Cambodia, The Kingdom of Wonders

For this post I will indulge myself in showing of this beautiful work of art they call the Cambodian visa. Most foreign nationals who do not hold passports issued by an ASEAN member country require visas to enter Cambodia. This is one way that the government collects revenue for its coffers. The other way is by charging all foreigners leaving Cambodia the "departure tax" of USD 25, which I think is just an excuse to burn a hole in the pockets of visitors who have already in a way contributed to the economy just by visiting.

Well, anyway, I could have entered Cambodia visa-free for 14 days or so on my Philippine passport, but I had the privilege of applying for a visa on my US passport and so I took it and am to this day thrilled with the wonderful result, which I present below:


This visa was issued in Hong Kong since there was no consulate in Macau (where I was staying) and I was charged HKD 200, which is about USD 30, 50% more than the USD 20 that is indicated on the visa itself. I would complain, but the visa is too nice so I won't.

The Royal Consulate General of the Kingdom of Cambodia in Hong Kong and Macao is a quiet little office that sits on the 17th? floor of a building that sits right in front of the Hong Kong Star Ferry terminal at Tsim Sha Tsui on the Kowloon side. The office is a nice, cozy little place. Upon entry, the seal of the Kingdom, a Khmer-style statue, and the Cambodian flag greet you. As you look to the left, you see a couch set with some magazines about Cambodia ready for your reading on a coffee table. But it's not like you even have the time to read them because after you fill up the visa application form and pay the HKD 200 fee, the friendly clerk at the counter then takes your passport over to some back office (I caught a glimpse of an old man who I guess made my visa) and after literally five minutes, the who process is done and over with. So I guess the visa is just really a source of revenue for the Cambodian government and no some procedure to do a background check and make sure visitors are not wanted criminals (although I'm sure Cambodia nonetheless has its blacklist for immigration).

If you study the visa, like I have done multiple times, you can see that it has quite a few security features. First of all, it has a watermark pattern that shows when help up against light - nothing special, just some lines. Then if you look closely at the lines where the holder's information is to be written, you'll notice that they aren't lines, but fine micro-print that reads "Kingdom of Cambodia." There is also an attractive hologram which is in the shape of the Cambodia Royal Coat of Arms. And, last, the paper is "cut" so that the visa would be damaged if it were to be removed much in the same way the price tags in some stores are "cut" to prevent price tag swapping.


Here is the entry stamp from Siem Reap. I like the little Angkor Wat design, which is also included in the departure stamps, as you can see below:


This chop is clearer than the one from Siem Reap, perhaps because it is newer and has smacked less passports than the one that was used for my entry at Siem Reap. Sadly, the Philippine immigration officer stamped over my Cambodian exit stamp. But since I am returning to Cambodia in October, I will have another chance at a better cancel and another visa as well, this time issued in Manila!

Third Passport Stamps

This passport, unlike the others has different stamps from countries other than the Philippines.


The stamps from 2003 are from a trip I took with my parents to visit my ailing grandmother before she passed away. There are immigration stamps for Korea because we had a 16-hour stop-over there. Our trip was last-minute since my grandmother's health was not doing so well, so my mother took the earliest tickets available. Since we had flown Korean to the Philippines before and stayed only for a brief 3-4 hours, she thought we were in for the same journey. But we were not. Apparently, there are two flight to Seoul daily from Los Angeles and we took the earlier of the two, landing us in Seoul with 16 or so hours of waiting ahead of us.

The stamps from February 2005 are from the trip we made to make arrangements and prepare for our move to the Philippines later that May. As the stamp shows, we moved to the Philippines from the States on 23 May 2005.


The US immigration stamp is from my February 2005 trip to the Philippines. I remember expressly asking the immigration officer to chop my passport, to which he agreed. I gained the confidence to do so after asking the Canadian immigration officer at Niagara Falls to stamp my passport (even if they don't need to stamp US passports for land entries).

The other stamps are from my 2007 trip to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Singapore uses a hexagonal stamp at the airport, which I take is a special stamp for social visitors allowed to stay for 90 days. The same day I arrived in Singapore, I went straight to the Woodlands border gate to cross over the bridge to the other side, Johor Bahru, Malaysia. We cross the bridge by bus and then waited for the bus to reach the end of its route. When we reached the terminal, we hopped onto the bus back to the border gate and returned to Singapore to check into our hotel room. This was the first time I would be doing something "crazy" just to get passport stamps and later I would learn that my antics would pay off.

Since we were leaving for Kuala Lumpur on a train (Air Asia was not yet so big and we also wanted to take in the sights of Malaysia along the way), we had to board at the Tanjong Pagar station, which was somewhere in the middle of Singapore. The company that services this station is Malaysian-owned Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) or Malaysian National Railways and the only destinations from this station are all found in Malaysia. Therefore, it is understood that if you are to board a train here, you are headed for Malaysia. The thing is, Malaysia seems to claim the strip of land on which the railroad tracks are laid and there is some dispute over ownership of the land on which the tracks are laid. But Singapore, of course, will not agree to this. So what happens is, you board the train until some part of Singapore that is close to the shore (Singapore is an island) and then you are all made to get off and go through Singapore immigration exit procedures, and then you board the train again. Once you board the train, you never have to get off again until you reach your destination. At first I thought it was strange that we never stopped to go through Malaysian immigration, and then I thought we might have to go through some immigration booth in Kuala Lumpur, but that was not the case. I would learn upon my departure from Kuala Lumpur that, as far as Malaysian immigration is concerned, my port of entry was Tanjong Pagar. You can read from the KL airport exit stamp, "Masuk melalui KTM Tanjong Pagar" or "Entered through Tanjong Pagar KTM..." and then the date. The immigration officer asked no questions about it, so I guess this is really Malaysian policy. The thing is, what if you are not supposed to enter Malaysia? What if you don't have the visa or what if you are blacklisted? Is this a way to sneak in without having to sneak in? Well anyway, thank heavens that I insisted on making the absurd trip to Johor Bahru so now I have a "Johor Bahru" entry and exist stamp!

Notice also that the immigration stamp applied at the Woodlands entry point is the generic stamp and that the number of days allowed to remain is filled in by the immigration officer by hand. No special stamp design at the land border, I guess. It seems immigration officers always neglect land borders: at Canadian and Mexican land entry posts, they never stamp your passport! But I guess it would matter a lot if you were passing from South Korea to North Korea by land.


Here are the stamps from my Hong Kong-Macau trip later that same year. Later on, I will post more stamps from HK and Macau and you can compare how the ones in HK have changed and the ones in Macau are still the same after 2.5 years. The HK immigration stamps do not indicate on the text the port of entry used by the visitor, but the color says it all. Black is for the airport and green was for the seaport (no it is purple).

The 11 October stamp is from an overnight business trip I took to Hong Kong a few days before my vacation trip. Note that 11 October 2007 was also the day the A380 was at the airport for its test landing and, yes, I did see it there. I unfortunately did not have the chance to see it land or take off, though. The May arrival stamp is from my arrival from Malaysia.

If you have been observant, you would have noticed that Philippine immigration stamps include the flight number of your arrival or departure flight. Notice on the 22 October departure stamp that there is no indication. This is because this was the time when I went through immigration without the officer even checking his computer! Yes, it seemed that there was some kind of system glitch. I was surprised that when I went through the check-in counter and headed for my gate, there were terribly long lines at immigration. This was the first time I had seen this, especially because it's not like MNL is like LAX where you have a flight departing every five minutes. We were stuck at the back of the line for something like fifteen minutes, and then the line started moving up so quickly! I was amazed at the sudden speed and then learned that the officers were, instead of individually scanning the passports, just stamping away quickly. I guess they were under pressure since some flights were already boarding! This was a chance for any fugitives or those on the immigration black lists to escape the country! I actually have a hunch that maybe there as some foul play and that maybe the Bureau Immigration was in on it and purposely processed the passports without checking them. Was this some kind of orchestrated corruption taking place once more? Or am I just too suspicious of Philippine government agencies?

Now, moving on, looking to the right half of the scan, you will see that all the five chops from three different authorities are from 25 October 2007! Include the HK stamp on top of page 12 and you have 6 all in one day! This was because I went on a one-day trip to Macau from HK that day and then returned to the Philippines that same evening.


This lone stamp from Canada is from my Toronto-Niagara Falls-New York trip in 2004. We flew from LA to Toronto and, since we were flying in this time as opposed to driving in like I did the last time I visited Canada in 2000, I got an immigration stamp! This one is from YYZ, or Pearson International Airport. The Niagara Falls stamp that I mentioned earlier is actually on Page 11, but the ink faded and the Malaysian immigration officer did not see it and stamped right on top of it! Today, the Niagara Falls stamp is almost invisible!


This last stamp was a bonus from my overnight trip to HK. Because I also hold a Philippine passport which I also present when I leave and arrive in the Philippines, officers often inscribe the letters "BB" for "Balikbayan status entry" or "w/PP" to indicate my dual citizenship. However, for this trip I decided not to present my Philippine passport so I received a special "restricting" date stamp which shows the day I must leave the Philippines (US nationals are allowed to stay only for 21 days). In the past, they used to write in "21 days," but now they actually stamp the date, which I think is awesome!

Second Passport Chops

Here are scans from my second passport, which also only has chops from the Philippines from visits in 1998 and 2001. The 1998 arrival stamp is a special "Balikbayan" stamp while the 2001 arrival stamp is a regular chop with a handwritten "BB" for "Balikbayan."




In 1998, my parents held Philippine passports, so when I went through US immigration with them as a family, we all received entry stamps. However, in 2001, my parents still had Philippine passports and we were still processed as a family, but apparently the immigration offices decided against stamping my passport. While regulation has it that it is unnecessary to stamp a US passport with a US entry chop and perhaps my case was different in that I was being processed along with non-citizens, I just find it strange that the practice in group processing is inconsistent among immigration officers.

I guess immigration officers both in the Philippines and in the States are not so consistent with their passport stamping when it comes to group processing (refer to my note about my "Balikbayan" status in 1992). Then again, theirs is a rather demanding and repetitive job.

First Passport Chops

So here are scans from my first passport with immigration stamps from the Philippines. I used my first passport for travel only to the Philippines and Mexico. I went to the Philippines twice in 1992 and to Mexico numerous times, but they do not apply immigration chops at land borders, much to my dismay.


A strange thing I noticed about my chops is that the first one from 17 Feb 92 is a normal immigration stamp in the sense that I was admitted as an American citizen. The second, round stamp on the second scan indicates that I was admitted on Balikbayan status.

Republic Act 6768, or the Balkbayan Program, was instituted in 1989 to encourage former Filipino citizens and Filipinos working overseas to return to the Philippines. Under the act, the balikbayan is defined as:

1. a Filipino citizen who has been continuously out of the Philippines for a period of at least one (1) year, a Filipino overseas worker, or a former Filipino citizen and his family, as this term is defined hereunder, who had been naturalized in a foreign country and comes or returns to the Philippines; and
2. The term "family" shall mean the spouse and the children of the balikbayan who are not balikbayan in their own right traveling with the latter to the Philippines.

The privileges of a balikbayan include:

1. Tax-free maximum purchase in the amount of One thousand United States dollars (US$1,000.00) or its equivalent in other acceptable foreign currencies at Philippine duty-free shops subject to the limitations contained in Section 4 hereof;
2. The national flag air carrier shall establish a special promotional/incentive program for the balikbayan;
3. For foreign passport holders with the exception of restricted nationals, visa-free entry to the Philippines for a period of one (1) year
   
4. Travel tax exemption as provided under Presidential Decree No. 1183, Executive Order No. 283, and other allied laws; and
5. Especially designated reception areas at the authorized ports of entry for the expeditious processing of documents.
   

What is strange is that on both occasions, I entered the Philippines with my mother, who at the time had a Filipino passport but lived permanently in the USA, which should have meant that I should have been admitted with Balikbayan status both times. Curious

In the end, it didn't really matter since I wasn't staying in the Philippines for more than two weeks so the 21 days afforded me the first time around was enough for my short sojourn.

Also notice how the dates were entered in hand, which is not very good since it left space for human error and, in fact, in a later post, I'll show an instance when the immigration officer indeed made a mistake in filling in the date.

My First Three Passports

Here are the first three US passports I had before the current e-Passport. I just want to show the evolution of the passport data page since 1991, when my first passport was issued. How I wish I could have applied for one of the commemorative green Benjamin Franklin passports that the Department of State issued in between 1992 and 1993 to celebrate 200 years of US Consular Affairs!

This first passport had a purple theme to it. It was very minimalist, which I like about it. The typeface used for the data is also reminiscent of those ancient computers that are the predecessors of the very powerful machines we have today. Unlike in passports today, the photo on the data page is the actual photo that I submitted to the passport agency, which was affixed and then "sealed on" with the laminate page. I had to remove my picture just for my protection, but if you saw the original, you would see how the eagle from the Great Seal of the United States is actually printed on the laminate that is applied onto the photo, which I guess was a measure taken to combat replacement of the picture. The USA design on the upper half of the picture is also printed onto the laminate.


This second passport is quite different from the first in that it is more colorful and has more activity. The theme is red and blue hexagons. The inside of the passport was also changed from the simple seal of the United States to a rather messy collage of state seals (you'll see what I mean in later posts). The security image printed on the laminate is no longer the seal of the United States, but three stars to the left of the photo, which you cannot see since I removed my photo. I do not understand this shift from the great seal to three stars that are on the photo itself since it is more obvious to see an alteration if the seal of the picture and the seal on the data page do not match if the design is on both the data page and the picture, and not just on the picture.

Notice that this passport was processed at the National Passport Center (I guess in Washington, DC?) and not in Los Angeles like my first one.



My third passport's design is very similar to that of the second one, but the typeface has changed to a more modern-looking one. Also, the picture is now printed directly onto the data page; in the past, they would attach the actual photo you submitted, and now they scan your picture and print it right onto the page. I guess this makes it almost virtually impossible to replace the image on the passport since it is printed onto the passport and no longer attached. Of course, there is no need for a laminate here.

Also, notice how the French translations of the months in the dates has been removed and that the consular message is now also written in Spanish, probably because of the increase in movement of Americans in Latin America or probably because now there are so many Spanish speakers in the American population that there is a necessity to include Spanish?

One last thing: this passport was processed at the New Orleans Passport Agency, which I think is quite neat since I lived in Los Angeles. I think it may have been because I applied for a passport at the Post Office and perhaps the post office either (1) sent all application from the post office where I applied to St. Louis or (2) my passport application was shuffled around and found its way to St. Louis.

The Circus Inside My Passport

This is one circus that does not amuse me. No, I am unfortunately not referring to a circus of visas and stamps, but I am referring to what I think are terrible pictures that are plastered all over my passport. I mean, I like the pictures, but just not in my passport.

Dual Citizenship

First off, a little bit on the two passports I use.

I was born in the United States of America and am thus a natural-born citizen of this great country. By operation of law, I was also born a Filipino citizen since my parents held Philippine passports at the time of my birth.

RA9225 ratified by Philippine President Gloria Arroyo in 2003 is the reason why I have two passports. The law affords Philippine citizenship to those who have abandoned their Filipino citizenship through naturalization in other countries as well as to those who are born in a foreign country to at least one Filipino parent.

So actually all I needed to do was file my birth at the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles and then after about a week, voila, I have a second passport!

Holding two passports has its pros and cons.

First off, if I were to ever get into trouble in the Philippines, I cannot count on US Consular protection to help me, but, then again, it's not like good, old-fashioned dinero can't get you out of any situation you might find yourself in throughout your course of stay in the Philippines.

Second, as I hold two passports, there is a higher chance that I might lose one of my citizenships due to some technicality. But, then again, all I really need to do is act like a good citizen and I'm sure I won't find myself in too much trouble.

The pros somewhat outweigh the cons. Why? For example, if I ever want to visit China, I won't have to pay the exorbitant visa fee of USD 100 that I would have to pay if I used my US passport. I could use my Philippine passport and pay about USD 25. I've done it four times, so if you think about it, those four visas equal just one visa one a US passport! Catch is, if ever something goes wrong while I'm in China, it will be difficult to ask for help or protection from the US government.

Also, if I want to go to Europe, I can go visa-free. With my US passport, I don't need visas to go to most of the countries in the world or at least visa restrictions and application procedures are lighter on US citizens. And, since I like to collect visas, my Philippine passport affords me the chance to apply for visas that I would never get on my US passport! Actually, on my recent trip to Cambodia, I actually decided to use my US passport since that way I could get one of them neat visa stickers. If I used my Philippine passport, I would just get the entry and exit stamps.

So, you see, having the two passports affords me the mobility to move around the world more freely than if I had only one of them!



Here is my American e-Passport. I prefer the older ones. This is my fourth passport and of all the four designs I have, this is my least favorite. This one is too modern and techie for me. I also do not like all the pictures printed on each page of the passport because they make the passport look so gawdy and messy, and sometimes you can no longer see the visa stamps in your passport anymore!

I get the feeling that these drawings make the new US passport look less presentable and respectable than the older ones that just had official seals printed on them. However, it seems that the US just joined the bandwagon of countries with different designs on each page. I have learned that other countries governments such as Hong Kong, Korea, and, quite recently, Australia have also begun printing different designs on each page in an effort to curb passport fraud and make page replacement a bit harder than it once was.


This is my first Philippine passport. As you can see from the blank space at the bottom of the data page, it is not machine readable (MRP), a fact that many immigration authorities protested. In response to the complaints brought up by the international community, the Philippine Bureau of Immigration decided to upgrade its passports to machine readability and, very recently, to e-Passport RFID technology. The change happened so quickly since I believe the Philippines is one of the last countries to switch to the MRP system and now it has escalated to the level of e-Passports. Also, from what I understand, the Philippines offers the cheapest e-Passport in the world since the e-Passport costs a little more than USD 20 while most other passport costs much, much more. The US e-Passport, for example, cost me USD 100!

The last non-MRP passports was apparently issued in 2007 and should be valid until expiration in 2012, but I heard that this policy has changed and the non-MRP will no longer be honored for travel starting sometime this year (2010).

The non-MRP Philippine passport had a green motif and the cover was green. The new ones are maroon-covered and have a blue-red motif, which I do not like in the same way I do not like the new US e-Passport.

It's funny how I do not like the new passports. I guess it means I either don't like change or I don't like modernity. Or it could just mean that I am old-fashioned.