Stranded in Kuwait

Here is an email that I wrote home to my family while I was in Kuwait that I thought others might also find interesting:

Things here in the Middle East have been a little rockier than on my usual trips. The world is just a TAD bit different over here. I'm pretty sure I won't be able to describe it in my email, but it reached its climax in my experiences today at the Kuwait Airport. Even though I had my paper ticket from in my hand when I went to check in, the man at the counter said he didn't see my name in the system and I had to go talk to the reservation counter. So I proceeded to said counter and he looked it up and told me I didn't have a ticket. I showed him the ticket in my hand and asked wasn't it a ticket?? He said it had been "cancelled" because the agent that arranged the ticket didn't enter some kind of number. He said my ticket was void. He said I needed to go talk to the man at counter #16. So I did, falsely thinking he might offer some kind of hope for my flight. He said that standby was my only option and that I simply needed to sit there and wait for the next two hours we had until the takeoff.

Then I discovered that even though this was supposedly due to error of my travel agent, there were two other people from the fair that this happened to. One of those people happened to be traveling with someone else in his office and their reservations were made by the same people. Interesting. As time grew closer, more and more people (not part of our group) were likewise displaced. So we waited those two hours, only to be told that there was nothing they could do for us. Period. End of story. This was a paid for ticket, completely rejected. They only fly to Bahrain once per day, at 5 o'clock, and the fair was set to start at 5 the next day, so we couldn't wait that long. The three of us tried to get on another airline and the only other airline was flying out at 10 pm, but that was completely booked as well. So we are on the first flight out in the morning and found the last three rooms in a hotel close to the airport. All I can say is that as selfish as it may sound, I'm glad I wasn't the only one in our group that got bumped. At least we have each other in this crazy country!!

I haven't had the best impression of this place, starting with being bumped from our hotel before we even got there!! I know, it's like they don't want us here or something. We had all booked rooms at the Crowne Plaza through the fair organizer. Since the fair was going to be held there, they got us a group rate to all stay there. Again, we had RESERVATIONS. Well, apparently, the crowne prince or somebody special came into town and the needed the rooms. So...our entire group got the boot to the Holiday Inn across town the night before we got here. We had some more drama when we first landed and had to get our visas. What we all thought would be a simple process took two hours in total--longer than it took for us to fly here from Dubai. Once we finally got our visas and went back down and stood in line at immigration, this man came and snatched my passport out of my hand and said, "Not finished, not finished." Then he started snatching other peoples in our group and we were told we all had to leave the line to get one more stamp first at this other desk where there was no one sitting and no one seemed to care or want to help us, they just all kept telling us we weren't finished. Wow. We finally made it through and were welcomed at the hotel by a metal detector and having to put all our luggage through a screener. So inviting.