Visa for Turkmenistan...

Yes, the visa for Russia was a pain but Turkmenistan was able to top it... . In Dubai it was simply niet if you don't have your own car. In Teheran we had to provide copies of our passport and the next visa and they said they would send it to Ashgabat (Turkmen capital) and they will check your data and decide whether you get a visa or not. We should come back in 5 working days. Obviously the working hours don't match - Iran has weekend on Thursday & Friday while Turkmenistan has weekend on Saturday & Sunday making 5 working days a bit longer... . Luckily Ashgabat approved our request but then the embassy let us run back and forth (call there and come back, now call there and come back, get a colour picture...) till we finally got the visa. The funniest thing was that the guy at the embassy pretended to speak only Turkmen or Russian which made us use Russian speakers, hand, feet, sign language etc. At the very end when he handed over the visa he spoke perfect English and had a big smile on his face...