Before you read
Subject: Last summer, I completed a 50-year mission: I had officially, and legally, visited every recognized country on earth
Excerpt: English text from the archived bilingual edition · Chinese edition
Reference text and retained source material
Last summer, I completed a 50-year mission: I had officially, and legally, visited every recognized country on earth
I’ve had hundreds of adventures inside these countries, but for certain countries, the adventure started before I could even get in. Here are the five countries for which I had the hardest time obtaining visas
Saudi Arabia was truly tough. I tried, from 2000 to 2009, without success, or even explanation for my failure, to secure a tourist visa to the Desert Kingdom—though at the time the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities had no history of granting tourist visas to non-Muslims. Because I had to get in to complete my quest, I worried that I might have to convert to Islam, memorize the Koran, study with a mullah, attend a mosque, and forget I was an ultra-liberal Jewish atheist
Chad required, and still requires, the visa applicant to submit a letter from a sponsor or hotel in the country’s capital, N’Djamena, inviting him or her to visit, and setting forth the relationship and the purpose of the trip. When I went in 2012, only two or three hotels there were issuing such a letter
Russia wouldn’t have made this list but for my fourth visit there in 2010, when I discovered the liability of being an American seeking to enter Putin’s land: While most of the rest of the world’s peoples can apply for a visa to Russia using a simple single-page form of 21 questions, U.S. citizens must use an arduous “new form implemented on the basis of reciprocity” that has 41 often-intrusive questions
Sudan was a hard nut to crack. From 2004 to 2007, whenever I asked the Sudanese Embassy in Washington about the status of my application, I got the same terse reply: “It is being considered in Khartoum。”
Angola was the most difficult of all the countries I visited. Its stingy visa policy perhaps reflected a widely held belief that foreign visitors only want to steal the country’s diamonds. Furthermore, Angola’s government granted Americans almost no tourist visas for years because of American support for Angolan rebels in a 27-year civil war that began in 1975 and killed more than half a million people
Legal and contractual language: using this material
Read definitions, parties and obligations in the complete clause rather than transplanting isolated terms between legal systems. Check cross-references, annexes and revisions. Translation is not legal advice.
