Friday, January 8, 2016

This is the day after my momentous trip to immigration to finally get my visa extension. So the question is, “Do I have it?” The answer, not surprisingly, is “No, I do not have it.”

I went there on my bicycle as usual. This time, I didn’t arrange to arrive when they opened at 8 a.m. I’d learned that nothing happens until 9 a.m. anyway, and the visa extension crew doesn’t wander in until 10 or later. So I arrived at a more reasonable 9 a.m. Things went a bit better at first. The guard at the front door shook my hand and then guided me right to a seat at the counter. This had happened on one of my other visits as well, but then the immigration officials had yelled at me to get out of that chair. This time, no one yelled at me and I was allowed to sit there and wait right at the counter.

Eventually, a man in the full and glorious uniform of the immigration office sat down opposite me and the circus began. This man had no idea that I’d already been to immigration six or seven times and had spent many, many hours there. He treated me like a brand new person. I explained my situation and told him that I had already done everything he wanted me to do. But it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference. He went over my passport like it was a masterpiece of terror and criminality. He went over my papers like he was Sherlock Holmes, looking for the slightest error or even hint of an error. And then he told me what I dreaded, that my sponsor, Rea, had to come in for an interview. I explained – at length – that we had already gone through this procedure. Rea’s identity and honor and honesty had been confirmed in a lengthy and detailed interview. I myself had been interviewed by everyone in the building and a few men from outside the building. I wouldn’t have been surprised if my case was being debated on the floor of the country’s parliament. But this made no difference to this man even when he confirmed with other people that all of this was true. He got up and indicated that I should follow him upstairs. This was not a good sign.

Upstairs we went, and I was told to sit on a sofa out in the hallway while my growing pile of papers and documents was taken inside an office to be considered. A couple of different men came outside to talk to me. They were friendly, but every conversation just added more requirements for me. For one thing, my sponsor absolutely had to come in to be interviewed. It didn’t matter that this had already taken place. So I had no choice but to apologetically send Rea a message and ask her if she could come to immigration again. She’d already done so much to help me, I felt bad that I had to turn to her yet again.

They also told me that I had to get a letter from my hotel manager confirming my residency in Indonesia. This was very confusing, and I fought back on this point as much as I could. My guys at the Hotel Asahan were friendly, but they could barely be relied on to track down a clean towel. I didn’t see them typing out and printing a letter for me. I told the guys at immigration that there was no one at the hotel to give me any kind of letter. And it was ridiculous anyway. They kept saying that I needed proof of residency. I kept telling them that I wasn’t a resident. I was a tourist. And once I got the visa extension, I would be leaving Tanjungbalai and staying in different hotels all over Sumatra and perhaps all over Indonesia. What possible use would a letter from the dumpy Hotel Asahan be? These guys gave me a long speech about how all of these rules and regulations were for my protection. They said that Indonesia was a very dangerous place full of terrorists and criminals, and the immigration department needed to make sure I was safe. Utter nonsense.

Rea managed to come to immigration about an hour and a half after I sent her the message, and I just sat on the sofa and waited. A group of high school students came by on a work tour of some kind, and all the girls posed for selfies with me. When Rea showed up, there wasn’t even an interview. Instead, the two of us were led downstairs into the corner office of the big boss, and they proceeded to tell Rea all about the residency permit I now needed to obtain. All the details changed, of course. It wasn’t clear that I got this document from the hotel anymore. I somehow needed to get it from the neighborhood council or government for the part of the city where the Hotel Asahan was located. It seems that they hadn’t called Rea in to interrogate her. They just wanted to stop talking to me. I kept arguing with them. But Rea, being a normal Indonesian, just accepted whatever she was told. And now they could cut me out of the conversation completely. They spoke to her in Indonesian and explained all the new documents I now needed to get, and Rea just nodded and agreed.

I put up with this as much as I could. I knew there wasn’t anything I could do about it. But for my peace of mind and self-respect, I did jump in and make my voice heard. I could understand some of the things the guy was saying because he had to use English words, and I told him that he was absolutely wrong. 100% wrong. He was applying all these “rules” from immigration, and I knew that they weren’t rules at all. They made no sense. I have spoken to many, many people who came to Indonesia on tourist visas, and none of them had ever had to get a residency permit. It is NOT required for a tourist visa extension. In fact, I had never heard of anyone having to ask their sponsor to come to immigration with them. Just recently, my friend had gotten his extension in Sumatra and it was as easy as pie. He got his 30-day visa within the first couple of weeks of his arrival in the country, and they just tacked it onto the end of his original visa. He didn’t have to provide a ferry ticket or a plane ticket or a residency permit. He certainly didn’t need to come to immigration seven times and sit around waiting for up to five hours each time.

Of course, it made no difference. They weren’t listening to me at all. So Rea and I left, and then went on to more and more confusion. I’m very glad that Rea is helping me, but she is almost as bad as everyone else in Indonesia. She makes little sense when she talks about these things and she applies almost no logic or common sense. They had talked to her a lot about this residency permit and visa-on-arrival and other things. And I asked her for details about they had said, and she was completely erratic and contradictory in her answers. No matter how many questions I asked, I wasn’t able to get the tiniest bit of factual information out of her. It’s the most frustrating thing in the world.

My main questions concerned this residency permit. How did we get it? Did we get it from the hotel or did we get it from the city government? Rea said a bunch of things that made no sense. Ultimately, I got her to focus and say that no, the hotel did not provide this residency permit. The city government did. And so we were going to go to the city government office now. Rea would drive her scooter there and I would follow her on my bicycle.

We set off into the crazy, crazy traffic on the main street. Rea was wearing a distinctive white helmet and a blue scarf, so I was able to keep her in sight most of the time. But once we got back into the main part of Tanjungbalai, I lost her. I rode slowly and looked to left and right, up and down all the side streets to try to spot her. But she was gone. I had no idea where this government office was, and I figured I’d just have to wait for a message from her. My hotel was nearby, and I rode my bike there to wait for a message. And, of course, Rea was at my hotel waiting for me. Despite her telling me firmly that we needed nothing from the hotel, she now went into my hotel and started talking to all the staff there. I asked her what she was asking them, but she didn’t explain. I had no idea why we were there. Rea talked to all the staff at the hotel and then she indicated that we should sit down on the bench in the lobby and wait. I didn’t know why we were waiting. I assumed the young staff at the hotel were now contacting the manager or owner of the hotel and then Rea would talk to that person about getting my residency permit or a letter or something. But Rea didn’t answer any of my questions. We just sat there for a long time and nothing happened.

Then, for no particular reason, Rea got up and said that we should just leave. She got back on her scooter, and I followed her on my bicycle. She drove around this block and around that block and around another block, stopping from time to time to ask for directions. We finally went into the very heart of the busy and crowded market right beside my hotel. I’d been there a number of times with my camera. Rea pulled up in front of a small yellow building that had a kind of government sign out front. The place was completely empty except for three women sitting at little desks in a tiny room way in the back. Now, at least, things started to happen. The three women appeared to know exactly why we were there. The local name for the residency permit I required was something like “domicile” (pronounced dom-a-sea-lay). I started to feel slightly better, but then the inevitable problem arose. The boss had to issue this domicile, and he was on vacation. He was at Lake Toba. There was a lot of discussion between Rea and these woman, and I could make no sense out of what Rea told me. First, the boss appeared to be gone for two weeks. Then it was two days. Then I had to go to Lake Toba myself because their head office was there. I gave up trying to understand.

The senior woman in this office pulled out an old notebook and then tore out a blank page from the back. She then wrote down Rea’s first name and her phone number. And that was it. That was the official starting point for my domicile. Then she told Rea that I needed to provide a photocopy of my passport. Rea offered to go get a copy for me. She needed to go back to her store and do some work anyway. While she was gone, the women in the office told me that I needed to supply two photographs. Luckily, I always keep a store of those on hand, and I had two photographs to give them. Then they took some selfies with me and joked and laughed about my being single and needing an Indonesian wife.

After a while, Rea came back and there was nothing more to be done. No one knew exactly when the boss would return. No one tried to do anything radical like phone him or send him a message. (They had no end of smartphones when it came to taking selfies with me, but none of them, apparently, were capable of making a phone call or sending a message.) There was no way to expedite the process. The piece of paper with Rea’s phone number and my two photographs were stuffed inside a drawer, and we left. Now all I could do was wait until something happened. I don’t think words can express how frustrating all of this is. The crazy thing, though, is that all of this is considered normal here. It is the way life is lived. And the local people don’t see anything wrong with it. It feels so weird to spend time here and feel so completely foreign. It’s like living in a world where black is white and white is black, and no one sees the problem.

It is now 10 a.m. on Friday morning. All I can do is sit here and wait. If the boss returned last night, he might perhaps come to the office today, and there is the possibility he will stumble across the piece of paper that they stuffed in a drawer, and there is a very slim and remote chance that there won’t be another problem and he will actually produce a domicile. Then they will call Rea. Rea will message me. She and I will pick up the domicile (for which I was told I must give a 30,000-rupiah “present” to the boss) and then we will bring it to immigration. If I’m extremely fortunate, that will be the last document they require of me, and I will finally, at long last, be allowed to actually fill out an application for a visa extension. It still blows my mind that filling out the application is the last thing you do here. It’s such a bizarro world that it is the opposite to everywhere else. In my entire life, in every transaction, the application comes first. Then comes the process. Here, the process goes on for two weeks or three weeks. And then when it is all over, you are handed the application form. Rea and I have tried on several occasions to get our hands on an application form to fill it out in advance, but they won’t give us one.

11:30

The plot thickens. There was a knock on my hotel door, and I was told that someone was waiting for me downstairs in the lobby. I went down and found myself facing three police detectives. At first, of course I didn’t know they were police detectives. They were just three rather mean-looking and stern men in normal everyday street clothes. People routinely show up at the lobby of the Hotel Asahan looking for me. They usually just want to chat in English or introduce me to their children so that we can chat in English.

The three men were sitting separately, and at first I didn’t realize that they were together. One man got up and indicated that I should sit down. Then he started interrogating me. Of course, everyone in Indonesia “interrogates” me to an extent. They all ask the identical questions and often in the same order. But this man seemed angry and official. And his questions were quite pointed as to my identity and activities in Tanjungbalai. I suspected from the top that they were officials. After all, I spent most of my waking days going from government office to government office. It made sense that officials would now come to me and investigate my wild claims that I was a tourist. I asked this man several times who he was, but he refused to answer. On my fifth or sixth attempt, he said that he and his friends were from the police, but he refused to show me any identification.

It’s not clear who called the police or why they were there. It was either immigration or the city government office. In any event, they were there to investigate me. I think this is the third time that the police have come to the hotel to interrogate me. This one was the most intense, that’s for sure. They were just going on the assumption that I was some kind of criminal, and they were trying to figure out just what evil things I was up to. Their proof was that I was unusual: I claimed to be a tourist, but I didn’t go to the beautiful beaches of Bali and drink out of freshly opened coconuts. I was alone with no family or companions. So I must be up to no good. I guess it doesn’t pay to be different.

They called my friend and sponsor Rea and insisted that she come to the hotel and talk to them. They were quite harsh with her, and I felt bad about that. I’m used to crazy policemen and soldiers. They are the same everywhere in the world. But for Rea it’s different. She lives here.

Well, the police did the usual police things. They asked me all the usual questions and they made copies of my passport and visa and they took my picture posing with my passport. It was all very ridiculous. They seemed to have no experience with passports or visas. One man wrote down what he thought was all my identification details. But in fact, he was copying all the details from my visa for the Philippines. The second man also examined my Philippines visa with interest. He was very confused by it, and I eventually took pity on him and flipped the pages to my Indonesian visa. They had no idea what to make of that visa or how to read it. It’s understandable to an extent. Visas are confusing. When you get a visa from the Indonesian embassy, it states when it was issued and how long it is valid for. But that validity is the not how long you are allowed to stay in Indonesia. It is the amount of time that you have to enter Indonesia. These men thought my visa was expired because of that date. I had to explain to them that they had to look at my entry stamp into the country. I showed that to them. And then you have to count forward by 60 days from the day I entered the country in order to come up with the expiry date. I’m sure none of this made any sense to them. They were even confused by some other dates in the passport, and I had to explain to them that those dates had nothing to do with my tourist visa. It was my date of birth.

I did everything I could to demonstrate to these guys that I was exactly what I was – a rather dumb and happy-go-lucky if somewhat unusual tourist. I showed them pictures of my touring bicycle (which I have yet to even use in Sumatra). I showed them all the pictures I had taken in Tanjungbalai. I explained my reasons for traveling alone as best I could. I smiled and answered all their questions and just treated the encounter like the conversations I constantly have with local people: “What is your name? How old are you? Where are you from? Where are you staying? How long have you been here? When will you go back to Canada? Where is your wife? Where are your children? Where are your companions? What is your job? Do you have Facebook?”

These men randomly whipped my passport out of my hands and examined new parts of it. Then they’d write down some random scrap of information on bits of paper that they pulled out of their pockets. They took pictures of my passport with their smartphones and then took pictures of me. My main interrogator made me hold up my passport in the picture, making it seem even more like a mugshot. I noticed they were doing the same to Rea. They took pictures of her ID and pictures of her. I felt bad about that. When I originally asked Rea to be my sponsor, I explained that it was just a formality. And as far as I know, it really is a formality. I did a lot of research online, and it seems that most people use an agent for this. This tourist visa confusion is a boom industry, and small companies have sprung up that take care of the details for you. You simply pay them a million rupiah, and they find you a sponsor. You don’t know even know the person. It’s just a name on a form. But Rea being my sponsor has turned out to be much, much more than a formality. She has had to vouch for me and my character on several occasions. As she explained to me later, the police detective talking to her was angry with her for sponsoring me. He said that I was probably a criminal, so why did she trust me? Why would she sponsor me?

I have no idea what this police visit means in terms of my trying to get a visa extension. Are they going to report back to immigration? Report to the city government? Do nothing? In any event, it’s certainly not looking good. My visa expires in four days, and two of those days are weekend days when everything is closed. If I don’t get an extension, I’ll have to take the ferry back to Malaysia.

Later:

In the afternoon, I went back to the government office just to check up on my domicile papers. To my dismay, I found the city government office completely empty. The front door was closed but unlocked. I went inside and found the big front room as empty as before. I went to the back office where we’d originally met the three unhelfpul women. That office door was closed and locked. I knocked on it a few times, and there was no answer. I sent Rea a message about this, and she replied and said she was sorry that she didn’t tell me, but the government offices all close at 12:00 noon on Friday.

 

Tags: Sumatra Part 01