Like the title says. What’s the most entertaining, frightening, bizzare moments you have ever had, going through customs?
I can think of three I’ve had:
Going through Israeli customs with half-size pastels in my carry-on. Who knew that on the x-ray, they look exactly like a row of bullets? Well, now I do. The hard way.
Going through Thai customs (many years ago now). All seemed normal - the bags for stowing go through the machine, are checked, etc. Then, they slap an easily removed sticker on the bags and hand them back to you to carry through a completely open, unsecured area onto the plane. You hand the bags to be stowed to the guy putting them into the cargo. Presumably, they just trust that you don’t just stuff them with bombs, guns, very small illegal immigrants, etc. in the meantime.
Going through customs at a stop-over in Japan, my wife and I were confronted by an extremely agitated security guard who spoke no English. He kept repeating the same word to us, in increasingly angry tone of voice: “Ash! Ash!”
I looked around, in vain, for some impromptu interpreter. None was to be seen. Finally, I figured out what he wanted: he was asking if we were smuggling “hash”, i.e., did we have illegal drugs?
I said “no”, and the transformation was remarkable; he broke into a great big smile, instantly dropped his angry demeanour, and respectfully helped us on our way. Evidently, all that was necessary was my say-so.
January 1972. Four of us were coming back from Canada where we visited a guy on our floor who lived in Montreal. It was my car, which was big, and some of us had long hair. US customs was very suspicious. Even more so when one person went to the bathroom and flushed.
That got them real mad. Luckily, we were clean.
Story 1) Coming back through Tijuana after a long weekend of sailing off Baja. VW van towing a Hobie-cat. Two scruffy, long-haired, sunburned, terminally hung-over men in the front seats.
Customs officer: Citizenship?
Driver: Um…yes?
CO: What about him? (indicating me asleep in the passenger seat)
Driver: Him too.
CO: (pondering stripping the van for drugs and deciding we were too suspicious to be suspicious) Have a nice day, sirs.
Story 2) - Let’s just say that having a bunch of sex toys in your carry-on luggage when meeting your cross-country lover (later and still wife) for a wild weekend in Salt Lake City makes the Mormon TSA agents very uncomfortable.
Entering Malawi at a land border, the inspectors were all boy-scout-agec, called “Young Pioneers” being trained to be authoritarian henchmen faithful to the current dictator, presumably with a grown up somewhere dozing in a supervisory capacity. The boys tried on some of my clothes, but were kind enough to put them back into my luggage. I’ve never had to bribe anyone, but I’ve heard some bizarre stories.
One of the few times in Africa I felt uncomfortable being white, on the bus from Nigeria into Benin, ordinarily the customs officers just made a cursory glance through the bus and then wave it through. But because there was a European passenger, they felt that they needed to put on a show of efficiency and diligence, so they enforced a few searches of belongings on the passengers, who were none too happy about the ordeal occasioned by my presence.
Entering Italy (Rome), we had our carry-ons taken apart my customs agents who apparently thought the tangle of wires, chargers and small electronic devices looked suspicious via x-ray. They weren’t hostile about it though and we weren’t too concerned since all they would find was a laptop, some MP3 players, etc.
First time coming back from England, I declared some minor thing to the US agent out of a spirit of good citizenship and a naive fear of being sent to Customs Jail over a tchotchke of some sort (I don’t even remember now). Anyway, said agent suggested perhaps I could adjust the value downward so my combined total came in under the $200 “free” limit and move his line along.
On holiday in southern Spain, I was walking in the open country and I found a pile of empty brass rifle shells - about 20 of them - presumably left there by a hunter. I picked them up and put them in my backpack, because I thought they were sort of cool.
When I was getting the plane back to England, only when I got past check in and was in the queue for the security check, did I realise that they were still in my backpack (that I was carrying as cabin luggage). It wasn’t live ammo, so there was nothing really wrong, but this was during the time just after the shoe bomber incident, when airport security was really, really tight and twitchy.
Nothing happened, but it was a few minutes of pretty weird and intense tension. I’m surprised they didn’t stop me just for looking nervous.
I visited Turkey when I was a kid, and bought a thing of saffron to bring back to my Mom. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to declare it as an agricultural product, so didn’t bother. At the customs stop, I was waiting in line when a Customs Agent walked by with a drug dog (wearing a cute little Customs uniform) started going nuts near my backpack. Oddly, despite the fact that the dog seemed pretty obviously interested in my bag in particular, the Agent seemed confused about what he was barking at, spent a few minutes trying to figure it out, and than shrugged and kept moving.
I doubt it would’ve really been a big deal if they’d stopped me and found the saffron. But I was 14 at the time and so was convinced for a minute that I was going to spend the next 30 years in a Turkish prison.
Returning Paris > Cardiff as an American resident in the UK with a backpack full of books and no other souvenirs. Apparently, nobody has ever done that before, judging by the deep suspicion encountered by the customs people. They thought it was packages of drugs. The same agent freaked out when I tried to go through the right-hand doorway rather than the left-hand doorway right next to it—both of which went into the same room.
On another trip, I had a British customs agent pick out a book in Welsh and say, “What is this, Russian?” I said, “no, it’s Welsh” (which does not use the Russian alphabet) and he started telling me all about his trip to Wales, to Weston-super-Mare. Nothing I could say would convince him that Weston-super-Mare was in England.
Most of my eyebrow-raising experiences have been with US border guards, but the two above were the most bizarre.
Returning from Jamaica with very long hair was an ordeal. The Cuban Cigar butts which I kept as souvenirs weren’t a problem, but they tore apart my bags and asked the same questions over and over. Sure, I had a very good time on the island, but I returned spotless. Duh.
Dang. I’ve never had anything even a tiny bit interesting happen in customs. I guess I’m a pretty innocent looking gal.
I guess I did make the questionable decision to cross into Zimbabwe on a bus full of clothing traders coming down from Tanzania. Every inch of the bus was packed, I even had boxes of goods under my feet and on my lap. It took as about 8 hours at the border to clear a of it.
I traveled with a group from the US to Argentina to Uruguay and back. We were to be working with kids in the South American countries, so we had packed lots of various candies. No problem leaving the US, no problem arriving in Argentina. Spent a few days there then went to board the boat to Uruguay when, 30 minutes before departure, heavily armed soldiers took the local serving as our group leader aside, then took him away! We had no idea what was going on. I got the group on the boat, since our luggage was already loaded, and was mentally planning how to get our leader out of Argentine prison. Literally one minute before departure he boarded the boat. Turns out that drug smugglers like to use peppermint candy to confuse the drug dogs. It took him 30 minutes to convince the soldiers that it was just candy, like the other varieties throughout our bags.
I had an antique metal statue of a ballerina that I bought at flea market in Amsterdam in my carry on bag when I when thru customs. She was sitting with one leg out in front and the other under her butt in a classic ballerina pose; apparently it looked like a pistol to the operator of the security screen. Two very unfriendly agents took me aside asked me what I had in my bag and I told them I was smuggling a tiny girl out of Amsterdam. When these two brutish security agents opened up my bag and checked it out they broke out laughing and started making prostitution rescue jokes.
Also, no American ever went to Heathrow without checked bags in the early 1990s–or so you’d think from the reception I got, including an item-by-item search. They went so far as to pull apart my tent poles and peer inside them, then put me in a sequestered waiting room with a number of flop-sweaty olive-skinned men until the plane was boarding.
This is related to but technically distinct from Customs, and not as exciting as some of the stories here, but…
Back in '06, my mother and I went on a photo safari in South Africa. Going there, everything was pretty normal. We were there for about three weeks, during which this happened.
When it was time to come back, it was security theater galore, and the South African airports were fundamentally not up to the task - they didn’t have enough equipment or trained personnel or procedures to screen everybody in an efficient manner, so they ended up doing it in a very inefficient one. We went through security at the tiny airport in Durban (which clearly wasn’t intended to have anything of the sort), then again upon arriving in Johannesburg. And then again, getting onto the plane back to the US. We went through about a dozen different checkpoints, scans, and patdowns. It took hours.
The plane stopped over in Dakar, and after the passengers headed there got off, men in uniforms and gloves came on board and searched all of the seats they’d been sitting in.
It was a relief to arrive back to the US, where, while everyone was still supposedly on high alert, they at least had the infrastructure to get us through customs promptly.
Entering the UK to attend courses at Oxford. I left before my “sponsorship” letter arrived, and customs didn’t want to let me through. He finally asked me for my return ticket to prove that I was only coming in for awhile. I then realized my ticket (era of paper tickets) was my bookmark, my book was in the seatback. I left the line with all of my luggage, went back to my gate to fetch. Ended up in a different line with a guy who just stamped my passport.
Leaving Manila having finished some duty time on a destroyer, flying home commercial. Dead, flat broke and there is a counter where you had to pay around $10 in “airport fees” to leave, and they wouldn’t take a credit card. Walked around the airport begging until I had enough cash to leave.
Leaving Poland (while it was still under Communist rule). I realize that they are searching every single bag of those leaving - unfolding clothes, checking pockets, etc. I had NOT declared all of the cash and traveller’s checks on me (they MADE you exchange a minimum amount of Western currency to Zlotys at a crap rate when you entered, and I had kept some back). I was sweating it as I came up to the counter. They saw my American passport and waived me through. The search was to keep the Polish from taking money out of the country - not tourists.
Going through Canadian customs (Alaska to Canada border) when I was moving from Anchorage to CA. 1:00 AM and the customs agent decides that he is bored and wants to strip search my truck. He was positive that I either had a handgun or marijuana (or both). I had declared 3 rifles and shotgun already. He found one pistol round in my range bag (I had shipped my handguns). He also found a blowgun that I had - it was a toy that could shoot paint pellets that I had picked up for having fun in the dorms in my college days. I still have my official receipt for the confiscation of my blowgun.
I don’t know if I would call it excitement, but I am convinced it is profiling…
For a number of years in the mid to late 2000s, 80 percent of the time I flew, which is quite often, I was either pulled aside and patted down; two embarrassing occurrences while waiting at the gate after going through security, or led into a small room where I was questioned and my bags searched. This happened so frequently that coworkers requested not to have to fly with me as it was a pretty sure thing I would be detained, and who knew for how long, or if I would miss my flight? It also didn’t matter whether I was professionally or casually dressed.
What I am quite relieved about is since I signed up and was approved for Global Entry and TSA PreCheck, I have not been pulled aside once.
I was pulled out of line and searched (in Ottawa) when my backpack yielded a positive scan for explosives. Easily explained by the artillery exercise I was leaving, but it’s always weird when someone pats the cups of your bra, although my (male) travelling companions were thrilled (perverts).
-Arriving in Lviv, Uk, a bunch of us (Cdn and US Military) were met by our local guide/facillitator/translator and we didn’t go through any customs. We completely went around the entire area. Same on the way out.
-Coming back from my first trip to Anaheim, I had a bunch of Disney stuff for my nephews. I knew I was over and declared it honestly (I said I owed 32 dollars in duty). I guess I looked sketchy, they took me aside and went through everything, including my dirty clothes (hate that) and rang up the total on the receipts. I owed $31.65. Yep, pretty much what I figured.
I will add my husband has gotten in the habit of throwing my military ID in with our passports. It usually means we got a lot of conversation, but really never hard questions/searches. We really never try to sneak anything across (over duty-wise) it’s just not worth it.
Transiting Miami on my way from Colombia to the Cayman Islands I was stopped by the agriculture inspection people in the Customs area. I had answered “Yes” to the question about visiting a farm.
The inspector questioned me to clarify how much time I spent, what sort of farm, whether I came into contact with soil, and so on. I described several days visiting a farm in rural Colombia where my girlfriend’s aunt lives. We walked the onion fields getting thoroughly muddy. The house had a garage where scattered farm animals (more like pets) came in and out as they pleased.
The inspector seem horrified and said he needed to take my shoes to disinfect them. I stood there for nearly 40 minutes in my socks. Finally he came back out and handed me my shoes.
I never mentioned that I never even took those shoes to the farm. My muddy boots were in my checked luggage all along and that was leaving the country in a couple hours.
Customs stole my Christmas fudge. Outright bald-facedly stole all 10 pounds of it. It was all nicely packaged, store label, receipt, but the “mystery semi-plastic substance” had to be confiscated as a suspicious material. The fuckers simply set it on their back table and watched me smiling as I walked down the concourse.
