November 24th
We got up this morning in Latakia with a plan to extend our visas. We had obtained multiple entry visas for Syria before leaving the UK. Unfortunately, Syria is slighty anal in its approach to foreign visitors. By this I mean that you have to register your passport details with every hotel you visit and most buses you travel on. You also have to also extend your visa - even though you can stay in the country for one month. Syria has a very communist atttitude [this is because it has a heavy communist influence, both politically and economically. Much more on this later]. You definitely get the impression you are being watched. Friends who live here get the impression they are being tapped electronically. You can notice the big brother influence in small ways all over the place. The most overt example I can think of offhand is the way the current president - Bashar Al-Assad's - son of Afez Al-Assad - picture is everywhere. Smiling from every shop, cafe, wall, barber-shop, and juice stand you see. When I asked someone why they wanted to put up the picture in their shop they replied 'because we are expected to'. The president's gentle, benign, smile is the public face of Syria. Reassuring everyone, including us tourists that things are good.
Anyways so the visa extension process needs to take place on the 14th-15th day of your visit. Many people have told us that this is beaurocratic nonense and can be ignored. From what we have seen of Syria hitherto this point, we decided it prudent to be prudent.
The visa extension office is great fun. We had such larks here. The office was a maelstrom of Syrians, Iraqiis, Iranians, Russians, Azerbajanians, and of course us. There is no queuing system [god damn it, I'm English]. There never is outside England, to be honest. We fought our way through rivers of emigrees and extensionees until we finally got to the extension office for non-arabic persons. The process was bewitching: We first had to fill out a lengthy form in French and submit several passport photos. We then had to give them to a guy with a big moustache and an impressive array of epaulettes gleaming on each shoulder. He told us what we had written wrongly and we corrected them. Once he was satisfied he tossed them aside and we waited. Then we paid him some money and the fun really began. The best way to describe this is to refer to Asterix the Gaul; one of my favourite books is the Twelve Tasks of Asterix. In this adventure, he and Obelix - his best friend and erstwhile companion - have to complete twelve tasks, similar to that of Hercules, set by Julius Ceasar. One of the tasks is to obtain a tax return [or something similar] from the imperial tax-office in Rome. They start the task positively and with good cheer. After several hours they are repeatedly sent backward and forward, looking for a B11a form to obtain a C452 order, so they may get a L15 card with which to... and so on and so on. They end up losing the plot entirely and beating seven shades of shit out of everyone. It was one of the funniest things I can ever remember reading, mainly in the genius potrayal of their growing frustration. That is pretty much how we spent our morning. With the added bonus of not speaking Arabic. We went from office to office, upstairs, downstairs, getting stamped left and right. We finally got our extensions! The effort felt pretty Herculean by the end of it.
We spilled out into the warm sunshine and walked to the pullman bus station a 1/2 a mile away. We decided to hop on a bus to Tartus first. Another coastal town further south. We got into Tartus about an hour before sunset. We walked a couple of kilometres into town in time for sunset. We had a quick stroll around the old city, saw a church, and then had a meal on seafront. After that we sat in a pikey bus-station waiting for a bus back to Homs, to change for Hama as there was no direct bus.
We stayed one more night in Hama. Tomorrow we are heading for Damascus.
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