Bali Visa

Indo dreaming may be able to advise ?

If you want a social visa you will need a sponsor. You can pay for a sponsor, of have an Indonesian citizen sponsor you. You have to organise this at home. Pretty straight forward process which you can find on the Indonesian Embassy website. If you don't have the contacts to sponsor you, you can go the Tourist visa option. 60 days up front and can extend it once (maybe more? I've only used it once before so I can't remember).

Speaking of visas, expect big crackdowns on visas next year. I've just had a nightmare sending students to Indo for a study trip due to visa changes not being communicated properly. Earlier this year (about a month ago I think) a new regulation came in banning foreigners from using more than 3 Visa On Arrivals in one year. It was almost immediately pulled back, but I've had warnings that the rule is due to return next year.

Also, working illegally (including getting paid to take surf photos) is set to receive a lot of attention. So if you are heading over to film for a commercial release or an advert, I wouldn't go around advertising the fact any more.

If your going from Bali or Java to West/north Sumatra its not that hard to go via Singapore or KL anyway, if your smart sometimes it can be cheaper to actually fly direct from Bali-Java to KL (or opposite way) then to Medan-Padang rather than go via Jakarta..weird but true…its only something I've clued onto fairly recently.

Plus as much as i like Indo, Singapore and KL can be great spots to get a bit of a more civilised fix eat some different food have a proper hot shower maybe some A/C especially if you have been somewhere remote for a while and bit sick of indo food.

If you have to stay in Singapore the backpackers or cheap hotels in Little india are the go, best Indian food outside of India.

And in KL Bukit bintang area is good range of accommodation and heaps of good cheap food, especially Malay and Chinese type street food.

While on the topic of Singapore.... Milk barfi with pistachios from just about anywhere in Little India. Holy good god I ate a lot of them last time I was there.

Just pay an agent for a sponsorship visa on your budaya 60 day visa. they look after you.
mind you they hold onto your passport while your away in other islands. Mke sure you get updates and emails of your of extensions ---i was robbed in sumbawa and made a report (had to pay the cops to report thievery) and they looked at my photocopied passport with out of date extensions and tried to jail me. My agent and friends got me out of that one but i could easily have been jailed. they thought at first i was a terrorist after seeing the photocopied passport.
An agent in bali or Jakarta will make everything else very easy for extensions. they dont cost much concidering the VIP treatment you get. they can be lazy emailing you your updated passport though.

Id be surprised if you could do that, i would have thought technically the only Visa you can get in Indonesia would be a VOA (Visa on arrival) other Visas i would expect you need to have before entering the country.

But hey its Indonesia so who knows anything is possible.

BTW. Yes Sosial budaya or Sos bud is same as Social Visa.

indo-dreaming wrote:

Id be surprised if you could do that, i would have thought technically the only Visa you can get in Indonesia would be a VOA (Visa on arrival) other Visas i would expect you need to have before entering the country.

But hey its Indonesia so who knows anything is possible.

ID I have a stopover in Medan - been 25 years since I was there and stayed in a shithole then for $20.

Any tips for decent hotels not to far from the airport?

BTW. Yes Sosial budaya or Sos bud is same as Social Visa.

Sorry Ive only ever stayed there once and it was also a shit hole right in town.

Medan has a new airport now though and its quite a drive out of town so id be trying to stay close to the airport if possible.

Medan - There isn't anything out near the new airport now. Its a 40min train ride into the city, direct to the train station in town. The Swiss-Belinn Medan Hotel does the job but isn't flashy. It has a decent local food street out the back, but you'll need a ride from the train station to the hotel. Might be easier to get something closer to the train station if you have a lot of boards.

As mk1 said there is nothing out near the new airport. The last few trips I've done I've stayed at the Marriott in town for $90 AUD per night which includes a full buffet breakfast. Excellent rooms, swimming pool, massage facilities and nightclub down stairs (Prime) which is usually frequented by local girls should you want any company ;). They also have a band on weekends.

As I'm always travelling with boards I usually get Boraspati Tours (Tom) to organise the accom, pick me up and drop me back at the airport. His rates are very reasonable IMO.

Medan is a bit of a shit hole but the Delta club is worth a look ;)

MK1 and MDM Thanks for the info - not sure I will use all of it :)

brownhornet wrote:

Hey groundswell thanks for your response bud you said "Just pay an agent for a sponsorship visa on your budaya 60 day visa-. I thought the "budaya" was the sponsor visa dude? Did you mean head over on tourist visa then see an agent for the social visa after the VOA runs out? Glad you didnt get locked up...fuck that!

If you apply at the embassy before you go they will give you a 60 day extendable to 180 days visa you can either have a sponsor before this stage or later have organised in Bali.
As Dan says things might have tightened up on this part so id say ring a few visa agents before you go to check it out. I had a business card of one in kuta -id give you his details but his phone number has changed since.
Getting a friend as a sponsor is a bit troubling for them and a they have to go out of there way for you where as with an agent everything runs much smoother and easily, as long as they send you the updated scanned passport details often.You will have to go back to Bali just once (somewhere in the middle of your trip) for fingerprinting which wont take long then you can be off on your way.

Prices seem to have gone up a little more than i remember but the service should be worth it.
Have a good trip mate.

I recently checked in for a 30 day VOA, cost me AU$56, whilst people from just about any other country waltzed through for free, even new zealanders!!

maybe time for Australia to have a good hard look at itself, and it's relationship with our closest neighbour. speaking of the relationship when I raise it, euro's and others quite enjoy having a laugh at us and our situation with indo. I would have thought most people would be quite ignorant to it all, so I'd love to hear what the indo's are saying when there's no aussies around.

re. 60 day thing, indo d and co. probably know better than me, but my experience is you can get 60 tourist visa from embassy before you arrive, no photos, no fingerprints, no sponsor, non extendable. however indo being indo you can extend by an agent converting it to a to a social visa, and that's why you have to do the fingerprint shuffle in indo. much easier and cheaper to extend a 30 day visa, so sometimes better to just have 30 day visa to start with, supposedly you can only extend 2-3 times but crew get it done more.

having said that the government does seem to be trying to make things more legit, and a hawaiian guy i was hanging with in September ran into some problems due to suss stamps on his passpirt, so maybe best to play by the book. things are certainly changing thanks to jokowi. while those 'in the know' with certain 'connections' may not like it, I think its for the better. jokowi is a bloody legend, taking on some big issues and tough cookies, some of the things I like are disappearing too, but for the long term he's finally sorting shit out.

I like him too i think he is trying his best but sadly pushing shit up hill.

I don't get the free visa thing though, how on earth does free visas encourage people to come to Indonesia?

I mean seriously if you can afford to take time off work, travel overseas and holiday in another country paying a little more for a visa is nothing its not going to discourage you to go to Indonesia and just because its free its not going to make you think oh great now i can afford to go on a holiday to Indonesia, I find it weird imagine the huge loss of revenue, they also scraped Fiscal tax for Indonesians when leaving the country a few years back which was really high like about 2 million, so would have also lost revenue there.

I can understand why they haven't given Aussies free VOA though, its really not a market they need to encourage after NZ Indonesia (generally Bali) is the most visited country by Aussies.

The VOA price is now USD $35 up from USD $25 which from memory it been for like 15 years, i guess its just the strong USD that has pushed it too AUD $56.

I really hope they are cracking down on other Visa and people who continually re enter Indonesia on VOA its crazy the amount of foreigners who work illegally in Indonesia especially in Bali and in the surf resort/charter boat industry its really not fair on those operators that do do the right thing as its very expensive for a business to hire a westerner not the wage but the work Visa (KITAS) and a thing called man power tax the company must pay.

yeh he's pushing shit up hill, but doing about as much as one could expect from a ' little person' or literally an orang kampung. the man has got balls! I heard he has shut down stadium, while I have some fond memories of stadium, it was very symbolic of everything that is wrong with Indonesia, to shut that down you've gotta take on some seriously big wigs, one's that rhink nothing of taking people out, which sadly I think may be his fate, let's hope not.

I agree with all you say indo d, especially this foreign workers issue. Bali is becoming ridiculous with the amount if people working there, especially surf coaches and yoga teachers and the like, maybe yoga teachers do need to be female, honkey and hot, because you can't tell me there aren't Indonesians that can do these jobs, I mean foreign surf coaches from places like Germany...really!!! what the fuck is that about?!

and I've gotta agree $50 bucks is no disincentive, if it is, stay home you miserable bastards! but I don't think it's about money. countries seem to have reciprocal agreements about visas, you let us in free we'll let you in free. oz seems to only have such agreements with nice white middle class countries, which you can kinda understand given our history, but it doesn't look good, especially if NZ can arrange such an agreement. I might be way off, but I reckon that's what's happening. it looks really bad from an indo perspective, sombong lagi! that's aussies being too arrogant again to work with their closest neighbours when even the kiwis have done it.

.if anybody loose i pad at west sumbawa,please contact me..iam sure he is a surfer,and he go to west sumbawa between 10th until 20th december.