Tuesday, January 12, 2016

At long, long last, I have my 30-day visa extension. In total, it took 14 days, countless hours, and incredble stress and frustration. But I got some valuable life lessons (assuming I needed to be reminded again that most of the world is inefficient and corrupt).

I went back to the government office first thing on Monday morning. I really had to push these guys to finish the “domisili” or resident certificate. I mentioned earlier that it isn’t actually necessary to get a domisili to extend a tourist visa. It’s not a requirement at all, but the immigration officers in Tanjungbalai forced me to get one. And on Monday, I learned why – to steal money from me.

I was glad to see that the government office was open when I got there. I went inside and found two of the women I’d met before sitting in the front room. They indicated that I could sit down on a third chair, and then there was a lot of confusion. I hoped they were contacting their boss to tell him or her that I was there and that I wanted my domisili. At first, things were looking good. I was brought to the small office in the back and a man came in that I recognized from before. He had been called to immigration long ago to interrogate me as a representative of the city government. I assumed he was the boss. There was another woman there that also seemed like the boss. But it didn’t matter who was the bigger boss. They turned on a computer and one of the women seemed to be filling out a computer form for me. I crossed my fingers and hoped this was my domisili.

While this was going on, they insisted that I call my sponsor, Rea, and ask her to come talk to them. I had a stroke of luck in that Rea’s trip to Medan was delayed by one day. She was going to Medan on Monday night, not Monday morning, so she was available to come. They asked her a lot of questions about me, and the woman at the computer continued to type. It took a long time, but she then printed out two copies of this form. The people in the office stamped it and signed it and dated it and pasted my photos to the forms.

Then the boss held the form in his hands far away from me, and said that if I wanted this paper, I would have to give him one million rupiah. The form was supposed to be free. It’s just a service that the government provides. Rea had told me that it was customary to give them about 30,000 rupiah just as a token of appreciation. Perhaps it paid for the paper or the ink in the computer printer. I had put 30,000 rupiah inside an envelope beforehand as instructed by Rea. But this man demanded one million rupiah.

My heart sank. Perhaps if everything else had gone smoothly and this was the only problem in getting this visa extension, I wouldn’t have been so upset. But I’d had so many problems and it had taken so long and all the people I’d dealt with had been so unhelpful and so dumb that this was the last straw for me. (And let’s not forget the visits from the police.) In one second, I went from still feeling relatively good about Indonesia in general to hating the entire country and just wanting to leave. I didn’t even want the visa extension anymore. To be honest, if my visa wasn’t going to expire the very next day, I would have just walked out. But I couldn’t risk it. I had only one shot at getting a ferry out of the country. That would be the next morning, and I had no idea if I would be able to get a seat. If I stormed out of this government office, and then found out that the ferry was sold out, I’d be in much more trouble. My visa would expire and I’d really be stuck. In fact, I’d definitely have to come back to this government office and get documents, so they’d really be able to take advantage of me. So I had no choice but to deal with these criminals.

At the very beginning, I thought they had made a mistake. Translating large numbers is one of the most difficult things to do between cultures and languages. The man had said one million, but maybe he meant ten thousand or one hundred thousand. That kind of mistake happens all the time. It happens nearly every day, in fact. But there was no confusion or mistake here. I opened the calculator on my phone and gave it to the man, and he typed out 1,000,000.

In movies and TV shows, you always see the hero dealing with this kind of corruption in a heroic fashion. The hero is self-possessed and cool and then bargains with the bad people. But in real life, the problem is that you don’t know what’s going on. You have no information. For all I know, this is a standard fee that everyone has to pay. It’s unlikely, but it’s possible. There could be a hundred things about this situation that I don’t understand. And with the language barrier, there was no way I could figure things out. Rea translated for me. I appreciated her help, but again her presence did me more harm than good. I am somewhat invulnerable in these situations. They want my money, but they’re not going to throw me in jail or beat me or doing anything really bad. I can’t say the same thing about Rea. She had sponsored me and associated her name and livelihood and official documents with me. If I caused a huge problem with the government, it could mean a lot of trouble for her in the future. She had to continue to live here long after I left. So that added another layer of confusion to the situation. And even Rea didn’t seem to really know what was going on. Plus, she was part of this culture. And in this culture, you don’t get angry and you don’t cause trouble. I’m a Canadian, and I’m VERY willing to get angry and cause trouble. But Rea was very meek with these people and she smiled and she just translated as best she could. She didn’t fight back. And I couldn’t fight back effectively because I couldn’t speak the language.

We ended up arguing back and forth about the amount I should pay. I found everything about the situation offensive. They kept trying to be very friendly and jovial. I made it extremely clear to them that I was angry and that if they were going to put a gun to my head and steal from me, then they were bad people, and we could not be friends. They had to choose. You could be a criminal and a corrupt government official, or you could be friendly. You can’t be both. I wasn’t going to sit there and pretend that these people weren’t stealing from me. Of all things in this world that I hate, I hate thieves the most. And a thief in the form of a corrupt government official is the worst type of thief.

It’s interesting that they had absolutely no sense of shame about what they were doing. They didn’t even pretend that it was anything but a criminal act. In fact, there was almost a party atmosphere in the room. More and more people had come in during this time. They were young and old and dressed in normal city clothes. The main bad guy was an older man wearing a traditional Muslim hat. There was another big, fat younger man in a colorful T-shirt. All these people were joking and laughing and, I assume, looking forward to spending their cut of whatever money they could extort from this dumb tourist.

I tried to point out on several occasions how ridiculous it was to expect me to just hand over one million rupiah. I didn’t say this to them, but the visa extension fee itself (the official fee from the immigration department) was 355,000 rupiah. So why would I pay one million rupiah for this little piece of paper. I also didn’t say this to them, but the ferry ride to Malaysia was 465,000 rupiah. So for one million rupiah, I could take the ferry to Malaysia and back to Indonesia and still have money left over to get another 60-day tourist visa at the Indonesian embassy in Malaysia.

I didn’t think of it at the time, but I had one more option. I still had one day left in my current tourist visa. The big city of Medan (where Rea’s home is located) is only three or four hours away by train. Instead of paying one million rupiah to these evil government officials, I could just take the train to Medan and go to the immigration office there. Rea had to go to Medan anyway. She could give me new sponsorship letters easily. I could go with her to Medan and I’d just apply for my visa extension there. I was reluctant to storm out of the office because I REALLY didn’t want to go back to Malaysia by ferry. That would have been a huge hassle. I’d have to pack up everything. I had a lot of Indonesian money, and I’d have to change it to something else. I had made no arrangements for places to stay in Malaysia, so I’d land there with nowhere to stay. With my luck, it would be pouring rain all day. It would be horrible and exhausting. But a quick train ride to Medan would be just fine. For a million rupiah, I could hire a taxi to take me there and spend two nights in a nice hotel. The more I think about that, the more I wish I had done it. It would have been such sweet revenge. But I didn’t think of that.

I also didn’t know how to respond to the demand for one million rupiah. It seemed completely ridiculous and bad to me. It was obvious. So why did these guys seem to think it was so reasonable? Again, I think we are dealing with cultural barriers and the relative lack of sophistication of these people. They honestly think that people from Canada walk around with millions of US dollars and that we can just toss thousands of dollars around and it doesn’t matter to us. They really do think we are that rich. And they have no idea about anything in the outside world. When I was arguing with these guys, I told them that if they insisted I pay one million rupiah, I would just go back to Malaysia. And they said that to get a tourist visa in Malaysia would cost ten million rupiah. That’s $1,000. They really thought it was that expensive. I got a visa in Malaysia, so I know that it costs $30. But these guys are like children. They just don’t know. How do you argue with that kind of naivety?

I ran into that same lack of experience at the immigration office. They were hitting me with rule after rule and restriction after restriction, and I told them many times that this kind of interrogation for a simple tourist visa was insane. I’m just a tourist. I know I’m not a normal tourist, but a tourist in general goes to a country to relax, spend money, and have fun. That’s the point. It’s a holiday. So how is it even close to reasonable to expect a tourist to spend 14 days tracking down documents and then spend five hours a day sitting in their offices just waiting? When would this poor tourist have the time to go out and have any fun? Well, their response was that it was the same everywhere. They said that if I go to Malaysia, I have to do the same thing. They said that the Malaysian government will make me get all these documents and get a sponsor and letters and resident certificates. I told them an emphatic “NO” and said that isn’t true. In Malaysia, you don’t have to do anything. You show up at the border, and they stamp your passport and you get to stay for 3 months for free. No fees. No papers. No documents. Nothing. It’s the same in Singapore. But these men, despite being professional immigration officers, have no experience with that. Their knowledge of the world is very limited.

It was ridiculous, but we finally ended up just bargaining over how much I should pay. They kept asking me how much I could pay. What was my maximum bribe? How much did I want to pay? All I could do was laugh and say that I wanted to pay nothing. The document was free, so I didn’t want to pay anything. Zero rupiah was my price. It was like a robber pointing a gun at you and then asking you how much he should take from your wallet. It was a bizarre experience. In my head, I had the figure of 30,000 rupiah because that’s what everyone had told me beforehand. I could triple that figure and think it was reasonable. So when it was clear that I had no choice but to pay the bribe or leave without the document, I said I would pay 100,000 rupiah. That’s it. They came back with 600,000 rupiah. I insisted on 100,000. Then they said 500,000. Then 400,000. Then for some reason, they asked for 250,000. Rea was actually sending me messages on her smartphone during this long conversation. She sent me a message saying that they would accept 250,000 rupiah. Was that okay with me? I sent her a message back and said “OK, I will pay 250.000.” I thought we were finished, but then the man in the Muslim hat broke in and said that I had to pay 300,000 and that was final. We agreed on that amount.

I felt like a total idiot, but I opened up my bag and took out a thick wad of bills and counted out 300,000 rupiah and handed it over. Before I did so, I gave a ridiculous little speech. I told them in English that I would pay them this money. But then for the rest of my life, I will tell everyone that Indonesia is a terrible country and that Indonesian people are bad people. I will go back to Canada, and I will tell everyone in Canada that they shouldn’t go to Indonesia because the people there are criminals and they will steal from you. I also told them that I would not smile and laugh and be friendly. I would not shake their hands. I would not even talk to them. And then I gave them the money. Then I walked out. The man in the Muslim hat spoke more English than anyone there, and after I gave them the money he started to ask me questions like “Are you a Muslim? What do you think of Indonesia?” I just held up my hand and said, “I dont want to talk to you.” While they were counting the money, I looked at the main people. I looked them straight in the eye and glared at them and shook my head slightly to tell them how much I disliked them. And I walked out.

I have no idea how Rea dealt with her departure. I just waited outside until she emerged. In the meantime, the fat man came outside and sat on a scooter and looked at me. He had a big smile on his face. He smiled at me, and I just glared at him and shook my head. When Rea came out, she said she was very angry with those stupid people. But we didn’t have a lot of time to sit around. I had the document, but I still had to get it to immigration and start the process of FINALLY applying for my visa extension. She left on her scooter, and I went to the hotel to get my bicycle. I was going to go to immigration first and then Rea would join me later. (It turned out she didn’t have to come at all, and I sent her a message and told her.)

As I walked back to the hotel, all the people in the market called out greetings to me as usual. Every other day, I said hello back to everyone and was very friendly. Now I was angry, and I just ignored everyone. Whenever anyone said “Hello, Mister!”, I just thought evil things back at them. This type of reaction happens all the time. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot and I’ve written about it in my journal since I came to Sumatra. It happens all the time. Annoying and bad things will happen all the time, but there is never anyone to blame specifically. So I end up just hating everyone in the entire country. Back in Canada, if a car driver cut me off and nearly kills me, I’d be angry with that one driver. THAT driver did something bad. Not all Canadians. But the things that happen overseas are part of the fabric of the culture. They are all terrible drivers and they all cut me off. And if a Canadian official demands a bribe from you, you would be angry with that one official. He is a bad man. But here, everyone is corrupt. It is normal. The whole country is corrupt. So I end up disliking and being angry at everyone – whether that’s fair or not.

The other side to that is that it is a very childish thing. It shows just how childish Canadians (and Americans and Western Europeans are). Life is so easy for us in general. We don’t have to fight for basic things. And when we come to a place like Indonesia, we really are like children. We go around whining and being petulant when people are mean to us. We don’t defend ourselves. We go around being nice to everyone and then our feelings are hurt when someone takes advantage of us. I do that all the time. I go far out of my way to be pleasant and considerate. I never complain and I never fight back. I think that if I am nice to people, then they will be nice to me. But the real world doesn’t work like that. I try very hard in this hotel, for example, to be quiet and considerate. I expect to get a nice pat on the head for that. But no one notices. No one cares. People here are not considerate. They slam doors. They shout. They throw garbage around. They shit all over the toilet and don’t bother to clean anything. That’s how they are. I could act the exact same way, and no one would be angry with me. It’s normal behavior. Instead of being a petulant child and whining and complaining, I should just grow up and fight back. I told the people at the government office that I would not be their friends. I told them that I was angry with them and that I would tell everyone in the world what bad people they were. For them, that must seem really silly. They live in a tough world, and they are fighting for whatever they can get. So they can use their power to steal money from me and still be friendly. For them, it’s part of life. Everyone has to pay bribes, so relax.

For me, of course, it’s very strange. When I went to the government office the first time, these women all took selfies with me to put on their Facebook page. When I went back on Monday morning, they gave me a hot cup of sweet tea and they opened up a bag of crackers for me. They were friendly and nice. Yet, all this time, they knew full well that they were setting me up for a trap. They were going to have me wait there for a long time while they printed out the resident certificate. And when it was all done, and it was dangling just out of my reach, they would demand a million rupiah. For them, it was like a holiday. They were going to get free money that day. They were happy. “Yay! A foreigner is coming today. We can steal money from him, so tonight I can go shopping and buy some new clothes.” They weren’t angry with me or anything. They could steal from me and still be friends. That is so foreign to how we think in Canada. But, as I said, we are really like children. Instead of being a petulant child and whining, I should just fight back. They are using their power to steal as much money from me as possible. I should use my power to fight back, and I should steal from someone else. But it doesn’t work that way for me. I could never change to that extent. It’s terrible, but my anger generally extends to everyone. Now when I see a beggar in Tanjungbalai, I won’t give them any money. I’ll just tell them to go to the government. They stole all my money. Go ask them to take care of you. It’s cynical, but I think I’ve become a very cynical person. I look at most foreign aid in the same way now. This is especially after my trips to Ethiopia and Guinea. We give them money and help and we think we are being nice and that they are thankful. But the reality is that they think we are idiots. We are children to them. They will take as much money from us as they can get and then they will steal the rest. They won’t be thankful.

The most interesting part of this story occurred after we left the government office and Rea went back to work at her store. Rea is my official sponsor. She wrote the letters to immigration and she brought me to the government office and helped me. While she was at work, a man from the government came to her store and tried to give her an envelope. Inside the envelope was 30,000 rupiah – 10% of the 300,000 bribe I had to pay. That was her cut. That was her commission on the money they stole from me. To Rea’s credit, she refused to take the money. She told the man that she didn’t want the money. She said she was my friend, and she said that they shouldn’t treat tourists this way.

I just love that ending to the story. For the man from the government, this was normal. He just assumed that Rea was also trying to steal money from me. Sure, she said she was my friend and she said that she was helping me, but come on, she was just pretending, right? The only reason she was helping me was so that she could get some of the bribe money. In any event, like any criminal gang in the world, these government officials were dividing up the money among themselves. They’d said earlier that the money was for the office. But, of course, it just goes into their pockets. Can you imagine the scene in the office after I left? There was a pile of money sitting on the table, and now they had to sit down and divide it up. Who gets how much? There must have been a lot of interesting discussion about that.

When I got to immigration, I tried to tell people what had happened. I thought perhaps they would call the government office and put in an official complaint. Maybe they would get my money back for me. Maybe they would call the police. After all, the immigration department was part of this. They told me I had to go there and get the domisili and they said it was free. It was their responsibility. And even if they can’t help me, maybe they can help the next tourist. But, to my further dismay and disgust, no one at immigration cared. They just laughed. I told them that they demanded one million rupiah. The immigration people were surprised at that and they asked me if I paid them. I said no, I gave them 300,000. Then they said that was fine. So I was lucky. And that was it.

I’m pretty sure now that the immigration officers are part of the plan anyway. Not all of them, but the guys up in the office in the top. They were the ones that caused all the trouble for me. They had even called the man from the government office – the one I recognized – and had him come to immigration to interrogate me. And these immigration officers definitely got their cut of the money. The whole thing was a setup. As I said from the beginning, you don’t need to get a domisili to get a tourist visa extension. But the immigration officers set up this scam where they tell the tourist they have to get a domisili. They government steals as much money as they can from the tourist, and then the immigration officers get their cut. They offered Rea 10% of the bribe and she wasn’t even part of the plan. So perhaps immigration officers get half and the government clerks get half and they divide it up amongst themselves. It’s such a sad and cynical world.

Two more events shed some light on this story. The first is that while this was going on, I was sending messages to a friend in Taiwan. He found the whole thing very amusing. And he just happened to be on a skiing holiday in Japan. He zeroed in on how much money we were talking about. I told him that they initially asked for one million rupiah, which is about $100, and I ended up paying three hundred thousand rupiah, or about $30. My friend – perhaps rightfully – just snorted and said not to worry about it. What’s $30? Who cares? Just his most recent train trip in Japan had cost $100. His hotel probably costs $200 a night. What’s the big deal about paying $30 to get a visa extension? And he’s right in a way. But, of course, I don’t think like that. For me, it’s a lot of money. It’s the equivalent of six nights in a hotel here. In my head, I think like a local person, not like a rich foreigner. And in normal life here, 300,000 rupiah is a lot of money. Plus, of course, I also had to pay 355,000 rupiah to the government. And it took 14 days of jumping through hoops and waiting in government offices. That is a LOT of money and effort just for a 30-day tourist visa. But still, he is right. When the dust settles, we’re talking about $30. If I were working full time, it would be nothing.

The last event occurred after I was finished at immigration. By the way, I ended up spending another three hours at immigration. It was insanely stupid. They needed to take my picture, and just like before, I sat down in the chair in front of the camera, and they couldn’t get the camera to work. I sat in that chair for two hours while they fiddled with the camera. I just about went out of my mind. Again, it was like watching an episode of the Three Stooges. These people were so dumb, and they just didn’t care. Everything was a joke to them. They weren’t embarrassed and they never apologized to me for making me sit there for two hours. And they never did take a picture. They just gave up after two hours of trying. There was a lot more confusion that I won’t bother describing. Then I paid them the 355,000 rupiah, and I finally got this tiny little stamp in my passport that says I can stay another 30 days. And to my astonishment, this extension begins when my current visa expires. When I first went to immigration, they said that was how it worked. My extension would begin on the date my current visa expired regardless of when the extension was issued. But on my next visits, they told me that the extension would begin from the day it was issued. So I’d lose a lot of days. But now that they finally issued the extension – and this was a brand new person who put the actual date stamp in my passport – it was dated from the expiry date of my old visa, not the issue date. That’s good for me, but it illustrates again how dumb these people are. They have no idea what they are doing. They don’t even know their own rules.

Anyway, that’s not the event I meant. The final event occurred after all of this was done and I left immigration and went to Rea’s store. She wanted to hear the whole story about what happened at immigration, and we had a good time giving our side of everything that happened and talking it all over. Then she told me some unrelated news. A brand new smartphone had been stolen from her store. And since she was the supervisor, they are making her pay for it. It was one of the mid-range Samsung phones, but it still cost 2.1 million rupiah, and the store was deducting that entire amount from her monthly salary. They will take 700,000 rupiah from her salary each month for three months.

Here I was complaining and complaining and complaining about having to pay 300,000 rupiah in a bribe, and she was being penalized 2.1 million by her employers for something that she didn’t do. I was flabbergasted. I still am. How can they do that? Don’t stores have insurance for theft? And what does it matter? How can they blame Rea? If their store has poor security and they are too cheap to pay for a security guard, that is their fault, not Rea’s. And how can they charge her the full retail price? The store charges 2.1 million for that phone, but it’s worth far less than that wholesale, I’m sure. Even if they have the right to make Rea pay for the loss, surely the loss should be based on the wholesale price, not the retail price. But there is nothing she can do about it.

And who knows who stole the phone? It was probably one of the customers. But it could have been one of her staff. She probably had a brief moment or two when she wondered if I stole it. I’d been in her store a lot. Of course, that wouldn’t make much sense. I already have a much nicer phone than the one that was stolen. And being a stranger, I would have no idea how to sell it. And the amount of money I’d get is too small for me to bother. So I’m not a very good suspect. But still, it could have been me or her own staff. She has to suspect everyone. And that is the kind of world that these people live in. It’s a tough world. It’s much tougher than the one that Canadians live in. You have to fight for your place in Indonesia. In Canada, we just assume we have all these rights and protections. Here, you don’t get what you deserve. You get what you fight for and what you can take. So if you go into a government office to ask for something, you better be prepared to fight and protect your own interests. You can’t trust anyone. Even your friends will cheat you and steal from you.

It’s a difficult lesson to learn and an even more difficult one to internalize. If I was able to internalize this lesson, I would have done so a long time ago. After all, the corruption I had to deal with in other countries was FAR worst than here in Indonesia. Guinea is one of the worst countries in the world, and I had to deal with corrupt police and soldiers on almost a daily basis – and these were very rough guys carrying assault rifles. My entire experience in Guinea could be defined solely by corruption and people fighting for their existence. If I was going to become a tough person, it would have happened by now. But I just became cynical, I guess. People in Indonesia grow up in this world, so they are used to it. They can steal from a person like me and still want to be friendly. It’s a competition. They won. I lost. Get over it. If I don’t want to pay a bribe, then fight back. It’s sort of a “Godfather” situation. It’s not personal. It’s just business. They assume I’m stealing from everyone I can. Everyone is stealing from everyone, so what’s the big deal? Grow up and fight back.

But I don’t think I can ever change. Right now, for example, I am sitting here being annoyed by the people in the next room in this hotel. There are three men staying in that room. They arrived last night. It was quite late, but they didn’t try to be quiet. They just slammed the doors and shouted and had loud conversations. The walls here are paper thin and there is a wide section of screen up at the top of the walls. You can hear everything from all the rooms around you. I’m intensely aware of that, so I try very hard to be quiet. I don’t make any noise, especially late at night when I know that people are trying to sleep. In my head, I think I’m being a nice person and people will be nice to me. But that’s nonsense. Right now, those guys are playing loud music on some kind of radio. It annoys me and bothers. But what do I do? Nothing. I put in earplugs. And I sit here getting angry. But what I should do is go knock on their door and tell them to be quiet. I should yell at them and tell them to quit slamming doors and turn off that horrible music. The point is that if I did that, they wouldn’t even be angry with me. They aren’t aware that they are bothering anyone. No one here even thinks about that. It’s not their job to think about your comfort. They think about their own comfort. It’s your job to think about your own comfort. If you are sitting there and putting up with loud music coming from the next room, that’s your problem. If you don’t like it, then fight back. But I won’t. It’s not how my cultural norms work – unless I’m pushed to the extreme.

Tags: Sumatra Part 01