00:00I had a police officer follow me around my entire time in Libya. Every person
00:04visiting Libya has to come on an arranged tour and a part of the condition
00:08of the visa is that a police officer will follow you the entire time to make
00:12sure you're not a spy. If you're in a tour group it's just one police officer
00:15per group but if you're a US, Russian or UK citizen you will have a police
00:20officer per person. So me and my dad both Americans each had our own personal
00:24police officer following us the entire time. I've traveled to a lot of countries
00:28with very strict visa policies namely Iran and Turkmenistan but nowhere in the
00:32world have I ever had a requirement that a government official be with me the
00:35entire time. Even in countries that require pre-arranged tours there's a lot
00:39of flexibility to go off on your own but not at all in Libya. While this might
00:43seem very annoying it's not actually at all what I thought it would be like. Our
00:47police officers spoke no English and basically just hung out the entire time
00:50smoking cigarettes drinking coffee while we did whatever we wanted to do. It
00:54didn't feel like they were actually there for our personal safety but rather to
00:57just watch our every move and make sure we weren't spies. And actually we heard
01:00some stories of past tourists who got deported for suspicious activity. Like
01:04one person who kept sending a WhatsApp location to a suspicious number every
01:08time they passed through a security checkpoint. That person got caught by the
01:11police, questioned and deported. At the end of the day the guys were very nice
01:15and polite and never told me that I couldn't do something. The only thing is I
01:18just never left their site. Even at night we stayed in the same hotels and the
01:22front desk were told to contact them if we left the building. The funny thing is we
01:26were allowed to leave the building and go out and do stuff at night and they just
01:28had to follow us and watch us. By the end of the tour they kind of became a part
01:32of the group and even gave us goodbye hugs. But I think my favorite memory with
01:35them was when I tried on these traditional Libyan clothes. When my police
01:38officer Mustafa saw me wearing them I have never seen a person beaming with so
01:43much pride. At the end of the day he was just a guy doing his job but we had
01:46these very relatable moments despite the language barrier.
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