Why would you pay an agent Visa-On-Arrival extension fees in Bali


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April 17th 2015
Published: April 26th 2015
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If you are staying in Indonesia for more than 30 days I can see no reason why you would not get a visa extension from the Immigration Office by yourself. Yes it takes three visits. They are all bureaucratic and not difficult. Even if you pay an agency $40 or more to do two visits for you you still have to go for the second visit to get your photo and fingerprints taken. And probably more importantly when you use an agent you lose control of the process. Hopefully a quick description of our experience will help some future applicants. Of course, thing might change soon because the Indonesian government is increasingly understanding the potential value of the tourist dollar.



We were under the impression you could do everything in three days and had this idea of renting a car to drive to the Immigration Office each day. We scrapped this idea when we found we need international licenses to be insured to drive. It was good that we did. In the end we took a private car to the office in Denspar from our guesthouse in Ubud for 250,000INR with plans to base ourselves in Sanur.



We arrived at the office around 10am on Monday. It was already crowded with foreigners, agents and locals. The foreigners applying for extensions had their own counters. When we arrived we got a 'queue number' from the machine. We waited fifteen minutes before it was called and went to Counter 2. The lady gave us the application forms. One of the other foreigners there helped us fill it in. How to do it just seems to get passed down from one applicant to the next. There were no tricky questions. As we were only going for the additional 30 days there was no need for a local sponsor. You just left that bit blank.



You need copies of the id page of your passport and the Indonesian Visa on Arrival page. You need a copy of your ticket for leaving Indonesia for each application. You get these simply by going to the back of the building where there is a small office next to a cafe. They charge 2,000INR per copy. With the forms all filled in with black ink and the copies made we went back to Counter 2. The lady check everything was correct and gave us receipts. These told us to come back for stage 2 on Friday, four days later. There was no discussion or change despite Jane's immediate offer to pay more. So this is when our plans to visit Nusa Penida formalised (see separate blog). We spent at most an hour at the Immigration Office on the Monday and probably less.



We returned from Nusa Penida on Friday on the first boat and were back at the Immigration Office for 8.30am. (Taxis, metred or by haggling, cost 50,000INR to or from Sanur.) The receipt for our passports said we could pay between 9am and 12noon. We paid at 8.30am at the cashiers desk right in front of the main door (the Immigration Office opens everyday at 8am). They accepted Rupier (710,000INR for two). We got another receipt and were told to take it to Counter 3. Here they told us to wait in the photo section. We waited maybe 20 minutes before we were called for photos and fingerprints. We then were told to come back on the following Monday to pick the passports up.



On the previous Monday one official told Jane that if we came early enough we may be able to have the passports back on the Friday. When Jane started pressing to get them back that day from the ladies doing the fingerprinting they sent her to Counter 1. Jane categorically told the official there that we could not come back on Monday as we were going to Lombok. He very quickly conceded that we could come back at 4pm because 'it was a weekend coming'.



So that was it. We hung around doing odd jobs, writing postcards and drinking a long beer in a bar with wifi until 3pm. We went back to the Immigration Office for visit number three and very shortly had our passports and visa extensions in hand.



It was that easy. The whole process took us less than two and half hours. Why pay an agent? And what is more, conveniently the Post Office was round the corner so we could post the postcards!



Note: I expect if you go through the process at any of the other Immigration Offices outside the big Indonesia cities it can all be done in 3 days.

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