I presume that you went to the immigration office in Singaraja.
The inconsistencies between different offices have always bemused me, but I guess that's "Incredible Indonesia" for you.
I have had a retirement KITAS for many years here. The last few years, I've paid extra for a MERP (multiple entry-reentry).
Imagine my shock and surprise when I had to go to Australia recently and my latest MERP wasn't in my passport.
It was late on a Saturday night, my flight due to leave in about two hours.
I had a big interview with the officials, who said I had to go to the immigration office to "fix" this.
What!? It's Saturday night, Wayan. Maybe my old age worked for me, because they let me fly out in the end.
Amazingly, they didn't ask me for any money, or cigarettes.
The person who has been doing all my visas for years is now a retired immigration official. Never had a problem before, so obviously somebody screwed up.
Usually, I just go to the ex-official's house, (not the immigration office), and everything is dealt with there (apart from having to do the fingerprints/photos stuff.)
In Australia, I went to an Indonesian consulate to try and get a two-month tourist visa (rather than just fly back to Bali and line up for a VOA).
That was OK, except that they wanted me to have a plane ticket out of Indonesia. I opted for a VOA instead, and unfortunately, I wasn't flying Garuda (where you can do your visa on-board).
Back in Bali, the airport officials pulled me aside again. Basically, they took all my KITAS stuff away from me (blue book, plastic card, etc).
The next problem was how long would it take to renew my KITAS from scratch? To be on the safe side, I decided to extend my VOA, just in case.
Of course I vented my displeasure about all of this to the retired official. Everything was fixed for the VOA extension, apart from me having to go to the immigration office near the airport for fingerprints/photo.
I had to wait nearly three hours before my number came up.
OK - so that part of my new process was finished. Next was waiting for the approval from Jakarta to arrive for my new KITAS. It actually came quite quickly (maybe 10 days).
I was sweating on it because I'd already booked/paid for my flights and hotel in Singapore and was worried that maybe, if the approval didn't arrive before my VOA extension expired, I'd have to go to Singapore twice.
To this day, after living in Indonesia nearly 20 years, I still don't understand the "logic" of why we have to leave the country to pick up our visas.
The money I spend in Singapore, KL, Bangkok, Darwin, wherever, is money that I don't spend in Indonesia. WTF?
The other thing is that are several extremely reliable agents in Singapore who can pick up your papers in the morning, go to the Indonesian Embassy and have everything finished later in the afternoon of the same day.
The price for this service varies with what kind of visa has to be processed.
In my current case, the official KITAS price is Rp 1,500,000 and I pay the agent an extra Rp 500,000 to do all the running around. Definitely beats going to the embassy and being told it will take at least three days, blah blah...unless you use an "agent".
Sorry for the length of this post. I thought it might be of some interest to somebody, and I've got it off my chest, so to speak.
:drunk:
