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'Taint necessarily so. I traveled all over with a diplomatic passport. One year I was in Miami on a very short R&R just before Christmas and was going to escort my son to Havana to spend the holiday with us. I bought a fresh turkey and a spiral-cut ham at a Publix just before leaving for the airport. I put the items in a carry-on bag, and as we were going through customs in Havana, the officer asked me what was in the bag. Food, I told her. She asked what kind. I said "cheese" then mumbled something unintelligible. She asked if I would open the bag, so being a "diplomat," of course I complied. She looked at the ham and passed it. She said that she would have to confiscate the turkey as it was uncooked. She said that they had been alerted to the fact that there was a fowl-borne disease in the southeast USA. She said that it would be burned. My son, who had been with me in Panama when I offered a $5 gratuity to a traffic cop to avoid having to accompany him to the nearest precinct house, said, "bribe her, dad!" I informed him that that wouldn't work here.

We are to this day convinced that they did indeed burn the turkey - in a 325 oven for about three hours. Feliz Navidad, compa#eros.

You may have been traveling on a diplomatic pasport, but you’re not a head of state and their senior staff on a diplomatic mission. I don’t even know if they x-ray the bags for that type of individual

“bribe her, dad!”

Great story. My daughter wasn’t with me when I had to bribe an official to get our passports back. She has a lot to learn despite spending most of her life outside the U.S. She does know about “machete Friday” school yard clean up and why the expats don’t send their kids. I could write a book but it makes my PTSD flare up. I never did find out the real price of a stamp in one country. We had lowly government officials trying to get a bribe of an unnecessary 3 day trip and Wookie thinks a gift basket is an appropriate gift. LOL.