It's no fun, being an illegal alien

A few weeks ago, I went to Indonesia for a Computer Security Conference. Of course, I won't bore you with details of the conference, but I thought y'all would like a good story concerning my trip, and of course a few pics.

First the story.

After over 29 hours travelling by plane through Washington Dulles, Atlanta Hartsfield, Seoul Korea Inchon, and finally Kuala Lumpur International Aiport in Malaysia I arrived at about midnight local time Monday night. We were 12 hours ahead of East Coast Daylight Savings time, and ready for the hotel. We take the tram from the arrival gate to the main terminal and follow the signs. We get to the immigration desks to find no one. I mean no one. There were about 30 desks, and every single one of them UN-attended. Everyone else was walking on through and I started to go with them, when my coworker touched my arm, and said "hold up a second." We let a few people walk on through and looked around. "I like to make sure the guards with guns aren't waiting for stupid tourists to go where they're not supposed to." "heh Yeah, I know what you mean, but I don't see anyone official at all." So we go on through the hallway to baggage claim. We get our bags and walk up to the one security guard we finally see. Before we can even ask him anything, he points to the exit. So we head on out and get a cab to our hotel. My coworker said "yeah, sometimes when you arrive in Eurpoe late at night like this, there's no one on duty and you just go on through."

We did our tourist thing the next day (pics below), then 2 days of conference, and finally late Thursday night, we head to the airport to catch our 1:00 AM flight. We walk up to the Korean Air Lines checkin counter, hand over our flight receipts and passports. The ticket counter agent thumbs through my passport. I'd just renewedit last year, so it was a virgin passport. No stamps. He looks up. My coworker and I tell him the story about how no one was on duty when we came through immigration on Monday night. He calls his boss over and we tell her the same story. She prints out our boarding passes and writes a phone number on the back. "If immigration officials need to verify your entry flights, have them call this number. The number they usually call is unattended now. We're all out here checking people in." "uhhhhhh okaaayyyyyyyy"

Next we head on down to immigration control to leave the country. We walk up to 2 immigration agents side by side and hand over our boarding passes and passports. My coworker's agent thumbs through the passport and looks up at him. "yeah, there wasn't anyone on duty... blah blah blah." My agent is distracted watching them, so I speak up, "yeah, I'm travelling with him and had the same thing happen." They look at our passports from front to back (I was very aware of my passport being completely devoid of stamps from _anywhere_.) The agents look at each other, then call their line supervisor over.

Picture your stereotypical cop-movie jerk cop. Middle aged, overweight, _big_ chip on his shoulder and out to prove he's a big fish in a small pond. He glares at us and thumbs through our passports. We go through the story again and he cuts us off. "No!! You broke international law and malaysian law by entering my country illegally. There are agents on duty 24 hours a day. You had to intentionally attempt to skirt our security to enter w/o a stamp." We again calmly tried to explain to him what happened. But was unconvinced. He called one of his other guards over to escort us to the dreaded "back room".

This guard starts walking us through the airport and to the head office of immigration. As we walked along we asked the guy how serious this was. "Well, you're technically illegal aliens. You've broken the law and could go to jail." yikes All I can think about is how there was recently a push here in the U.S. to make being an illegal alien a felony. Spending up to and possibly over a year in Malaysian prison was not on my list of things to do on vacation...

We finally arrive at the immigration office. It reminded me of a bus station in a small town. Rows and rows of plastic molded seats that were designed to be anything but comfortable. There were about 8 people in those seats waiting for the results of whatever got them brought them back here in the first place. There was a folding table up at the front of the room with a Korean gentleman in a business suit trying to get his wife out of jail for being an illegal alien. He was pleading his case to a uniformed immigration official. This guy was also middle aged, but seemed more inclined to actually help people with their problems rather then just yell at them for whatever they did wrong like the first line supervisor.

We listen to the Korean guy try to get his wife out of jail. Listening to 2 people speak Enligsh to each other when English is neither's native tongue was a little hard to follow. But it seemed like the woman arrive the day before with a letter applying for a visa. Something was inaccurate in the letter, so she was arrested. yikes. She was trying to do the right thing, but was arrested anyway. My stomach dropped a little more. But as we listened, the immigration official told the guy he could get his wife out in the morning. So again, this guy seemed like he was willing to work with people.

Our guard then approached him, spoke in Malay and handed him our passports will nodding his head in our direction. The smile went away from the official's face. I asked my coworker "Should we call the embassy before it's too late?" "Nah, you wait until you're actually arrested for that." "I'm just worried by then it will be too late. It's not like this is the U.S. and I get my phone call." "Nah, we'll be fine..."

The guard walks off and the official gestures for us to come over. We sit down and proceed to tell the story for the umpteeth time. He also interrupts us to say that the immigration desks are manned 24 hours every single day. We suggested that the airline sent us through a domestic arrival gate instead of an international arrival gate. Or any other possibility besides us intentionally skirting security.

After repeating our story the same way over and over again, the guy finally realized we were telling the truth. Now instead of being angry with us for illegally entering his country, he was angry with how the system failed and he now had an entire planeload of illegal immigrants to worry about. One thing he said that caused me to grin was "if you're out there and you don't see any immigration officials, it's your duty to find one of us." Sure, it's easy for us to say, "that's ridiculous, it's your job to be set up to funnel us through your officials instead of letting us wander around where there's NO signs whatsover." But think about things you hear here in the U.S. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." But the guy was letting us go, so we didn't argue with him.

In fact my coworker said, "well, next time we come, we know." The official smiled real big and asked "oh, you want to come back?" "oh yeah. We had a great time. It's a very beautiful country and we didn't get a chance to see very much." "Oh great!!" He seemed happy we wanted to come on back.

We made our way to our departure gate and began our 28 hour trip back home. I was a little nervous about coming into customs in Atlanta without any stamps in my passport from anywhere. Completely empty. Nada. But no worries. The customs official didn't even look in my passport. He just asked where I was and why. He then opened my passport at random and stamped it for re-entry. So my passport for international travel just has a stamp showing I came back into the U.S. Nothing about being anywhere else. It's like I just popped into existence out of thin air on a flight from Seoul, Korea to Atlanta, GA, U.S.

So, on to the pictures you know you want to see.

We went to the Petronas Twin Towers in the morning and got our free tickets for 2:00 that afternoon. To kill some time, we went to Batu Caves, a Hindu temple.

The entrance was guarded though. ;-)

Off to the left, before we actually entered the gates were some really neat statues and engravings.

You go through a gatehouse that's nicely decorated and head up a LOT of stairs.


Even the back of the gate house was ornately decorated.


After a lot of steps, we finally made it to the top.


Once at the top, we entered the caves. "Cave" is kind of a strong word. They're not the deep, dark, limestone caverns I'm used to in the Blue Ridge of Southwestern Virginia. It's more of a big depression in the hillside. But, they're still quite impressive. Unfortunately, they were too dark for my cheapo digital camera to get really good pictures inside of. But here's a few that give you an idea of what was in there...


On our way back down the steps, a group of wild monkeys had gathered along the steps. Some were obviously young ones, still nursing from momma. Others were full grown adults that weren't to happy with having their pictures taken.


After the caves, we took another cab back to the Petronas Twin Towers. They used to be the tallest buildings in the world, but have since been usurped by the Tapei 101. Now they're the tallest twin towers. I took some pictures from the ground

Then we went up to the skybridge connecting the two towers at about the 40th floor.


We also went to Chinatown, which reminded me of a black market. Lots of open air stalls and you could get everything from bootleg movies to pashminas. I didn't get any pictures since it was so crowded (didn't wanna risk taking my camera out o fmy pocket where it could get snatched easily), so sorry about that.

All in all, it was a good trip. And the almost getting arrested part is a good story if I really wasnt in danger of actually being arrested...