VISA Extension ~ Indonesian Government in Action!

Glen and I are currently in Manado, on the Island of Sulawesi.  We are staying in a ridiculously expensive (for here) Five Star Hotel in a corner suite with  floor to ceiling picture windows, a small living room, a huge marble tiled bathroom, and a great bed.  We ended up here, because we tried to get our Visa extended in Mataram, before flying here, only to find out the process took three days, and we had already booked our flight to Manado, the jump off spot for what is supposed to be some really great diving.

So, to back up a bit,  back in January, when we booked our airline tickets for our trip,  we didn't know that a tourist VISA here is for only 30 days.  A bit silly, when you consider the size of Indonesia.  Really, it would be like trying to see America in only 30 days.  The VISA situation here in Indonesia seems to change with the wind, and after much research we heard that, starting in 2010, you could extend your visa for an additional 30 days, or you could apply before traveling for a 60 day VISA, which required mailing off passports, lots of paperwork, and paying about $200.00 each.  So we decided, to just apply for an extension once here.  We figured we could always just book a quick flight to Malaysia or Singapore, and back again to get a new VISA ON ARRIVAL if we had to.

So anyway, when we left Gili Air (Perfectly wonderful!), we thought we would just go to the immigration office in Mataram, apply for a visa extension, pay some money, and be on our way. We went to the the Immigration Office, where there was very little english spoken, they kept pointing us in one direction than another, they helped us fill our our paperwork, took our passports, and said come back in 3 days.  We said we had to leave the next day because we had already paid for plane tickets.  We retrieved our passports, and he said no problem, just take the paperwork to the immigration office when we got to Manado.

Forward to Manado~
We flew to Manado on  Wednesday morning, checked into our hotel, and got a cab to the immigration office.  We hoped that we could turn our paper work in, and that it would get processed by Friday, so we could move on with our travels.  Luckily we asked our cab driver to wait.  We went in, found out we needed to fill out entirely different paperwork, and then the guy said come back tomorrow.  I asked HOW long until we had our VISA, he said, after we turned it in, it would be 3 days.  I insisted that we needed to finish the paperwork that day, so we could get the VISA on Friday, otherwise we would have to wait until Monday.  At least I assume,  I tried to find out if they were open on Saturday, but the language barrier wasn't to helpful.  Then, the immigration officer asked who our sponsor was!  We said we didn't know we needed one.  He suggested the manager at our Hotel.  Well, we are staying in a five star hotel, so I presume the manager had better things to do than spend several hours at the immigration office with us.  Glen went out and asked the waiting Cab Driver if he would do it.  He said he would, so he came in, there was much discussion between the cab driver and immigration officer in Bahasa Indonesian.  Glen went outside with the driver, who ended up taking Glen on a short drive to find a couple other guys, much discussion ensued among them about whether they should help us.  (All of this of course is going on in a language we don't understand, and of course we don't know whether to trust them, and they aren't really sure whether to trust us.)  Legally as a sponsor, they are responsible if we decide to engage in drug trafficking (punishable by death ~ although we have been offered a lot of marijuana since our arrival, but I digress).  In the end, one of the guys signed all the paperwork to be our sponsor, even though we didn't even know his name, and actually never found out what it was.  After a  couple hours of this, we had the paper work filled out and the immigration officer told us 'come back tomorrow at 10:00am.  I was extremely happy that we weren't asked to relinquish our passports at this juncture.
So we went outside, and paid the two guys the cab driver had picked up 100,000 rupiah (~$11.00).  The driver took us back to our hotel, where we paid him the cab fee plus an additional 100,000 rupiah, which he looked shocked to receive, and arranged for him to pick us back up this morning.
At 9:45 am on the dot, we walked out the door of our hotel as Frangky Kalalo, our cab driver, arrived.  We went back to the immigration office, and Frangky went and got the guy who was our sponser (Still don't know his name!)  After much waiting around, we went to the office of one of the immigration guys who spoke again to our sponsor about his responsibility  (AT THIS POINT OF COURSE, EVERYONE IN THE IMMIGRATION OFFICE KNOWS THAT WE DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW HIM, AND HE DOESN'T HAVE ANY CLUE ABOUT US EITHER).  We go through a rather mild, but still nerve racking 'interrogation' about what we are doing in Indonesia, are we on holiday or business, are we married?  The 'nice' immigration man says many people who come to Indonesia turn out to be criminals.  I tell him we are good, not criminals,  after a while he seems to be satisfied, says it is OK to get an extension and sort of waves us away.  We pay another 200,000 rupiah, (about $22.00) which I guess is an 'Administration Fee'  they wrote it down in a notebook, but I think perhaps this money is actually going to the official.
They take our passports and send us downstairs to wait some more.  So we sit, and wait, and wait and wait, all the while not really having any idea where in the process we are.
Finally, after they have made us wait for what seemed like an appropriate amount of time, they give us our passports, with a new 'stamp', collect some more money from us, tell us to go across the street to get a photo copy (which our cab driver does for us) and then say OK,  GOODBYE!
We tried to give our cab driver and additional 100,000 rupiah for his help when he dropped us off, but he refused, saying 'NEXTIME'.

SO in the end, we got out Visa extension in two (somewhat stressful) days.  (Did I mention the detention cell we passed on the way to our interrogation?)

As the saying goes "All's Well that Ends Well"

Cheery Wave,
Carrie