A traveller claims that she was detained for two days because immigration officials didn't believe that New Zealand was a country.
Chloe Phillips-Harris flew to Kazakhstan but when she landed at Almaty Airport officials told her she couldn't enter because her passport wasn't from a real place.
If you know any Kiwis, or are a Kiwi, you'll know be all too familiar with the fact that they get asked if they're Australian about 20 times a day, which must be very fucking annoying. But Kazakhstan has taken that one step further by telling this lady that New Zealand is a 'state of Australia'. Ouch.
Credit: Facebook/Chloe Phillips-Harris
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She told the New Zealand Herald: "I got to an immigration booth and they asked me for an Australian passport, and told me I couldn't come in without an Australian passport."
She added: "They said, 'New Zealand's clearly a part of Australia'." That is just the biggest kick in the teeth to any Kiwi out there.
Now in this situation, you'd think finding a map to show them would help, right? And luckily for Chloe, there was a world map on the wall. So, problem solved? Well, no, because the map on the wall didn't have New Zealand on. For fuck's sake.
She was then kept for the next day-and-a-half, which is just bizarre. Couldn't someone have Googled it during that time?
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Anyway, all's well that ends well and it appears that our pal, Chloe, used some dodgy contacts to get out. Speaking to the paper, she said: "The people I knew in Kazakhstan got me a new type of visa and paid the right people and got me out. That's probably the easiest explanation." Fair enough.
She wasn't put off by her experience, though. She spent a full six months in the country before heading back to the Shire.
Featured image credit: Facebook/WikiCommons
Featured Image Credit:Topics: New Zealand