Kiwi detained by officials say ‘NZ is not a country’

Kiwi detained by officials say ‘NZ is not a country’

A Kiwi tourist says she was detained in Kazakhstan after immigration officials refused to believe that New Zealand was a country, and not just a distant, unpopular state of Australia. Ouch!

For Chloe Phillips-Harris, who arrived at Kazakhstan’s Almaty Airport in May this year after being assured by the New Zealand embassy that she would be able to enter the Central Asian country on her Kiwi passport, the last thing she expected she would need was an Aussie passport to enter the country.

Apparently, her insistence that New Zealand was, in fact, a country was made difficult when it wasn’t on the map of the world the airport officials had in the interrogation room.

“I landed in Kazakhstan on the last flight of the night, and I got to an immigration booth and they asked me for an Australian passport, and told me I couldn’t come in without an Australian passport,” she told the New Zealand Herald,” Philipps-Harris told the New Zealand Herald.

“Plainclothes policemen got involved, immigration police got involved, airport officials got involved … and at that stage it was a bit late to bribe my way out, which apparently is what I was supposed to do from the beginning, but being a New Zealander we’re not familiar with that.”

Young Kiwi tourist, Chloe Phillips-Harris, said she was detained in Kazakhstan for close to two days.

Young Kiwi tourist, Chloe Phillips-Harris, said she was detained in Kazakhstan for close to two days.

Phillips-Harris said she was able to get out of the situation after her contacts in Kazakhstan helped her secure a US passport and a new visa.

But the 28-year old is not holding a grudge against Borat’s country of origin that refused her entry without an Australian passport.

“It is changing very fast, there’s a huge amount of potential over there. It is corrupt and there are problems but there are a lot of good people there too, it’s just a beautiful country to be in it’s just really unfortunate there was a world map that didn’t have New Zealand on it.”

Yes, quite unfortunate.

We’ll be damned if we ever acknowledge the island ‘across the ditch’, but it turns out Kazakhstan feels much the same.

Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

kazakhstan new zealand

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