News and notes from around the interweb:
- Be careful — if you select miles as your earning option with Club Carlson, they’ll convert your entire points balance as well.
- Turkey is going to eliminate visa on arrival for tourism and trade and begin requiring e-visa in advance, supposedly making the transition in April.
- India is going to eliminate visa via bloodletting, oath-swearing, and physical challenge and replace it with electronic travel authorization in 5-6 months, and covering several Indian airport arrivals. But since it’s India, I would anticipate “5 to 6 months” to mean something longer.
- Joe Biden hates LaGuardia .. but thinks cool airports like in Hong Kong make you think you’re in the U.S. which tells me he has no sense of how large capital infrastructure projects work, and I suspect if he visited Singapore he’d think he was on Mars.
- The two New York City Andaz hotel properties are replacing their C.O. Bigelow bath amenities with all natural, ‘cruelty-free’ Beekman1802, owned by winners of The Amazing Race. (HT: uggboy on Milepoint
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Having just gone through the Indian Visa process with their outside contractor BLS in NYC, I can attest to what a great development this is. While I didn’t have to self-immolate thankfully, I felt like I wanted to a various points in the ordeal. At least I now have a 10-yr visa though. 🙂
BLS is like an extension of the Indian Govt. – corrupt and inefficient. The previous visa processor was at least pleasant to deal with and very responsive, in my experience.
Agree with previous comments, BLS is a disaster so good riddens!
Thank bloody Christ, at last!! I reckon they will see a spike in tourism because of this.
I have an Indian OCI card (Overseas Citizen of India) since my parents were born there. When I got it, I was told that was all I needed to enter the country (along with my current US passport) since it provided me most of the benefits of Indian citizenship.
Yet I still need to provide my old passport (2 passports ago) with my old visa to enter the country. It’s stupid.
Indian visa is PIA. Had a US citizen friend with US passport. His App for visa took 2 months and after begging multiple times, they gave her the visa during the day of his flight and he missed the first flight. He was born in China but his US citiznship didn’t matter to them and demanded all kinds of docs from China. He has been living in US right after his birth.
@Jim – Please educate yourself before making such comments. David Headley, the enabler of Mumbai attacks was(is) a born American citizen – has a Pakistani muslim father and an American mother. Chinese Uighur muslims who had gone to Afghanistan to fight alongside their brotheren from Al Queda were among the detainees at Gitmo. Having an American citizenship does not preclude one from being a suspect, just like being a non-muslim from India does not preclude one from TSA harassment – the female Indian ambassador was publicly searched and thoroughly examined in full view of the public by the TSA at an airport a couple of years back. Ignorance of facts does not excuse one from making silly posts.