be there in mid-August, walk in and pick it up. I had a letter of recommendation from the US embassy in Ulaanbaatar explaining my situation, recounting a personal conversation about some of the other difficulties that I've had in the past, the most problematic of which was a failure of Mongolian immigration officials to stamp my passport on leaving the country by train. By phone I also had an oral account of the discussion of my case with Mongolian immigration and the, also oral, account of the approval that was sure to be given to my application.
So when I walked up to the counter where my passport was waiting, I was
surprised disapointed to learn that no approval had been given. After checking several times, the Mongolian man behind the desk suggested that I come back the next day, which I did. I came back the day after that as well, with the same result. In the remaining days between returning to Montana and when I thought I would be leaving for Mongolia with Judy, a flurry of emails to the other side of the world both confirmed the fact and denied the responsibility for what had failed to happen. To get to Mongolia, I would be starting over with the visa application process.
With one book on Mongolia under my belt and several months of morin khuur lessons that I'd like to continue, as well as an appearance on national television, several of those who were helping me decided that an S (study and research) visa might be the most promising. So Judy's supervisor at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology found a professor working in their design department who would act as a sponsor. (I will offer help with curriculum and assignments, as well as software instruction and its necessary English vocabulary. And more.) She ran the proposal through her university's upper management, which, even for such a risk-free deal, took weeks. August went by. Meanwhile I got my first HIV test, (first for this trip, at Planned Parenthood in Missoula, the only place that offers this test here,) submitted diplomas for translation, signed a contract for some undetermined but still frightening amount of unpaid labor.
Halfway through September I learned that my case had made it from the desk of the university official to the desk of someone at the Ministry of Education—then a week and a half later, to the Department of Immigration. On the 23rd, an email saying that there would be another email with an approval code. Then, days later, the email with the code. Then a call to the Mongolian Embassy, and surely an end to this process. No, there's a meme that says "wait, there's more." And yes, of course, there is.
The man at the desk of the Embassy assured me that everything was set, that my passport, with visa, would be mailed the next day. Then a phone call that afternoon from a woman at that same embassy. After two checks and three trips in person and many conversations by phone she now informed me that they do not actually accept personal checks, and could I please come in and give her a cashier's check. Explaining that Montana is 4,000 kilometers (2600 miles) away from Washington, I would now need to find a bank and a post office that was open (most near here close at 1:00pm)
By now, not all of my frustrations came from Mongolia. A woman at Flathead Bank in nearby Lakeside explained that because of
Homeland Security regulations they could not exchange $190 in cold, US, cash for a cashier's check unless I had an account with their bank. (My bank, Missoula Federal Credit Union, is 120 miles away in Missoula.) I went across the street to the post office, which sold me a money order, but which could not mail it until the following day. I drove to Kalispell, twenty-five more miles away, and there, sent the money order purchased in Lakeside, by express mail for delivery the next day, or maybe the day after that. (I am really sorry, but I am a librel from the East! I say Ki-O-tee, and we expect more.)
Five more days I waited patiently without word before calling to check on progress. Yes, my passport had been mailed, though several days later than I had hoped. Two days later I had the envelope in my hand. What I discovered when I opened it was that I had been issued a 90 day single-entry visa instead of the 9-month multiple-entry visa that I needed just to satisfy the contract I had signed with the university. "No problem," said the man at the embassy, who I had by now gotten to know. "No problem," said Judy's supervisor by email. They both assured me that it could be fixed once I got to Mongolia, where it was made to seem that anything can be fixed, even if it's not clear to foreigners just how it would be done. So late Thursday afternoon I booked a flight from Missoula for Saturday, and finished packing my bags, and at noon on Saturday Judy's ever gracious father John dropped me off at the airport. "Surely the red tape is behind me," I remember thinking as I stood in line.
It was not.
More...
In Missoula I discovered that my bags could not be checked to my final destination because my layover in Beijing happened to be too long. In Seattle I was informed that I couldn't board the plane because the visa that was issued to me expired before my return flight. After a half hour of negotiations a red flag was placed in my record by the Delta desk agent—in truth, a trap was set—to assure even more difficulties at my next stop. In Beijing it took an hour with immigration officials to deal with this trap, and by the time I went to collect my bags there was no longer a clue on the signboards where my flight's baggage might have been sent. After walking around each of the first seven carousels, I found my bags sitting all by themselves on the final eighth, where I then dragged them out to the bus and hauled them aboard for the twenty-minute ride to the next terminal.
Air China Gate, Beijing
Luggage check-in would open an hour and a half before boarding, so I still had ten more hours of watching my luggage—two huge suitcases, a bag with four cameras, seven hard drives and a computer, and a lime green case that contained my morin khuur. At eleven I tried to sleep. At twelve a maintenance crew came in to do a little jackhammering, leaving at 4am. At six I was first in line to check my two bags, hoping, despite the one bag carry-on limit in China, to carry on my morin khoor as well as my camera bag. A man from the China Air desk took me to the oversize baggage desk. He and the oversized baggage official waved me away from the counter. Yes, I could carry on my instrument, but it would cost money. A hundred. (Yuan? Dollars?) Quite a bit of back and forth later it was agreed that it would take $50 USD. After paying the oversize baggage official, the man from Air China, who had been carrying my passport, then took me to the gates for international departure, waved his card for the turnstiles to open, then waved me to the other side of them. He held out my passport with one hand and made the gesture of drinking, guzzling really, with the other, saying that a tip would be a nice thing to give him right then. I dug through my wallet and gave him the rest of the money I had changed into Yuan, and he handed me my passport. When I got to the the gate there were few passengers and the plane was nearly empty.
Three hours later I was met by
Baisaa as I emerged from customs in Ulaanbaatar—a very pleasant and familiar face, a driver who works for Zaya's Guest House, who I've traveled with several times before. Home sweet home.
Another HIV Test
I'd like to report that this was the end, but it's not. Within seven days there was a trip to Mongolian Immigration, near the airport, to register to stay longer than thirty days. There was a trip to the hospital in Sukhbaatar District for another HIV test. (Seven pokes in the crook of my arm, bingo under my watch band. Who knows what could have happened on the plane between the US and Mongolia?) There was a trip to the Khoroo office with my landlord to get permission to live in the district. There have been several attempts to get the paperwork from the Ministry of Education that would be used to then go to the Immigration office and attempt to extend my visa. After promising these papers Friday, I was told that they would not be ready until today, Monday, at noon, then at two. An hour ago (3pm) I learned that they might be available Tuesday.
..........
Gone Missing
It is now Wednesday and after showing thirty pages of documentation at the immigration office, it appears that the thirty-first page has gone missing. Clearly it was here at a previous step in this process, because there is a copy of this permission for residence in the wad of papers I presented today. But the original? Left in a copy machine? The Minister of Education's secretary's office? The two women who accompanied me on the 45 minute drive from downtown to the Mongolian Immigration office glared at me and asked what I had done with that piece of paper. With a dozen people handling it in the past week, I'm pretty sure it didn't jump out of the folder for a dog to eat. Really, I am trying to finish this story. I'm at least as curious as you are about how it will end.
.........
Thursday. Another trip to the Khoroo office to replace the now missing permission document. Then another trip to Immigration, the (by now,
A) student of one of the teachers assigned to help me, driving me there through the shutdown of the main road from the airport for the arrival of a high official from Japan. "You will need to pay," the man behind the desk told me. Uh oh, here we go again. He wrote down just how much I owed, which turned out to be the same as yesterday, and I started digging through the mound of papers until I found the three pink slips that the teller at the adjoining bank had given me. A simple oversight.
With that, it is possible that I am done. The man behind the desk had me sign several documents, in Mongolian, so it is not clear what I had certified. He tore copies of them off and tucked them into various places under his desk and handed the yellow copy of one of them back to me. "You will come back on 29 October," he said with certainty. He did not return my passport, which in this case I took to be good news.
Less...
