New Zealand is its own country in Oceania, with its own Prime Minister, its own states and its citizens have their own Kiwi passport – said no one in Kazakhstan ever.
Chloe Phillips-Harris, a Kiwi who recently returned from a six-month trip in Kazakhstan, said she hit a snag when she first arrived in Kazakhstan’s Almaty Airport, because no one at the gateway would believe New Zealand was separate from Australia.
Speaking to the New Zealand Herald, Phillips-Harris said officers at the Central Asian gateway were adamant that her homeland was an Australian state and wouldn’t allow her to enter the country without an Aussie passport.
To prove their point, airport officials even allegedly took her to an interrogation room to show her a map of Oceania, which didn’t event feature the Land of the Long White Cloud.
“They said New Zealand’s clearly a part of Australia.”
Chloe Phillips-Harris
https://twitter.com/davidadonaldson/status/805515264057933824
Phillips-Harris claims she was detained for a day-and-a-half before people she knew secured her a new type of visa and “paid the right people” to get her out.
Despite the experience, the Kiwi traveller said stayed for a good six months and met some “good people”.
“It is corrupt and there are problems there but there are a lot of good people there too, it’s just a beautiful country to be in,” she said.
“It’s just really unfortunate there was a world map that didn’t have New Zealand on it.”
A spokesperson for New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade told the publication that the were aware of the situation and it was resolved.
