Arriving in bali
If you haven’t been to Bali or even Indonesia before, then landing here can be a bit of a shock to the system! Whilst this write up focuses on Bali as that’s where we flew into each time, the Bali visa information would also apply to other areas of Indonesia. Let’s start with that:
VIsas
Tourists (from most countries) can stay in Indonesia for up to 60 days with a Tourist Visa - broken down as 30 days + 30 day extension. You can pay for your visa on arrival at the airport, but I would suggest doing it online before leaving the UK, especially if you may want to extend it. The queue for the pay on arrival visa was over 100 people long when we landed!
Online or e-Visas for Bali take around 20 minutes. It states your visa will be returned in 3-5 days, but ours came back instantly. You’ll need a photo of your passport and a passport style photo for each person travelling, as well as your address (we just used the first location we were staying at), evidence of your travel out of Bali (even if it is over 30 days from arrival it’s ok) and then head to the visa website here. I would recommend using a laptop rather than mobile for this as I did try on the mobile and it was slow and frustrating and just didn’t seem to work.
Once you have uploaded your passport and photo, you are then prompted to fill in your passport details, upload your ‘exit journey evidence’ and then re-upload your passport again - this isn’t an error! You then have to check all your fields again - and be careful as the system defaulted our passport expiry dates to that days date and so I had to edit it again!
Once happy, click submit and then continue to do the same for any other family members. You’ll end up with a summary page of all your applications and then you need to select ‘pay’ for each one separately - again, a bit cumbersome! The cost is c£25 per person. Once payment is received you’ll get a copy of your visa by email which needs to be printed out for when you arrive in Bali - copies on your phone aren’t accepted.
We haven’t yet renewed ours, but I’ll update this blog when we do, but if got a visa online, you can renew online. If you did a visa on arrival, then you have to go to the immigration centre to renew which can take all day.
Airport arrival
The immigration arrivals hall at Bali is huge and you’ll see long queues as soon as you arrive. There’s the aforementioned visa-on-arrival queue which is your destination for anyone without an e-visa; an automated passport check queue which can only be used by over 14s with a e-visa; and a queue for over 65s, families with kids and disabled. This queue can be long and slow - it took us 45 minutes this trip, and over an hour last trip so make sure you have water, snacks, entertainment to hand for the kids. It is also constantly moving so you can’t sit down for long for a break. You will need to show your e-visa, passports and boarding passes (from the flight you just arrived on) so have those to hand.
After immigration you emerge into the baggage halls and don’t be surprised if your luggage has already been removed from the belt and cast into a pile because immigration took so long! You’ll see several ‘luggage porters’ offering to help you - there is a charge for this and you really don’t need it. Once you have collected your luggage you need to fill in a customs card for the whole family. There are PCs in the hall to do this online (and then you get a little ticket print out) but you’ll need your passport again!!! This takes around 5-10 mins so we split and one person found the luggage whilst the other started this process. There’s then another queue out of the hall to hand your little ticket in to a customs guard.
And if you’re lucky that is you done - if you are unlucky you’ll get directed to the right and your luggage will go through an x-ray security scanner. We were lucky this trip but there doesn’t seem to be any logic as to who gets randomly selected.
Worth noting the airport wifi is great if you do need it.
After the formalities
After clearing the immigration, customs and security stage of your Bali arrival, you will exit and be prepared to be accosted by money changes and sim card operators. If you have kids, I would strongly suggest just marching on and politely declining them all until you get to Starbucks on the right. Get the kids a drink and (if there are 2 adults) one of you can go back and get a local sim card. 50GB will cost you around £22 and the operator will set it all up for you, but you’ll need your passport again so don’t leave that behind! Ignore all the money changers and just use an ATM - the current exchange rate means that 1,000,000 rupees is around £50 if that helps for your first withdrawal.
So you’re in Bali, you have mobile data, the kids have had a drink / snack (strongly advised as the traffic in Bali is terrible) and you’re ready to head out.
If you have a pre-booked taxi you will have to try to find your name in the throng of hundreds of taxi drivers waiting at the exit. If you haven’t arranged transport (our preferred option) then book yourself a GRAB (Asia equivalent of uber) via the app - download the GRAB app before arriving in Bali and then with your new local sim/wifi you can set it up whilst waIting in the various queues. You’ll get a driver instantly and then instructions are given to the meeting point which is an airconditioned GRAB lounge - with staff there helping to join drivers and passengers. On your way there you’ll probably be asked 50 times if you want a taxi -just be firm and politely decline! Our taxi to Sanur which took around 45 minutes was just under £10.
Good luck!