April 22nd: X-Rays and Indonesia Visa Extension
Day 191
BIMC Hospital in Kuta is one of authorized penal physicians to take and review chest x-ray for Australia visa application. We showed up on time, and found a very clean modern hospital filled with only tourist patients. A local told me it costs 10 million Indonesian Rupiah or 860 US dollars per day to receive in-patient treatment there. He expected me to be astonished by this but I told him, that’s about normal for the United States, he was astonished. Our x-rays cost 560,000 IDR each (48 USD), that included the doctors inspection and communicating the results to Australian Immigration. All we had to do was wait for now. So we moved on to extend our Indonesian visas at the immigration office near the airport.
We have discovered that most Indonesian government services are not easy to navigate. The government webpage will onoy reveal a web address with nothing there and a twitter account with an incorrect physical address, (they added an extra space), which I found unsearchable. A search for “Imigrasi”, or immigration on Google Maps will give you the old location at the airport, (I added a review there to help people out). I ended up asking for directions at a local Travel Agency and we were directed to the new immigration office. The new office is listed as a government building on Google maps as “Ka 0849”.
New immigration office in Kuta
Once inside the building, you should go straight to the customer service desk. You will get your visa extension application forms here, which are in English. Then take the ticket from the machine and wait for your number being called. Cher was told that since her visa on arrival was free she can not get it renewed. Cher would have to do a visa run to renew her visa. I was told I would need proof of departure, such as an airline ticket. For expedited service the cost is 700,000 IDR, while normal service which requires 3 trips over 8 days. Expedited service fees differ depending on the location and we have read that it’s only 400,000 IDR in Mataram, on Lombok. We would have loved to go to Mataram but the location of the Hospital and the only available times for our x-rays meant we would be staying here in touristy Kuta for a while.
We originally intended to island hop to East Timor and fly from there. However, having no idea how long it would take to process our Australia visas nor exactly how long it would take to get to East Timor, since ferry schedules show that the ferry we would need from Bima to Kupang only runs twice per month. I realized it would be best if we flew from here.
Cher had to leave the country and re-enter to extend her stay in Indonesia. The cheapest flight was to Singapore and it would be a 2 and half hour flight one way. It was a huge expense and we paid for our crappy research. On the bright side our change in plans will make up for the difference in cost. We have decided to visit Gili Meno, an island off of Lombok, for 2 weeks and then fly from Bali, instead of island hopping to East Timor.
Flights from East Timor to Darwin cost 288 USD, not including excess baggage fees, while our total cost, including tax, fees and extra baggage from Bali to Darwin is just 163 USD. Cher’s round trip to Singapore was 150 USD. Our total travel costs are just slightly more than one ticket from East Timor, and this doesn’t include the long ferry ride we would have taken. We won’t see some of the least inhabited islands of Indonesia, but we also won’t have to rush before we start the next leg of our journey. Most importantly I think we were both ready to move on and two weeks on a sparely inhabited island without any mechanized travel is right about what we need at this moment. This also puts us in Australia at the right time. Any earlier and we would have ended up in the Blue Mountains, outside of Sydney in the dead of winter. Everything seems to have worked out for the best, as has the majority of our travels over the last 6 months. It’s hard to believe that we may spend as long as another year on the road.