Or maybe both - a drug smuggling pervert! :O

Baikal, Sorry to hear of your bad experience with Canadian Customs.
As mentioned earlier even Canadians get hassled coming back into Canada.
I have learned that the less said at any border crossing the better. Only answer questions, don't ask them.
When your bikes get here, you are welcome to stay at our place in Revelstoke, and I will supply the beer.
Canada really is a pretty nice place, you can probably get your visa's extended, and hopefully you will want to.
Cheers, Peter

I never say no to a beer
 

Simon I just might take you up on that. Now which was it bring my gun and leave my helmet or is that backwards.

Life is so confusing.

If you come in the winter (snowbird season--no, they're not just from Canada BTW) bring both, traffic gets pretty dangerous, lol

The worse kind!! LOL

thanks for invitation
 

thanks peter!
revelstoke is not so far away from the route we planned - so maybe we will visit you for this beer :-)
we will also ty the extension - wish us look...
greets
alex & carsten

Sadly, that was what cooked your goose.

I know you didn't mean to do anything wrong, but, you were very naive to ask an immigration officer about the possibility of working in a country that you were trying to enter without a visa that permitted you to work there. It was only coincidence that it happened to be Canada - you would have encountered the same grief in any 1 of the other 250 or so countries in the world.

I remember entering the United States about 20 years ago for a quick transit from the Atlantic Provinces of Canada to Ontario, Canada. This was about a 2 day, 1,000 mile trip. At the point where I entered the USA, I asked the customs officer if I was allowed to sell my motorcycle in the USA. That was the wrong question to ask! He went ballistic, searched the motorcycle with a fine toothed comb, and made me fill out all sorts of papers, then gave me a 'transit permit' that I had to get stamped when exiting the USA, on penalty of being tossed in jail the next time I visited. Remember, this was back in 1985, long before terrorism or any kind of crap like that - back in the days when a Canadian could enter the USA with nothing more than a library card as ID.

Anyway, the point is this: Never, ever ask customs or immigration officers any questions, at any border of any country. It's their job to ask questions, and your job to give the shortest, simplest, most to the point answer you can. If you need to gather information, gather it here, call the local embassy of the country you plan to visit, ask another rider you meet on the road, but whatever you do, DON'T ask questions of the customs and immigration officers - anywhere!

Hi
we never asked immigration officer about possibility for work.
That' s misunderstanding. When entering Canada we had no documents for work, not even a job offer and so we decided to travel like normal visitors by motorbike.
But the immigration officer found a posting from May 2006 on our website. There we wanted to inform generally about working conditions and possibilities in Kanada.
We didn't even ask one question at the immigration office. Only the officer asked us a lot about our travelling. With this information she looked and found our website in Internet and so on...

That's all.
greets Alex &Carsten

Agreed.
However ... gathering information (asking questions here or elsewhere) well before the possible event should not lead to an assumption that you will do the thing you were asking about!
E.G. I've thought about (and possibly asked about) travelling from India up to the Isle of Man TT in 2007. I'm no longer thinking about that.. I'm thinking of going another way. If I ask about working in place X then I'm simply getting information - that information may decide for me that I won't work there, won't apply to work there or may decide for me that I'd LIKE to work there and that I should apply for a work permit .. Asking a question or questions is not saying you will do it - simply getting the information to make a decision about that topic.

And officials (of any country) SHOULD take that into consideration! Not just assume the worst.......

------------------------
As for why a imigration officer should let you into the country .. well most countries spend a lot of money to ENCOURAGE people to vist their country. Why are YOU trying to undermine that policy of YOUR government? :P

Their job is not to let in 'undersirables'. As a motorcyclist you will be spending money in their country, you won't be taking money from their GPD, rather you will be contributing to it.

I'm sorry but I think a lot of people here have missed the point, what I can see from Baikal's first post is the fact immigration officers looked up on the Internet his web site and from there started all the hassle.

I'd never heard of that before, but I'm not very surprised - wait and in a few years they will be watching CCTV footage of your last steps before coming to their country, not sure if the world is changing for the better or the worse :(

If you are Mexican, and sneaking into the US, then you have Bush's unofficial blessing..."what a country!"

Hi Alex & Carsten, You can check your messages for Revelstoke info.
Cheers, Peter

you got it!
 

That's the point!
big brother is watching you :-)

alex & carsten

Gripping stuff this but one question Baikal: How did the Immigration officer get to know about your website?

My most frustrating border experience:
1. Just finished Uni and was heading back to Namibia with all my clutter I had accumulated over my 5 years of studying. Namibian border guard looks in my fully loaded VW Golf...mmm...single health looking male entering the counrty with lots of stuff... I had to unpack the entire car. They went through every single box; even my statistics and engineering study notes (Hope they could make sense of it). 4 hours later I was allowed to pack my car and leave. After a few minutes they were annoyed with me for not packing quickly enough. Very annoying considering I was a returning citizen.

2. Arrived at Namibian border at 3am. No guards at gate. Stopped outside immigration office. No lights on anywhere. Walked around the place for 10min shouting. Finally found someone sleeping on the floor in one of the offices in the pitch darkness. Half asleep he handed us the stamp and ink. We promptly stamped our passports and left.

After the interview (in which we told nothing about the website, only answered questions!) the officer dissappered, went to a PC, looked up in the net, found our site with the keywords she got by the interview and showed us the articel.

untill this moment we have been lucky that google rates our site high...

greets
alex & carsten