Always Renew Your Exit Permit!

So my most recent vacation got off to a bit of a slow start. The plan was to travel to the good ol US of A for 48 hours to attend the wedding of Wil Biddle and Jessica Young. From there I would fly back to Doha and head to Jordan for the rest of my Eid break. Everything was going according to plan until I got to customs. The exchange went something like this:


Evan: Asssla’mualaikum
Qatari Customs Agent: Mualaikumwasalam
Pause to check passport
Qatari Customs Agent: Who do you work for?
Evan: Qatar Foundation at Education City
Qatari Customs Agent: You don’t have an exit permit
Evan: Yes I do. It’s a multiple exit permit.
Qatari Customs Agent: It expired this week.
Evan: I didn’t know that they expired. What can we do? I have a flight in an hour.
Qatari Customs Agent: Call someone from work.
Evan: But it’s 1am.
Qatari Customs Agent: (Insert shrugs shoulders) Next!

Living here in Doha all Ex-Pats are sponsored by their employer. As part of this sponsorship you must be granted permission to leave the country in the form of an exit permit. Some people need to request an exit permit every time they leave the country, luckily I have a multiple exit permit and can leave freely. The bad part of this is not checking said permit and assuming it is valid for the term of your resident permit (which is good for 2 years). I found out the hard way that exit permits need to be renewed each year (have I used the word permit enough?). It wasn’t a situation where I forgot to renew it…I simply didn’t know that was something I needed to do!

It was a pretty helpless feeling as I frantically called airlines trying to re book flights and explore options. As it was I was only planning to be in the US for 48 so time was of the essence. In the end I had no option but to cancel the trip and had to miss the wedding. So MAJOR apologies to Jess and Wil for not being able to be there for their special day but I will find a way to make it up to you!


As a consolation Brennan was hosting some of our friends in Dubai to go to a concert with the Killers and Of Monsters and Men on that Atlantis Beach Resort…not a bad consolation prize. So I booked a flight to Dubai for the concert with Will and Brennan before we left for Jordan. Eid ended up getting off to a great start after all and led me to the Jordan trip which was another 1,000 stories by itself!