Transit in Doha: Qatar Visa

After Maryam and Aiman were born, Aimi and myself decided that we should always spend a night or two during our transit on our way back to Ottawa. This time we traveled with Qatar Airways since it was the cheapest price that we could get. So we decided to spend 3D2N in Doha.

I checked the Qatar Embassy in Washington D.C. website (since they don't have an embassy in Ottawa), and it shows that Malaysians are required to have visa to enter Qatar, but they can get visa-on-arrival at the airport. I double checked this by calling an officer at the Qatar Embassy in Kuala Lumpur and he confirmed that we can get them at Doha airport upon arrival. He told us the visa fee is Qatari Riyal (QR) 100 each, approximately RM 80 per person.

When we were checking-in at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the officer told us to have our hotel booking confirmation slip since sometimes the Qatar immigration officer might ask for hotel slip before issuing a visa.

We landed in Doha at about 1:55 afternoon at the old airport. The new Doha airport is not completed yet. Everyone has to use the stairs and board a bus. The bus has several stops - transfer terminal and main terminal. To make things easy, Qatar Airways issued boarding pass with different colors - so just look at the color of your boarding pass and the color of the bus stop. You should get down from the bus if the color of the bus stop matches your boarding pass.

The main terminal building is rather small. There were not many people at the immigration checkpoint. We lined up and in few minutes it was already our turn to go to the immigration desk. Initially I thought that to get visa on arrival, we need to fill in some forms - but I was wrong. There is no form needed. We simply submit our passports to the immigration officers and she asked whether we want to 'buy' the visa. Of course I replied yes. So she asked me to pay QR 400 for four of us. I was about to give her QR 500 notes when she said, "No cash, credit card only!" Yeah, I recalled that I saw it somewhere on the web - was it Trip Advisor or Virtual Tourist - that mentioned visa payment must be done with credit cards only! So I hand in my credit card to the officer. All adults have to be taken pictures - there's a camera behind the immigration officer - so if you are wearing a cap or glasses, you have to take them off. I was asked to take my glasses off. By the way, she did not ask for our hotel slip.

So finally we got our Qatar visa! We got one month stay, and we are also allowed to enter the Sultanate of Oman as well. Now our adventure in Doha begins!

Notes:

1. The telephone number for Qatar Embassy in Kuala Lumpur is +603-42565552.
2. The website for Qatar Embassy in Washington D.C. is http://www.qatarembassy.net/.