The trip to “Trip Ticket”

Saturday 26-June 2010 – Abu Dhabi, UAE
A great road journey starts with a trip to the “Trip Ticket”

“Carnet de Passages en Douane”, or “Trip Ticket” (TT) for those non Francophone oriented people, is a French log book to facilitate vehicle entry into a foreign country. TT has been made obsolete in France shortly after World War II but is still required by Syria & Lebanon, being the upholders of tradition and cumbersome bureaucratic procedures.

First stop was at AD Tourism & Automobile Club, Nasr St, the not so friendly staff asked for 20,000AED deposit to guarantee the safe return of my car to Abu Dhabi. Second stop was our friendly, highly efficient local “Arab Association for Tourism & Automobile Clubs” (AATAC) at Madinat Zayed behind central mail next to AD Municipality vegetable market. AATAC also demanded a guarantee, but were happy to substitute the 20K AED for a gullible friend who is willing to under sign my trip …


A quick call to my trusted friend and travel partner Hussam, and he was there next to me backing me up not only as a guarantor but also with 600Dh for the TT Cost since I had reached my daily cash limit from NBAD ATM.

AATAC staff member greeted us with a big smile and even a bigger quote for TT, but managed to negotiate him down to 600Dh, knowing that actual price is 550Dh.

The employee reached out to a dusty plastic cover to unearth a 1960 typewriter in pristine condition. He inserted a thick blue Cardboard and typed my details.

He then turned on his AT 80286 IBM tower desktop, complete with 5 1/4“ floppy disk drive and 20MB Hard Disk, and started “Lotus 123” to type the car details in predetermined cells and printed on a plane A4 paper using a clunky Epson dot matrix printer. The A4 was then copied 20 times using a 1980 B&W Xerox copier on a preprinted French text paper.

The lot were turned into a book by using a heavy duty stapler and stamped no less than 4 different stamps utilising three different colours, red, black & blue.

And when you thought it was all said and done, the hot off the press TT was passed to the clerk behind him and the details were entered into the great registry book that measured 1.2 meters end to end.


This whole experience was simply fascinating… just like walking into a time machine taking you back 100 years into the golden days of road travel and those men with their magnificent machines.


the “Trip Ticket” a step back in time