Subject: My experience on the way back from Thailand to Canada
Hello everyone,
Please read my previous posts and replies to learn about my experience in going to Singapore and Thailand from Canada if you haven't read it yet. You may also find posts with information on how to apply for visas to Singapore and Thailand. It'll be helpful to prepare yourself on how to deal with some unknown situations.
Please read my whole story so you don't experience any difficulties while traveling to Canada from Asia without a PR.
This paragraph has some extra information, which may be helpful in case you are in a similar situation. You may ignore this if you are not in a similar situation. I left Bangkok on October 11th with Emirates EK244 to Dubai. In Dubai, I had 13 hours of layover. I booked a sleep and fly lounge through Expedia for $130 CAD. On the official website of Sleep and Fly Lounge, the rate was $250 USD for 10 hours. The same was for $130 CAD on Expedia. The lounge is located on the Airside and you don't need to pass through the immigration. You can't pass through the immigration in any way because Gulf countries don't accept RTD. The lounge is hidden near Gate C14, Terminal 3 and you may not be able to find it easily unless you ask someone.
I checked in online 48 hours before the flight and got the boarding pass. In order to get your boarding pass online with Emirates, you have to fill up some questionnaires. There will be a question about your citizenship. Just enter Canada under citizenship or country. Then other information as per your RTD. You'll easily get the boarding pass online and no need to go through the check-in desk unless you have big luggage to check in. I didn't carry any big luggage on purpose and only had a cabin-size bag and a backpack. Also, if you fly domestically or internationally from one country to another within Asia, some low-cost carriers charge you extra for check-in baggage. You can easily avoid that by traveling lite. I didn't wanna have any trouble at the check-in desk on the way back. Though nothing would have happened I'm sure but I was scared because I didn't have a PR. When I was boarding the flight to Dubai from Bangkok, at the boarding gate, they manually entered some info and let me board the flight. I don't know what they had to enter into their system while other passengers just scanned their boarding passes and were automatically allowed in. Reached Dubai in 6.5 hours which was great.
At Dubai, after sleeping for around 7 hours in the lounge, I headed towards the boarding gate. Boarding for the US and Canada is not as easy as boarding for any other country. They need lots of information for non-Canadian passport holders. For me, because the RTD was issued by Canada, I was asked why I'm carrying this travel document. Weird question right? I just said I'm a refugee in Canada and then they scanned my RTD. I was also asked for two other IDs issued by Canada. I gave them my Quebec Driver's License and Quebec Health Card. Scanning RTD didn't allow me to automatically board like some other Canadian passport holders. They tried at 3 different desks for whatever reasons. I was able to see their screens. As soon as they scanned the RTD, it was showing STATELESS under Citizenship and showed unable to board. Scarry right? They manually changed STATELESS to Canada and then the screen changed to BOARDED. I boarded Emirates EK352 which took 13.5 hours to reach Montreal. Really long flight, Damm.
After arriving in Montreal, I had to scan my RTD on the automated immigration kiosk. It gave me an incomplete immigration slip. I took it to an immigration officer. He asked me the following questions.
1. Where have you been to?
Answer: Singapore and Thailand.
2. What was the purpose of the trip?
Answer: Meeting my parents.
3. Where do they live?
Answer: Home country informed.
4. Did you buy anything from the countries you have visited?
Answer: I bought some souvenirs from Thailand.
5. How much do those cost in Canadian dollars?
Answer: $50 or less.
6. Where do you live?
Answer: Montreal.
7. Did you not leave from Montreal? (Not sure why they couldn't see it on their system that I left from Montreal)
Answer: Yes I did leave from Montreal.
These above questions and answers were super quick and didn't take more than 2 minutes. Then he said you need to go through the secondary immigration and handed me over a yellow slip with a bunch of information. That scared me lol. I went to the secondary immigration. Guess what. No questions asked. The immigration officer just scanned my RTD and entered something on his system manually which didn't take more than 10 seconds. Then said Goodbye, haha.
Hope it helps people who want to travel with RTD and already have a PR or don't have a PR yet.
Have a good one...