I really enjoyed planning our six months' trip while we were still in Australia. I love researching places to go, where to stay and what we'll do when we get there. Often the plans are pretty loose. For example, the plan for our trip to KL, is hang out, eat good food, maybe watch a movie. But the anticipation of staying in a beautiful place that I have handpicked is a real part of the fun of travel for me. And unless I have either been to a place before, or heard that most people turn up without a booking, I would always prefer to book ahead. Just as a quiet aside, I am also pretty sure that I would stay in less-nice places if I followed the "we'll find something when we get there" approach, which may have something to do with my enthusiasm for hunting down 5 star bargains in advance!!
Phil prefers to make less plans and just go with the flow, but he rarely objects to my trip planning. I usually do a pretty good job of organizing our itinerary and booking awesome places to stay. Usually. In fact, ordinarily, I would say that I would find being a travel agent would be really fun. Ordinarily.
Not so much today when my inability to count to sixty propelled us into a smoke-choked, linoleum floored, very official Indonesian Imigrasi office. Where we were told we had overstayed our visas. By one day. Oh, fuc....Whoops! It turns out that you count the day you arrive as well as the day you leave as part of the sixty days in a 60 day visa. This is despite the fact that the stamp in my passport says I arrived on 25 August - which I did, about 2 minutes past midnight... The "system" apparently says I arrived on 24 August and therefore should have left the country yesterday. And poor Phil had 24 August stamped in his passport, so there was not even anything to argue about there.
As I thought back over the various factors that contributed to overstaying our visas, all fingers pointed to me (who booked the flights), me (who arranged the visas) and me (who created the itinerary). Damnit. Maybe I'm not travel agent material after all.
After a stern, but helpful young Imigrasi officer relieved us of a fine totaling Rp 400,000 or AUD$47 we were sent on our way with an assurance that we will be allowed back in the country next week. I hope so!! In any event, I was glad we were at Denpasar airport in Indonesia and not Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne - between customs, that border control TV show and immigration I suspect I would be begging for the ten minute delay we experienced in Indonesian immigration...
We are now sitting at our gate waiting for... a delayed Air Asia flight. What a surprise! I curse every stingy bone in my body each time I book a discount airline. It's never worth it. I only do it because they're so, so, well, so cheap! When Malaysia Airlines is double the price it's so hard not to choose the budget option. Grrr... Repeat after me - I will not skimp on air travel... Combine the delay with the fact that a week ago Air Asia moved our flight time from 8.30 am to 5.00pm (Thinking bubble: Why no, I didn't have a damn thing to do in KL today so it's nooo problem for us to arrive EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS later than planned...). These sort of shenanigans really get me going - Phil is all smiley and reading on his iPhone and I want to tear someone's head off... Fortunately I prepped for a stressful day by walking along the beach and getting a facial today. It was lovely.
This last week in Bali, in addition to a bit of gym, long walks on the beach, reading, eating and general faffing around, we had to deal with some other Indonesian bureaucracy. I had to get some documents for the bank here which first involved a visit to the Australian Consulate-General for notorisation of a few documents.
On our last European trip together, some lowlife fiend stole Phil's bag including his Australian passport, so we had to go to the Australian Embassy in the Hague. The way I remember it, we were greeted with a lovely warm bear hug from an official who gave us some milk and cookies and asked us what happened while giving a shoulder and neck massage**. It was a beautiful thing - we, as Australians, needed something and the Embassy couldn't have done more to help us.
At the Australian Consulate-General in Denpasar, they swabbed me for explosives. Then they swabbed my bag for explosives. Then they swabbed my camera for explosives. And then they confiscated my passport (my passport, wtf??) and Phil's Leica. Wow, I really didn't think he was going to let it go. He held onto it for a bit too long before passing it over with a laundry list of care instructions. He must have made an impression on the guard because at the end of our visit, rather than passing our confiscated items through the metal trapdoor, she came out and personally delivered them back to us.
Apparently the passport confiscation thing is standard, and (as recounted to us by a resident of our apartment block) rather inconvenient when the reason for your visit is to renew your passport. Anyway, in our case we just needed a couple of stamps and signatures and $32 later (remind me why I pay taxes??) we were on our way.
Not so smooth sailing at the bank... In addition to certified copies which were also notorized by the Australian Consulate-General, they wanted me to write a stat dec explaining the content of the documents and have that statement affirmed by the embassy. The lawyer in me giggled momentarily and then looked Mr Banker straight in the eye and said "you want... what???" So let me get this straight, I have all this official documentation certified, notorised, stamped, signed, sealed and delivered, but what is going to persuade you is my own declaration of what I want - stamped by the Australian embassy. Wow. I just said no. We'll see what happens... I'm not holding my breath. Bali is easy - Indonesia, and particularly bureaucracy in Indonesia is a little bit of a nightmare!
Oh goddammit!! Now I am typing this on the plane because some part of the plane (apparently an important part) is malfunctioning and we are waiting on the engineers to come and fix it. It's nice and cool on the plane and not too full and I'm looking at one of the most stunning sunsets I think I've ever seen:
You are looking at very poor photographic representations of it because, despite my pleadings for Phil to pull out his, or my, camera from his bag, the GOMP emerged and simply said "please don't make this any more irritating than it already is". Ouch!! I'm your wife buddy, that is what I am for...
Phil has returned and politely requested that I use my blogging powers for good rather than evil, so I won't post the truly terrible things he said about a poor helpless crying baby in the cabin. Partly because I said worse!!
It's now one and a half hours after the (re)scheduled take off time and TEN HOURS later than our original flight departure time. Where's my complimentary pacifying diet coke!!!!!?????
It occurs to me that if we have to change planes, it might be possible to simply re-enter Indonesia without ever having taken off - since we have officially departed through immigration... Now that would be awesome - to get through immigration, then board and unboard a plane and head straight back inside... Worst case scenario if we can't depart and re-enter on the same day, we could hang out in the airport until 12.30am and then cab back to the apartment.
I suspect that this is just a flight of fancy and that ultimately I will be posting this from Malaysia. But let me say now that if we get back into Indonesia today (or in the very early hours of tomorrow) I will consider it a moment of indescribable sweetness - a personal triumph over Indonesian bureaucracy.
- Posted using broken (plane) wings
** Phil's memory differs very slightly on this point
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Why hello readers... It seems that in Malaysia all the blog instructions revert to English... So I can leave comments and perhaps change a few settings in here... Yay!
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