Rant: My visa renewal in Bali turned into a two week mess

I thought I had all the paperwork ready for my social visa extension, but the agent said I needed a new sponsor letter from a local. That took a week to sort out, then the immigration office had a system outage. What's the longest a simple admin task has delayed your travel plans?

3 comments

3 Comments

dakota_taylor392mo ago

Two weeks in Bali sounds like a rough deal, but honestly, that's just how it goes in a lot of places. I got stuck in Manila for ten days once over a missing stamp. It's frustrating, but it's part of traveling long term. You learn to build in huge buffers for any official paperwork. Calling it a mess feels a bit dramatic when it's just standard bureaucratic delays.

rubys292mo ago

Ugh, that Manila story sounds awful.

elizabeth2202mo ago

Missing a stamp gets you ten days? I'd have started my own tiny country in the airport by day three. Standard delays are one thing, but that sounds like they were auditioning you for a new season of "Border Patrol: Manila." Maybe the real souvenir was the friends we made in the immigration line.