Hiya,

Re the visa situation...

In March 2005 we tried getting a 2 month visa in Penang, and were told that it would be "considered" if we had a ticket out of Indonesia. Obviously we didn't as we were heading for East Timor, then Darwin but no amount of explaining this to the clerk made any difference except for us to get extremely frustrated!

So, we got our return ferry tickets planning to just bin the return, from memory it was about 30 pounds we wasted. We decided to head down to KL and apply there (we got bad vibes from the lady in Penang!) and then head off around the country for a couple of weeks and pick the visas up on our return.

In KL we were told that if we had a letter of recommendation from an Indonesian resident, then we could have a two month visa... So I contacted a colleague of my Dad who lives there, and he e-mailed a letter and copy of his Indonesian ID and we applied for the visa. We were then told that since we had the letter, we didn't need the return ticket!

When we went back to Penang to ship the bikes, we tried to cash in the return ticket, but were told that we couldn't until we had used the outgoing ticket... but it had to be cashed in at their Penang office!!

Confused?

So, if you can get a letter of recommendation before applying (remember to get the copy of their ID) then hopefully you should be able to get a 2 month visa. Someone in the Indonesian Community may be able to help you with this.

We used nearly the whole two months to get from Belawan to Kupang, and it felt like we were rushing it a bit, so hopefully you will manage to get one. It's such an awesome country.

BTW. We didn't have the permit that has been mentioned in this post, and we did use the carnet.

Good Luck

Jacqui and Trent