Muddling the water a bit with my story about Ethiopia, an episode where I lost about US$ 4K in the process without even visiting the country!
I had booked three week long stay in Addis Ababa and long weekendish jaunts to Simien, Lalibela, Bale Mountains, etc. thru a local travel agent and had paid the 50% advance. After making the payment, I found out that I need a permit for my Canon 18x50 IS binos. Contacted the travel agent and he assured me that he will take care of getting the permit. A week before arriving in Addis Ababa, he informed me that the permit was denied and I will have to leave the bino at the airport. We had already begun our six month long travel thru Africa (I am retired) and we were in Zanzibar at that time and the bino was already with us. Rather than risk having the bino confiscated, we decided to cancel our travel and skip Ethiopia all together. And the travel agent refused to refund our deposit even though he didn't keep his assurance.
We are right now traveling thru Morocco (arrived thru Casablanca airport where they confiscated my Henkel chef's knife and the sharpening rod from the checked bag - while Morocco actively sells swords and knives to tourists). We didn't have any problem with our bino nor my 400mm prime lens (going birding to Atlas mountains tomorrow).
We fly to Tunis in a few days. Hope we don't encounter any issues there. I think I will stick to South America and Australasia for birding in the future. We had no problems in Ecuador, Costa Rica, Panama, Viet Nam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. Will be heading to Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile and Bolivia next year.
Looks like these issues happen, infrequently, but it is a major pain when it happens!