Things that are super annoying when trying to extend a visa in Bali:
- You are only meant to go to the immigration office that covers the region you are staying in. We arrived at the Denpasar office only to be told that because we were staying in Canggu, we had to go to a different one (even further away from us).
- You need to show you accommodation booking to prove where you’re staying. We tried to reason with the man behind the counter, telling him that this office was in fact closer for us. He said that if we showed a hotel booking of at least three nights in Denpasar, then he would be able to extend the visa for us. We told him that we’re traveling and just turn up to places and don’t have any bookings. Eventually we wore him down and he gave us visa extension forms but said we needed to apply with a Denpasar address. So we picked a random hotel from Google Maps and gave that address on our forms.
- Print out of flight details. There’s a little paper you get when you arrive at the airport that tells you where the immigration offices are and what you need to extend your visa. It says a photocopy of your passport and visa but doesn’t say you need a printout of your flight out. It only says you need a flight out. Anyway we had to go search for a print shop to print our flight confirmation.
- We have to go back two more times, to go pay for the visa and then go and pick it up. No idea why this can’t just be combined into one day. (Update: You have to wait a few days to pick up the visa after the second day, so it takes longer than just three days to extend a visa.)
- Additional pain: flying into Bali from Sydney with AirAsia was also a hassle, as they wouldn’t let us check in without a flight out. We said that we wanted to extend our visa which is why we didn’t have a flight out, but they still wouldn’t let us check in. We ended up just buying the cheapest ticket out of Indonesia in order to board our flight. Reading other blogs, it seems as if some other airlines/countries aren’t so strict when it comes to checking in to Indonesia flights.