Living the tourist life

Loes woke me around 10 o’clock. It was time to get up. Brian was leaving today, we were moving to another hostel and we had to extend our visas. I had to go to a photographer to take new photos for the visa and Loes wanted to buy Brian a little Buddha. We walked down the street into the photographers’ shop. A lady took a digital camera and placed me on a seat. It was not the kind of camera you would expect – her camera was definately much older than mine – and took one picture. ‘Good!’ she said. Five minutes later I walked out with four photos. Loes bought a Buddha after some bargaining and we walked back to the hostel to play one last game of chess before Brian left. Then all of a sudden Narayan showed up – our guide during the Annapurna trekking. We were surprised to see him. He asked when Brian would leave and said his boss, Devy, would take us to the airport. We wondered why, but agreed to walk to the office with Narayan. Devy came and called another guy, who would take us. Loes and me took our passports with us so we could extend our visas at the airport, as they would expire today. It didn’t take long to get to the airport. We realized we couldn’t go inside with Brian and had to say goodbye sooner than we expected. Our taxi driver told us we had to go the immigration office inside the airport to extend the visas. We tried, and one cop sent us to another but they wouldn’t let us in. ‘I’ll take you to the immigration office downtown’, the taxi guy said. We filled out the paper work and asked how much it would cost. We then realized we didn’t have enough money with us. To extend the visa for 7 days was more expensive than obtaining a 15-day visa. We got out of the office to find an ATM. The immigration officer told us we needed to hurry because the office was closing and we would have to pay a penalty if we didn’t fix the visas today. Of course there was no ATM to be seen anywhere near. We went to the taxi guy. ‘How much do you need?’ he asked, and gave us the money. The immigration officer told us to wait another while. Would we like some tea? ‘Sure.’ He took us to a little tea shop across the street and ordered milk tea. He told us about his family and assured us he spoke not only English but also Japanese and Italian. ‘Buongiorno!’ Then he started talking about his sister who had a really nice house, and we should definitely come there with him. Loes and me decided to agree with everything he said until we had our passports back. We drunk our tea and the immigration guy said: ‘I pay or you pay?’. So we paid and left. Finally we got our passports back. ‘You come with me now?’ We ran out of the building, back into the taxi and our driver safely took us to our hostel.

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