Immigration at Jakarta

The first day of arrival was in Jakarta and we stayed there for just one night. We had a sort of bad experience at the airport immigration because my husband is Pakistani; he was stopped at the immigration and asked to come out and sit in a corner, a reserved area, where there were some boys from Morocco as well. The immigration officers were checking all their paperwork and all their passport details for verification. And they started asking questions as if they were some sort of a wanted criminal, questions like Why have you come here, How many days do you intend on staying? Where are you going and what attractions will you be visiting?

Why did you decide to come here? What plans? What's this with that?

 And it was just not a great experience.

I don't know why they actually do it, whether there are other people who actually just abscond from their vacations in Indonesia and decide to settle here and hide. I have no idea. But there are a few nationalities that are targeted basically and made to sit for 45 minutes.

They will just simply make you sit in this space, which is covered by plastic trees so that you cannot see anything outside. And you sit there feeling like a criminal, and then one by one,  they will be called and they will be questioned for half an hour, 40 minutes, and then they will make you sit some more. And then they will take all your papers, all your details, and sort of intimidate you.

They just make multiple copies of all your documents in front of you. And I don't know whether it's to test your reaction or whatever.  I sat in one of the questioning sessions, and they did not speak to me because I was an Indian, so I wasn't actually involved at all. But I sat there because, you know, to be supportive of my nervous husband.

And they kept asking him, how many days again, because they had already finished asking all these questions. And then they asked him again, "How many days are you here? So we said around 25 days, so he's like, you have only one night's hotel stay booked,  showing up in your itinerary.

So my husband was like, yes, because I just stay on plan on staying for one night in Jakarta, and tomorrow morning I have a flight to Malang. I have already booked a flight, you can see to Malung, and I've already booked a guest house there as well for two days. And then from there, you know, it depends.

He's like, but then, where are the rest of the bookings? And we are like it all depends on what we plan to see, and how tired we will get, and would we need to take some more time there to rest up before moving to a different destination.

You have to show all 25 days of the itinerary. And my husband and I were like it doesn't make sense to book for all 25 days. What if we didn't like a place and wanted to change immediately? 

After having sat outside for another 40 minutes, this security guy comes out and very nicely says, Just book any hotel for 25 days. And then we will let you leave. It just has to be an online booking. I did just that, booked a hotel in Bali and Malang for 25 days and just showed them the booking. They finally took copies and let us go.  Once I reached my hotel in Jakarta, I cancelled the bookings.

The blessing at that moment was the internet. Before going in for our immigration, we got a SIM card and installed it. Then we were able to do all our bookings and other things. They took all the copies for themselves inside.

Imagine having no internet at that point, we would have been royally screwed.

So 17 hours later, flight time included, we reached our hotel in Jakarta and just crashed into our beds.

There was nothing to eat anywhere. We were like, is there anything to eat in this hotel? And uh they were like, it's we too late all the restaurants are closed and I was like maybe we just let's take a shower and just go to bed.

 Everything just fell into place after that. Then it was like, you know, vacation actually had started. Wea went down for our free breakfast.

We had an amazing local breakfast. The continental breakfast that they serve is boiled eggs and toast, no butter, no jam, nothing. So either you can have that or you can just eat the local breakfast, which is rice porridge and, you know, some condiments that go with it, you know, Nasi goreng, which is basically fried vegetable rice.

You can have a vegetable, or you can add boiled chicken. You know, everything is just kept there so you can just add whatever you want and eat. And we had a fabulous, heavy breakfast because we did not know if they would make us sit somewhere and then start, you know, with the inquiries again, how many more hours we'll have to actually starve before we can reach a place and ask for tea or coffee or whatever?

And then we just got a flight and everything was smooth. We got done at Malang, and nobody asked us anything because once you have crossed your international immigration thing, then you're basically just free within the country. So when you come through a domestic airport, nobody even asks, even if you're a foreigner, nobody will ask you even in immigration.

So that was our very exhaustive entry to Indonesia. Hotels in Jakarta, which I learned later, have hotel rooms in Jakarta that are basically tiny rooms with all basic amenities.

I'm talking about the budget stays. I'm not sure about the luxury or the four-star staff hotels.

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