Thursday, January 7, 2016

Today is the big day. It’s time for my trip back to immigration. Two days ago, I met up with Rea, and we put together all the documents that I needed. I thought that it would be easy. She had already written my sponsorship letters on a computer and printed them out the first time. I thought we could open the files and then just print another copy. But it turned out that she hadn’t saved the files. I guess she had a good reason for that. She said that since we used her store computer for personal business, she didn’t want to save the files on that computer. Still, had I known she wasn’t going to save the files, I’d have had her save them on my flash drive. I thought about doing that anyway last time. It’s a habit with me to save everything and to save multiple copies. But since the letters contained all her personal ID information, I didn’t want to press her to give me a copy to save forever.

In the end, it worked out. Rea didn’t mind typing out the two letters again despite not being a very good typist. We printed them out after a long time and then we got new tax stamps and she signed the letters. We had to get new copies of my passport and visa and her ID as well, since immigration had put date stamps all over the original copies I had prepared. All that remained was to get a ferry ticket.

I probably should have started looking into that earlier and not waited so long. But I was reluctant because I knew it would not be a pleasant experience. The problem is that immigration wanted me to buy a ticket back to Malaysia (or at least out of Indonesia). But I had no clear idea when I wanted to go. I also had no idea if they would actually give me the visa extension or not, even if I did buy the ticket. And since the tickets aren’t refundable, I’d just lose the money. Plus, I couldn’t be sure how long the visa extension would last. The visa extension would be 30 days, but on exactly which day would the count-down begin? It’s difficult to calculate ahead and know for sure when the visa will expire. Finally, I probably want to stay another 45 to 60 days. Yet, this first extension is only for 30 days, and I have to buy a ticket for within those dates. So if I buy a ticket that is useless after 30 days, I have to use it and leave the country early or stay longer anyway and lose the money. So it was a complete waste of money unless I was able to change the date or get a refund. Changing dates and getting refunds is a relatively simple thing in Canada, but in a country like Indonesia it can be impossible. No one likes giving money back once they have it. And usually there is not a system in place to even make it possible. It’s an unheard-of occurrence.

I was hoping that Rea would go with me to a place that sold ferry tickets and act as an interpreter. She could ask about the potential for refunds. I had already been to a place that sold ferry tickets long ago and noted the address. My original plan was to go back there, but no one there spoke English, and they really didn’t want to talk to me when I went in. I had since learned that you could buy tickets at several different outlets around the city. Rea told me about one, and since it was on the main street with the most traffic, I thought it might be a more professional operation. I got the location from Rea (on my magical smartphone), and I set off on foot yesterday afternoon.

It wasn’t an easy walk to get there. Walking anywhere is never easy. However, when I arrived, I got a surprisingly friendly reaction from the female clerk behind the desk. She even greeted me in English, and I thought we would be able to handle things in English. It turns out all she knew were the greetings, but a customer who was also there spoke a bit more English, and he interpreted for us as much as he could. Within seconds, we ran into a problem. And I fully expected this problem. I knew from my experience in Malaysia, that they didn’t like to sell tickets in advance. You buy your tickets for this ferry on the day it leaves or at the earliest, the day before. That’s the way they do things.

When I spoke to this woman about buying a ticket on the ferry, she asked for my passport and instantly started making out a ticket for the next day. I stopped her, and with the help of my magical smartphone, I told her that I wanted to buy a ticket for a few weeks in the future, perhaps for February 4th. (If I was lucky enough to get my visa extension on January 7th, it would be valid until around February 5th.) This woman said that was impossible. If I wanted to go on the ferry on February 4th, I could only buy the ticket on February 3rd. I heaved a huge internal sight.

This is exactly what I had told them at immigration. They told me that I had to buy my ticket in advance and show it to them in order to get a visa extension. I told them that it was not possible. The ferry company would only sell tickets the day before. And immigration man said that I had to do it anyway. It was a rule. And that was that. He insisted that I could buy a ticket for any date in the future. I insisted that it wouldn’t be possible. And, of course, even though he was completely wrong, he won that argument. He was the dude handing out or denying the visa extensions. It’s not like I could argue with him and win the argument.

I sent Rea a quick message on my magical smartphone to tell her about the problem I’d run into. I thought that perhaps I would need her help at some point, and I wanted to get the ball rolling on that. Then I started chatting with the people at the travel agency to see if there was something we could do. Could they make an exception for me? After all, their ticketing system consisted entirely of opening a paper notebook to the next page, writing the date on the top, and then writing down the names of passengers. What is so hard about just writing my name down in your notebook somewhere? Even if you didn’t want to start a February 4th page so far in advance, just write down my name and put a date in brackets behind it. How hard is that? But people generally don’t do anything in Asia that isn’t following whatever system they’ve been using forever. Logic and independent thought are not strong suits here. I started thinking about just buying a ticket for the next day and then forging the date. But the tickets were actually not cheap, and if at all possible, I didn’t want to just buy one and then make it invalid.

But then the miracle occurred. At one point, I had said the magical words – an “open ticket.” This would be a ticket without any date at all. This woman could not sell me one. She said that no travel agent or ticketing office could do that. But if I went directly to the head office of the ferry company, perhaps they could sell me an open ticket. In fact, she seemed pretty confident that they could and that they would. It was worth checking out. I tried to get this woman to tell me the address of this ferry company head office, but she wouldn’t do that for some reason. No Indonesian would ever walk any distance, so she could not imagine that I would ever walk. She insisted on getting a motorcycle taxi driver – a becak driver – to take me there. She said it would cost 10,000 rupiah. That is double the normal rate for a trip within the city, but I agreed. The guy was going to take me right to the front door of this office, so it seemed like a good idea.

In a few minutes, the becak driver showed up and I climbed aboard. To my amusement, he drove me all the way back to my own neighborhood. The ferry head office was right around the corner from my hotel. If I’d known that, I could have gone there from the beginning instead of walking all that way to the ticketing agent’s office. But that’s the way it goes. The head office didn’t look like a head office at all. It looked exactly like every other ticketing office I’d seen. However, the woman behind the long counter at the back reacted positively when I said the words “open ticket”. At least she didn’t wave her hands in my face and start shouting “No!” That’s what usually happens whenever I ask for something slightly out of the ordinary. An open ticket seemed like a normal thing for this woman, and after I handed over my passport and we discussed the price, she quickly filled out a ticket with the date left blank and gave it to me. The only catch was that I had to use the ticket within three months. I had no problem with that.

I did, however, have a little bit of a problem with the price. Price is always the sticking point in places like Indonesia. Even the becak driver had caused a problem about this. The original ticket-selling woman had arranged a 10,000 rupiah fare with this becak driver, and that was already double the regular fare. But when I handed over the money, he got upset and demanded 15,000 rupiah. That’s triple the regular fare. I refused and I told him that we’d agreed on 10,000 and that was that. He was angry and annoyed, but he took the 10,000 and went away. I mentally patted myself on the back for always walking and riding my bicycle instead of taking becaks and buses. I do that precisely because I can’t stand all this arguing over money. I’d much rather walk for two hours than take a becak and then have to argue over the price. This was actually the first time I’d even taken a becak since I’d arrived in Indonesia, and I’d done so only because the ferry ticket-selling woman had insisted on it and organized it for me.

When it came to the price of the ferry ticket, there was also confusion. What bothers me is that everyone appears to think about the price for a long time whenever I ask about it. That seems weird to me. This woman sells only one thing. She sells tickets for one ferry that goes to one place. And that’s all she sells. She sells these tickets all day every day. So the price should be burned into her brain. If you sell apples at $5 a pound every single day, you should be able to tell someone the price pretty quickly. You certainly wouldn’t have to think about it. I figured that this clerk shouldn’t have to think about it either. In fact, the price should be on display somewhere. But it never is. That’s another difference from a place like Canada. In Canada, we are used to set prices and the prices are usually on display somewhere. We can just see the price on the wall or on the display at the desk. Then we can be sure that everyone is paying the same price and we aren’t being cheated. But that’s rarely the case here. The price of the ferry was not shown anywhere. And when I asked this woman, she stopped and had to think for a long time. She looked around the office and even cocked her head to one side as she pondered this question. Then she pulled out a big calculator and started tapping out the price for me. But she did it a few times. She kept hitting the clear button or the backspace button and then tapping in the numbers again. I don’t know why coming up with the price would be so difficult unless she was trying to figure out how much she could cheat me by.

The final figure she showed me on the calculator was 465,000 rupiah. That’s a lot of money in a place like Indonesia, and it was considerably more than what I’d paid for the same ticket when I was in Malaysia. At first, I thought it was much, much more than I’d paid before, but I got out my smartphone and checked. I had paid the equivalent of 360,000 rupiah in Malaysia. So the ticket here was 105,000 rupiah more. That wasn’t a huge amount more, but I was still surprised. I guess I’m still not used to the large figures on their currency here. In Malaysia, the ticket had been 115 ringgit. So when someone asks for 465,000 rupiah, you think you are paying a vast sum. It just seems like a very large number. (It’s about $47 Canadian, by the way.)

I counted out the cash and handed it over and got my ticket. I had no choice but to pay what the woman was asking. My only defense was to ask for a receipt, and I did so. This is another big difference between Canada and Indonesia. In Canada, you always get a receipt. You don’t have to ever ask. But here, you almost never get a receipt. That’s partially because they’re so disorganized, but it’s also because everyone is cheating the government. No one wants to pay taxes of any kind, and they always keep the money out of any official records so that they can cheat on their taxes. If they hand out receipts for every transaction, they’d have to pay the full taxes. This woman looked confused when I asked for a receipt, and she indicated my ticket. My ticket was the receipt, she said. I paid for a ticket, and I have a ticket, so what was my problem? She even opened the ticket and showed me the columns were it listed all the fees and taxes and the full amount at the bottom. The problem was that none of these fields had been filled out. There were no numbers in the sections for the fees and taxis and full amount. At the bottom, she had written her initials or her signature. And that was all. I indicated through sign language and by pointing at the calculator, that I wanted a receipt with the amount I had paid on it. This was not possible for some reason, but she agreed to write the number on the back of the ticket. She wouldn’t write it on the ticket itself, but she dutifully wrote 465,000 on the back. It means nothing, but at least I had something. I’ll have to get Rea to ask how much it costs for a ticket and see if I got ripped off.

I was very happy to get this open ticket. It’s rare that anything works out well for me. Not only did I get a ticket that should satisfy immigration, I got one that had an open date and was good for 3 months. I walked to a little shop that I knew made photocopies and I made a copy of the ticket for immigration. Then I had lunch. Over lunch, I thought things through, and it occurred to me that perhaps the difference between the price in Malaysia and the price in Indonesia was not as great as I’d thought. I remember that purchasing the ticket was a two-step process in Malaysia. I’d purchased the ticket for 115 ringgit originally. But when I returned to actually take the ferry, I had to check in at the counter and I had to pay again. There was some kind of fee or set of taxes or something. The woman in Indonesia had something about the price of 465,000 rupiah including all fees and taxes. So perhaps it worked out equal in the end.

Tags: Sumatra Part 01