Immigration

Part of the inevitable settling in process over here is to get all your paperwork taken care of through Immigration. Jeff has a consulting firm in Johur Bahru and they have been managing the work VISA status for him, and my dependent VISA pass. We first went to Immigration about 3 weeks ago, along with two employees from the consultants. When we walked down the crowded hall and into a VERY crowded room with at least 100 men, women and children, we were immediately overwhelmed with noises, smells and sights. Jeff has described it as the bar room scene in the original Star Wars movie--pretty accurate! As you can rightly imagine, we stood out from everyone in the room.
On Friday we, once again, needed to go to Immigration to get our ICAR--a pass that allows you to travel between Malaysia and Singapore without having to fill out the long, tedious paperwork each visit. Before we went, however, the consultants told us we needed to have new passport photos taken and so we all went to a little shop located in the lower floor of the consultant's office building. The woman who worked there took us back into a TINY closet and pointed towards a tie and men's sports coat, pointed to a mirror on the wall and left. Since I knew Jeff needed to get his tie and sports coat on, I walked on out and had a seat to get my picture made. The two consultants and the woman working there quickly informed me I needed to also put the sports coat on for the picture. I said "really??" and they said, oh yes, I must have it on. So I put on this blue, 40 regular men's sports coat and sat down for my picture. (It did NOT look good with my red shirt and black capris, but I figured it was their party.) The only really good thing about it was my shoulders looked VERY broad! So then Jeff comes out and has to try and fit into this too-small sports coat for his picture. The strangest thing about that whole process was that we were the ONLY ones finding this process strange. That happens a whole lot over here--we look around and realize no one finds it odd or out of the ordinary!
The consultants lead us outside to get in a cab and go to Immigration. Both of our escorts are very small locals (a man and a woman), and the man gets up front with the driver, leaving me, Jeff and the other escort to the backseat. This cab was TINY. I mean, two in the backseat would have been OK, but three was pushing it. So I'm in the middle, escort to my right, and Jeff is trying to fold himself up enough to sit behind the passenger in the front seat AND hold his briefcase on his lap. He finally manages that (knees almost up to his chin) and we are off to Immigration. About 15 minutes later we arrive and I am going to get out on Jeff's side of the cab, when I realize he is more-or-less stuck trying to get out of that tiny area. He has to really work to get his legs out of the cab, at the same time ducking his head so he can clear the inside of the cab. Bless his heart--they aren't used to having to accommodate men of his size over here!
We head back into the Immigration office and it looks remarkably the same as it did before; very crowded and noisy with numbers being called over a loud speaker every few minutes to indicate who should go to the counter next. Our consultants had an appointment for us, so we just stood to the side (lots of seating, all taken) and waited for about 10 minutes until they were ready to see us. They take us to a very small "office"--and I use that term loosely--that is about the size of a cubicle, but there is a desk and computer on one side and two chairs on the other. (Once again, Jeff was staring at his knees.) The woman looks at Jeff's passport, enters the information into her computer and gets his thumb chop. She then looks at my passport and starts speaking in Bahasa to the female consultant. They talk back and forth for awhile, then the consultant informs me that I don't have enough blank pages left in my passport to get an ICAR (apparently you need at least 6 and I only have 4) and that I need to get a new passport. Since my passport doesn't expire until 2015, that seems a little silly. (Actually, if the immigration people would place their stamps closer to each other, instead of in the middle of the page, I wouldn't have only 4 pages left!) Jeff and I try to plead our case, but to no avail. So we leave the Malaysian Immigration office only to have to go back a THIRD time to complete this process.
The good news is the US Embassy will sew extra pages into your passport at no cost, therefore I don't have to get a whole new passport. The bad news is the Malaysian US Embassy is in Kuala Lumpur, 4 hours from where we live. We are planning on using the Singapore US Embassy (about 30 minutes) and seeing if they will do it for us there, but we have our VISA's in Malaysia and hope that is not a problem. I guess we'll find out next week!