Visa Vie

If visitors to Heathrow airport find negotiating UK immigration controls akin to passing through the eye of a needle then crossing the Syrian-Lebanese border feels like you are a ping-pong ball.

At each side of the border you get bounced from one official to another with no apparent logic or predictability to the process.  But the two countries are different.

Syria's is all security-minded bureaucracy while Lebanon offers official entrepreneurism.  As-Summaaiyah is the only Lebanese entry point where you are charged an entry tax. Presumably it is an initiative of the local police chief, designed for job creation and revenue raising. His three teenage cousins appear to run the only money exchange office where they can charge an exhorbitant exchange rate.

On the Lebanese side there is more hustle and bustle but things seem to get done efficiently. In Syria you are likely to be the only one in the office. It's as though they have been waiting for you.

In both countries the border appears to provide entertainment for casual observers, along the line of: "there's little going on today, let's pop along and look at a few foreigners."

But in the end both systems work and with patience plus a little money you do get through, or at least bounced out of the other end.