Several years back, my family loves to travel around the world. Not because we had the money to spend, but it was more of one of the effect of having a father that works in the art industry. He often goes out of the country to see and find new spots for him to be shooting his adverts. So technically, he often brought his family with him too. It was a few days after my family and ten years old me celebrated New Years in Hong Kong. We stayed there for a couple of days, travelled through nearly every ends of the city, and it was the time for us to fly back to Jakarta. We arrived at the Hong Kong International Airport, checked in, loaded our baggage, ate lunch, prayed, and so on; we were set to fly back to Jakarta. The loud airport speaker announces that my flight is prepared and they announced that passengers are allowed to enter at a certain gate. Like any other normal procedures, I gave my passport to the officer, not long after; I was held in their office for a quite one and a half hour. Turns out, my passport stated that I'm a female. The main question is, how did I manage to fly to Hong Kong in the first place?
To come to Indonesia, I had to ask for a student Visa. I started the procedures in May, sent all the documents required to the university, but unfortunately, the Indonesian administration was too long to process my demand. To do my Visa in France, I would have had to go to the Indonesian embassy in Paris, give them all the necessary documents to obtain my Visa and come back one week later to finally have the Visa on my passport. However, one week before coming to Indonesia, I still hadn’t received one of the papers, so it was impossible for me to do my Visa demand. So, I came to Indonesia with a Visa on arrival, which means that I had to go out of the country within thirty days. One week before I had to leave for Singapore, I finally received the missing document. Once in Singapore, I had to go to the Indonesian embassy between 9am and 12am to ask for my student Visa and come back the next day at 3pm to get it. I thought that after going to Singapore, all my Visa issues would be over, but it appeared that I still had to leave my passport to the International Office of the UGM for at least one month. Now I just hope to get my passport back as soon as possible and finally be able to go in and out of the country as much as I can. The only good side of this Visa problem is that it gave me an opportunity to visit Singapore, which is a really nice city.
Last April, me and my mother had a plan to go to the Netherlands to visit my brother who's studying there. Because I did not have anything to do after the national exam, we decided to order the ticket right away. The problem is that we ordered the flight without thinking about the visa. My mother still had her visa to go to European countries so the problem was in my visa. Turns out, the appointment to proceed my visa was fully booked until the first week of May. Our flight was supposed to be at April 25. My father then tried to go to another agency to proceed my visa and an agency said that he could handle this problem. On April 21, there is another problem. They said we applied for visiting family visa and not holiday visa and we actually need a letter from the government of the Netherlands and we didn't submit that letter. So it was impossible for the visa to be ready by 25 April. We decided to postponed our trip until 2nd May. Everything went well after that but the only thing that made me nervous was my visa is not finished until 1st May. What I learned from this is that I should've been more prepared and I should not order the ticket without thinking about the visa.
I traveled to Malaysia in 2010 with my family, including my grandfather to visit one of my uncle who lives in Kuala Lumpur. That was the first time i traveled overseas. I was still 9 years old back then. We visited many places there and tasted a lot of foods. We stayed for 6 days in Malaysia and 2 days in Singapore. We went to Singapore by car, from Kuala Lumpur. It took us 6 hours to get to Singaporean border. At the border, our passports got checked by the immigration officers. At first, i waited at the car with my cousins. We waited for about 30 minutes and we still didn’t get allowed to cross the border to Singapore. Until when my mom called us to get out from the car and come to the immigration office. We got in the office and i saw my grandfather getting asked with a lot of questions by the officers. I sat on the office for 1 hour until they let us pass to Singapore. Turns out, the Singaporean immigration was aware and afraid to let my grandfather in, just because of his name which is “Abu Ubaidah”. They said that it sounded like a terrorist name and they want to make sure about my grandfather was safe to let to pass.
Actually I got Into problems while making one of these just about one or two months ago. At that time, I was going to renew my passport into the e-passport. This is mainly due to my pasport is expiring soon so my Parents just decided to just upgrade my passport into the new version. Then, I book a date for the passport renewal which is actually quite hard to do, because most of the time the quota for the day available is full. The booking is done online as far as I know, yet the system is somewhat ambigous. I’m not even sure that there is an offline booking quota available at the immigration office. This online booking process is taking about a week due to the difficulties of finding an available date at every office in Jakarta. Then, when I arrived at the immigration office, I gave my booking form to the officer and finally I am in the waiting room waiting for my number to be called. The problem is starting to occur when I am finally in the process of making a new e-passport. The cause of the problem is the misspelling of my fullname on my passport. The mistake is actually on just one alphabet : they write Muhammad Naga Aghista instead of Muhammad Naga Abhista. It is a minor yet fatal mistakes by them when releasing my passport. I am actually slightly confused as to why this problem can occur. Because, when I am making this passport several years ago I write my own name in a piece of paper,on a monitor, and it is also stated clearly in my birth certificate. Well, it is also my mistakes for not reporting the problem as soon as possible, which results in I am unable to make the new one that day. The next day I had to go to the immigration office that released my ‘wrong’ passport in depok. Then, I had to repeat the whole process from the beginning.
I had an unpleasant experience going to the United States back in 2012. First of all the visa process took a very long time and they had to ask a series of questions that are uncomfortable (keep in mind I was 12 years old). They asked me how serious I was about my religion, if I was an extremist, and if I had any plans to do any harm. I thought it was a normal procedure of questions but when I told my european friends about this, they said they never had that before. When I finally arrived at JFK Airport, there was a "problem with the machine", now I could understand if it was a normal error with the machine. However, they took me to another room and the person behind me in the line went through without a problem. They interviewed a 12 year old for 4 hours. It was traumatising and honestly it was pretty prejudice. In the end they explained it was all because my name had the word "Muhammad" in it.
Back then in June 2012, my family wanted to travel around Europe. Since my father is a teacher and my mother had her own business, every holiday season, our family will have a very long holiday and I always waited for that moment to come. Back then, I was very happy because I knew there’s not a lot my friends that could spend long holiday as a family. And since my father is off for school holiday and my mom could just shut her business for a while, they decided that this holiday we were going on a trip to Europe. It was very special, because I imagined as a 12 year old boy, that was my first time going to Europe. We first arrived in turkey for a transit and reached Netherland the next day. We travelled to france, Italy and Spain. The first day we arrived at Barcelona, we went to the canta d almar if I’m not mistaken. We visited a lot of places and I liked Barcelona very much. The first few days went very well and suddenly one of my siblings told my father through Blackberry Messenger and he told me to be more careful in Spain because there were a lot of pickpockets.
Out of nowhere, the worst thing happened the next day. At that time, we were eating at a restaurant on the sidewalk of Barcelona, and my father left his waist bag full of phone, passport and visas hanging on a chair to wash his hands. When he went back, it was mugged and we were stroked by panic attack. Luckily, my brother and my mother kept their phone at their pocket so we could just browse on how to get our visas back. We had to go to the Indonesian embassy in Madrid to make a new visa and the whole process takes 2 days. We missed our flight home and we had to reschedule the flight. The process strain us out of money and energy. The important thing that I learned In here is that, if you are travelling, either it is abroad or just inside your country, you should look first about what hazard you can encounter there and you should be more careful with your personal belongings.
There’s this really sensitive story of my first ever trip to the USA on January last year. I was going to America to join a competition with my school friends. I’ve been really psyched on getting on this trip since almost a year before it. We had it all planned up by our travel agent where we just do whatever they told us to. Then there was the day we had to take a picture for our visa. I just knew then that there was this regulation where everyone must show their ears on the photo, not excluding people like me, the hijabis. I was quite emotional back then, and I felt like it was a very huge deal and I’m scared that I can’t even dress how I usually am (with the hijab). It was also supported by the fact that it was the perfect timing where Trump was elected as president. I imagined how chaotic the political ambience would be when I was there. With all the ‘Islamophobic policies’ that Trump was proposing during his campaign, I was honestly so nervous that my visa would eventually get rejected. But turns out, I was just overthinking it. I did enjoy my trip later after, and I actually had a chance to join along on an Anti-Trump march in Boston where I just felt very welcomed for people like me, who just started to live in fear of how people will discriminate them for their identity or beliefs. After that trip, I realized that we should still have faith in humanity. Also, a bad leader doesn’t always mean they have bad followers. It was a heartwarming trip and I learned so much from it. I honestly hope someday someone will make America great again.
I arrived in Indonesia in January 2018 on a holiday visa. This visa is valid for 2 months and is not extendible, or at least, not without a sponsor. I decided to do “visa runs” to the cheapest airports outside of Indonesia. I wouldn’t actually leave the airport of that country, I would just make sure that I passed through immigration. I normally had a flight back to Indonesia within four hours after I arrived. Once back in Indonesia, I would buy a Visa On Arrival (VOA). This VOA is also valid for two months. This method worked fine for quite a while, but then there was this moment in Singapore. I think it was the third that I went there, when the immigration officer told me that what I was doing was actually illegal. I honestly didn’t know this even though I knew that I was balancing on the limits of the law. They decided to lock me up in a small “airport prison” together with 4 others that were doing the same thing. They held us there for about 3 hours and wouldn’t let me go until the moment I showed prove that I was going to study in Indonesia. This was the last time I went to do this in Singapore, after that moment I decided to go to Kuala Lumpur instead. In Kuala Lumpur the immigration seems to be much more relaxed.
In 2016 I had a study trip to Japan, during the beautiful spring of the land of the rising sun. The trip consists of tours across Honsu and Kyushu. We arrived in Tokyo and stayed there for two days before continuing our trip to Osaka. On my first day my friend and I got lost for hours in Tokyo without internet and could not even ask someone due to the language barrier, it was a nightmare but also an adventure for us. On the second day we went to the Asakusa area, where traditional Japanese craft are on sale, and fell for a mokuto or a wooden sword for kendo. And of course I bought two of it. I was pleased for it since I did not know about the nightmare that I would have because of it. The tour includes several flight, and every time we went to the airport the authority would have suspicion on me due to the odd shape of my luggage. I almost got arrested three times for it, such nightmare.
During my exchange year on 2017 in Italy, I was registered to a public vocational high school named Istituto Tecnologico Industriale Statale - Liceo Scientifico delle Scienze Applicate “Othoca” (in English would be translated into “State Industrial Technological Institute - Scientific High School of Applied Sciences “Othoca”). Yes, it is quite a long name given for a school. I spent one academic year with Class 4M. My class went to Poland for an excursion on 2016 and visiting numerous landmarks. The following year, they’ve proposed a school trip to London. Luckily, I was one of them and was also a part of the trip. I have never been to the UK before so you should’ve know how excited I was.
The trip was held on April 2017 but parent’s permission letter were collected since January. Even though I am an Italian permesso di soggiorno (resident permit) card holder, I was still required a visa to enter the United Kingdom. There were several processes in order to gain that one visa. First, I had to input personal information data about myself, my family, my school, and current financial situation online. After I submitted the file, I had to print it and brought it to the representative office of the UK’s Visa and Immigration Department in Rome. They took a photo of my face and scanned my fingerprints. It took 5 days only until my UK visa attached on my passport arrived at my house.
Overall, applying for UK visa was not difficult at all but to be honest, it’s quite expensive.
I love travelling, especially travelling overseas, but I never travel outside of southeast asia. I still remember when I was at primary school, my family are planning to go to Malaysia, it was going to be my first experience going overseas and I am very excited at the time, because I only went to other cities in Indonesia before. I thought that going overseas has the same procedure as going to another city inside the country, but I was wrong, I was told by my parents that I must make a passport in order to travel overseas. I remember going to the immigration office to make my passport, at the immigration office I waited for my name to be called, and then I walked into a room to get my photo taken, and after that I wrote my signature on the passport. After that I was informed by the officials, that I should renew my passport every five years.
Personally, I do not have any problems when trying to get visas or renewing my passport, but I do have a friend who has interned at an Indonesian immigration office in Taiwan. He interned there to fulfill his high school requirements of having to intern for a certain amount of hours so he thought why not do it in the immigration office. He said that he wasn't able to speak Chinese quite fluently yet understood most of the language. For the first few days, he worked as the one who would check the requirements for a visa. He would check if they have all the needed documents and if they do, he would stamp the documents and pile them up in one place. After that, he worked in front of the counter, where he would distribute the finished passports to the respectful owner. Going back to what I said before, he does not know how to fluently speak Chinese so whenever someone asks him anything he would tell them to wait and then run to the back room to get someone who can speak Chinese. That went on for around 3 days and that was the worst 3 days of his time in Taiwan.
Last July, me and my family went to europe. Mostly, we went to the east europe countries such as Hungary, Austria, and Czech. The rest, we spent our days in Netherland. There was a bad memory when i was in Prague's airport. We were going back to netherland that time. Everything was ok that tkme until we reached the gate. In the gate, our luggage were checked if it's fit in the cabin or not. We usually had that hand carry bag when we're travelling, and it's usually fit. But, i didn't know how, but it didn't fit in their lugagge criteria. So they had something like a spot to measure your lugagge's size. Each member of my family had one handcarry that time, and the result, three out of five bags didn't fit, and we had to pay the charge if we wanted to take our bags. The thing is, the ampunt of money that we have to spend was very expensive. It can be used to buy a new suitcase. A good one. So, we decided to left one handcarry at the airport, and put it in a plastic bag, and we bought a new suitcase back in Netherland. But, we paid for the rest two handcarry. So, that's my story.
I am studying in Germany with an Italian passport, therefore, I had never have a problem with a visa until I came to: Indonesia. This story starts back in Germany, when one month before flying, I got an email saying that my University sent my application to the wrong email address, and that coming to Indonesia was not an option any more. Fortunately, we solve the problems with the University but I will have to enter the country with a Visa on Arrival. When I arrived in Jakarta, the officer charged me 30 USD for my VOA, which I discover later that the visa do not have a cost anymore. So pretty sure the officer kept the money by himself. Anyways, that nightmare was only the beginning because 30 days later I flew to Singapore to get my Social and Cultural Visa. Actually, I messed up and forgot that January has 31 days, so I needed to pay 300.000 Rp to the officer because I stayed one day illegally in the country. Once in Singapore, I had an unpleasant experience in the airbnb I was staying which made my trip disappointing and a monkey try to steal my visa papers in the “tree top walk”. Anyways, I got finally my second visa, but the story does not end here. Because my community service was going to be the end of June, I was required to have a ITAS. Therefore, two months later, before my visa expired, I flew again to Singapore to get my long stay visa. This time a friend came with me, so the trip was better. It was a really annoying situation, but after a lot of wait, I finally got my ITAS.
I have a story about my unique travel experience in Italy. It was early summer last year, where my family is planning to go on a two-week trip. I was so excited because it was going to be my second time in Italy, and I loved the country. It probably is my favourite country in the whole world. I’ve packed my stuff since about a month ago, and suddenly it was the day of my trip. The flight felt like forever, but then I arrived safely after being 12 hours on air. Then, when we enter immigration, we were stopped to get checked. They didn’t just let us through because they said we have some permit issues. We were held for around two more hours on the waiting room, and when we were inside, we were interrogated. We were asked if we brought any types of fresh meats in our baggage. We said no, and we were confused how would they think otherwise. It turns out we ticked the wrong box in our immigration sheet because the sheet was in Italian and we felt that the question was about something else. The two hours they spent was a waste, searching for something non-existent.
2 years ago my family and I travelled to Europe for 2 objectives: summer vacation and to attend my cousin’s graduation in Brighton, UK. Our initial plan was to visit the Netherlands, Belgium, France and then the UK for the graduation. The interesting story however, began in Paris. My family and I stayed in this hotel (let’s just call it Hotel X) located in the heart of Paris. My parents and I were queuing for the breakfast at the hotel while my 11 years old sister waited in the table where we left our bags. Because the hotel was crowded, my sister decided to leave the table for a minute to call me. When we got back to the table, we realized that one of our bag was missing. The worst thing is that my passport, camera, my mom’s wallet, phone and other valuables was inside the bag.
During the same day my mom blocked all of her ATM and credit card, we ordered an Uber to take us to the embassy to prepare for emergency passport. We were forced to extend our stay in Paris to deal with this matter. We also went to the police station to report the incident. Reporting to the police was the hardest task as most police refused or unable to speak english. After hours of waiting, we got a call from the hotel saying that they have the CCTV video of the possible suspect. On the next day, we got a phone call from the police saying that they found our bag in the street. The weird thing is that all of our valuable documents and the ATM is all organized in this bag. The thief only stole our cash and gadgets. Though we got unlucky in Paris and failed to attend my cousin’s graduation, my family and I decided to make the best of our vacation.
I arrived in Indonesia on August on a tourist visa, that allow me to stay on the Indonesian territory for 30 days only, I had to come on a tourist visa because I haven’t received the necessary document to apply for the student visa in my home country, even thought I send all the required document on time in May. I had to leave for Singapore after 30 days, and to apply for a student visa at the embassy of Indonesia, when I left for Singapore I still haven’t received the Telex visa required for application, but I had no choice because my visa was about to expire, I also needed to buy a return ticket in advance in order to enter Singapore, I arrived on a Thursday but received the Telex Visa on Friday night, too late to go to the embassy, my flight return was on Tuesday morning, I went at the embassy on Monday morning but my visa process would take 2 working days, therefor I missed my flight and I had to buy a super expensive return ticket at the last minute
I have a story about an incident that happened at a Singapore immigration a long time ago. When I was in elementary school, I remember going on a family gathering with my father’s work friends. I don’t remember the exact year, I think it was 2010 but I could be wrong. We went to Johor Bahru and Singapore for 3 or 4 days I can’t really recall the trip. There were about 200 people on that trip so it was nowhere near a small family gathering. We went to Johor Bahru first and we stayed there for one night. The next day, we went to Singapore by bus. When we arrived at the border, we had to go through custom and immigration before entering Singapore. But for some reason, after everyone finished there was still this one person who didn’t came out of the immigration for almost 2 hours. We were all really worried and anxious of what might’ve happened. Some thought he might’ve lost his passport and some were just genuinely confused about this odd situation. After 2 hours of waiting game, he finally came out of immigration. Turns out they thought he was a terrorist because of his name. I thought it was really close minded and racist for them to think of him in such way. You should never accuse someone of such horrible things just by looking at their names. That’s just ridiculous.
Raymond, he is my friend’s best friend. He was born in New York and moved to Indonesia since he was 1-year-old. He never experienced the American lifestyle, but he had the American dream. This American-born Indonesian never feels at home when he was in Indonesia, although he spends most of his life being in the capital of Indonesia. He had a dream that wasn’t patriotic for some, he wanted to renounce his Indonesian citizenship. He never considers himself as an Indonesian, seeing that he was born in the US and the most important factor for him, both of his parents aren’t ‘Indonesians’. He left Indonesia without his family and nationality, but he carried the ideals of an American dream. I haven’t heard of him since he left. I heard some stories that he applies for a job at Target and he got it. Other than that I think he’s on his way to reach the American dream that he wanted, to be a better Raymond.
Back in 2017 I travelled to Europe with my family. We decided to do a family road trip together, we rent a mini van and travel across Europe. At that time, we are in Belgium fro about 3 days. That day we decided to go to a Maasmechelen Village which is a place consisting various kind of shops. We park in the parking lot and carry our small bags, we leave the other bags in the car. I’m pretty sure my brother has locked the car at and we already put our belongings under the car seat. After spending around 5 hours shopping we finally decide to head back to our hotel, and when we got in the car we seem to not noticed anything different since we left it. The shocking part is my sister’s passport went missing, and also on of her sling bag gone missing too. We panicked because passport is an important thing when you’re abroad, and my sister is too reckless didn’t bring along her passport with her. Then we agreed to go to the Indonesian embassy in Belgium, we fill out a form regarding a missing passport. Turns out, the officer there said there has been a lot of cases about thieves around the Maasmechelen Village area. In the end, my sister got a temporary passport to use while we’re traveling around Europe.
In 2015, I went to United States for an exchange program that was sponsored by Rotary organization. Before that, the last time I went abroad was to Singapore with my family, which was long time ago. That time to be honest I was pretty anxious about how am I going to make visa and especially how to pass the immigration. I made my student visa in Surabaya and turned out it wasn’t that hard to get it. I went to United States alone without companion and I was quite nervous that I couldn’t get a sleep even though I got 8 hours transit. I was too afraid of missing the flight and didn’t sleep at all when I was transiting. When I got to United States the first thing I faced was the immigration. People were queuing for visa checking while being sniffed by a police dog. I brought a bunch of Indonesian food seasoning that time and I was afraid that the dog might like it and bite it. Once my visa is checked, they ask me about my program and where am I going to stay. It was a great experience. If you ever want to go abroad alone, make sure everything is there, don’t forget your belongings, and stay calm.
In 2015 me and my family decided to visit Cannes and London for holiday. I was excited to see the French Riviera so we decided to check what is needed, and there is Visa that we need to applied then we went to the Kuningan City where there is an office for applying UK visa. The process took me about 4 hours and then we've been told to wait for 3 to 6 weeks to get our visas so we decided to book a flight for the next month to London. After waited for 6 weeks, the visa was not published yet but we had the flight leaving in 3 days so we decided to cancel the flight and booked another flight which cost us a lot of money but eventually we got our visas the next week. Because of that we had to book another flight and another hotel.
Several years back, my family loves to travel around the world. Not because we had the money to spend, but it was more of one of the effect of having a father that works in the art industry. He often goes out of the country to see and find new spots for him to be shooting his adverts. So technically, he often brought his family with him too. It was a few days after my family and ten years old me celebrated New Years in Hong Kong. We stayed there for a couple of days, travelled through nearly every ends of the city, and it was the time for us to fly back to Jakarta. We arrived at the Hong Kong International Airport, checked in, loaded our baggage, ate lunch, prayed, and so on; we were set to fly back to Jakarta. The loud airport speaker announces that my flight is prepared and they announced that passengers are allowed to enter at a certain gate. Like any other normal procedures, I gave my passport to the officer, not long after; I was held in their office for a quite one and a half hour. Turns out, my passport stated that I'm a female. The main question is, how did I manage to fly to Hong Kong in the first place?
ReplyDeleteTo come to Indonesia, I had to ask for a student Visa. I started the procedures in May, sent all the documents required to the university, but unfortunately, the Indonesian administration was too long to process my demand. To do my Visa in France, I would have had to go to the Indonesian embassy in Paris, give them all the necessary documents to obtain my Visa and come back one week later to finally have the Visa on my passport. However, one week before coming to Indonesia, I still hadn’t received one of the papers, so it was impossible for me to do my Visa demand. So, I came to Indonesia with a Visa on arrival, which means that I had to go out of the country within thirty days. One week before I had to leave for Singapore, I finally received the missing document. Once in Singapore, I had to go to the Indonesian embassy between 9am and 12am to ask for my student Visa and come back the next day at 3pm to get it. I thought that after going to Singapore, all my Visa issues would be over, but it appeared that I still had to leave my passport to the International Office of the UGM for at least one month. Now I just hope to get my passport back as soon as possible and finally be able to go in and out of the country as much as I can. The only good side of this Visa problem is that it gave me an opportunity to visit Singapore, which is a really nice city.
ReplyDeleteLast April, me and my mother had a plan to go to the Netherlands to visit my brother who's studying there. Because I did not have anything to do after the national exam, we decided to order the ticket right away. The problem is that we ordered the flight without thinking about the visa. My mother still had her visa to go to European countries so the problem was in my visa. Turns out, the appointment to proceed my visa was fully booked until the first week of May. Our flight was supposed to be at April 25. My father then tried to go to another agency to proceed my visa and an agency said that he could handle this problem. On April 21, there is another problem. They said we applied for visiting family visa and not holiday visa and we actually need a letter from the government of the Netherlands and we didn't submit that letter. So it was impossible for the visa to be ready by 25 April. We decided to postponed our trip until 2nd May. Everything went well after that but the only thing that made me nervous was my visa is not finished until 1st May. What I learned from this is that I should've been more prepared and I should not order the ticket without thinking about the visa.
ReplyDeleteI traveled to Malaysia in 2010 with my family, including my grandfather to visit one of my uncle who lives in Kuala Lumpur. That was the first time i traveled overseas. I was still 9 years old back then. We visited many places there and tasted a lot of foods. We stayed for 6 days in Malaysia and 2 days in Singapore. We went to Singapore by car, from Kuala Lumpur. It took us 6 hours to get to Singaporean border. At the border, our passports got checked by the immigration officers. At first, i waited at the car with my cousins. We waited for about 30 minutes and we still didn’t get allowed to cross the border to Singapore. Until when my mom called us to get out from the car and come to the immigration office. We got in the office and i saw my grandfather getting asked with a lot of questions by the officers. I sat on the office for 1 hour until they let us pass to Singapore. Turns out, the Singaporean immigration was aware and afraid to let my grandfather in, just because of his name which is “Abu Ubaidah”. They said that it sounded like a terrorist name and they want to make sure about my grandfather was safe to let to pass.
ReplyDeleteActually I got Into problems while making one of these just about one or two months ago. At that time, I was going to renew my passport into the e-passport. This is mainly due to my pasport is expiring soon so my Parents just decided to just upgrade my passport into the new version. Then, I book a date for the passport renewal which is actually quite hard to do, because most of the time the quota for the day available is full. The booking is done online as far as I know, yet the system is somewhat ambigous. I’m not even sure that there is an offline booking quota available at the immigration office. This online booking process is taking about a week due to the difficulties of finding an available date at every office in Jakarta. Then, when I arrived at the immigration office, I gave my booking form to the officer and finally I am in the waiting room waiting for my number to be called. The problem is starting to occur when I am finally in the process of making a new e-passport. The cause of the problem is the misspelling of my fullname on my passport. The mistake is actually on just one alphabet : they write Muhammad Naga Aghista instead of Muhammad Naga Abhista. It is a minor yet fatal mistakes by them when releasing my passport. I am actually slightly confused as to why this problem can occur. Because, when I am making this passport several years ago I write my own name in a piece of paper,on a monitor, and it is also stated clearly in my birth certificate. Well, it is also my mistakes for not reporting the problem as soon as possible, which results in I am unable to make the new one that day. The next day I had to go to the immigration office that released my ‘wrong’ passport in depok. Then, I had to repeat the whole process from the beginning.
ReplyDeleteI had an unpleasant experience going to the United States back in 2012. First of all the visa process took a very long time and they had to ask a series of questions that are uncomfortable (keep in mind I was 12 years old). They asked me how serious I was about my religion, if I was an extremist, and if I had any plans to do any harm. I thought it was a normal procedure of questions but when I told my european friends about this, they said they never had that before. When I finally arrived at JFK Airport, there was a "problem with the machine", now I could understand if it was a normal error with the machine. However, they took me to another room and the person behind me in the line went through without a problem. They interviewed a 12 year old for 4 hours. It was traumatising and honestly it was pretty prejudice. In the end they explained it was all because my name had the word "Muhammad" in it.
ReplyDeleteBack then in June 2012, my family wanted to travel around Europe. Since my father is a teacher and my mother had her own business, every holiday season, our family will have a very long holiday and I always waited for that moment to come. Back then, I was very happy because I knew there’s not a lot my friends that could spend long holiday as a family. And since my father is off for school holiday and my mom could just shut her business for a while, they decided that this holiday we were going on a trip to Europe. It was very special, because I imagined as a 12 year old boy, that was my first time going to Europe. We first arrived in turkey for a transit and reached Netherland the next day. We travelled to france, Italy and Spain. The first day we arrived at Barcelona, we went to the canta d almar if I’m not mistaken. We visited a lot of places and I liked Barcelona very much. The first few days went very well and suddenly one of my siblings told my father through Blackberry Messenger and he told me to be more careful in Spain because there were a lot of pickpockets.
ReplyDeleteOut of nowhere, the worst thing happened the next day. At that time, we were eating at a restaurant on the sidewalk of Barcelona, and my father left his waist bag full of phone, passport and visas hanging on a chair to wash his hands. When he went back, it was mugged and we were stroked by panic attack. Luckily, my brother and my mother kept their phone at their pocket so we could just browse on how to get our visas back. We had to go to the Indonesian embassy in Madrid to make a new visa and the whole process takes 2 days. We missed our flight home and we had to reschedule the flight. The process strain us out of money and energy. The important thing that I learned In here is that, if you are travelling, either it is abroad or just inside your country, you should look first about what hazard you can encounter there and you should be more careful with your personal belongings.
There’s this really sensitive story of my first ever trip to the USA on January last year. I was going to America to join a competition with my school friends. I’ve been really psyched on getting on this trip since almost a year before it. We had it all planned up by our travel agent where we just do whatever they told us to. Then there was the day we had to take a picture for our visa. I just knew then that there was this regulation where everyone must show their ears on the photo, not excluding people like me, the hijabis. I was quite emotional back then, and I felt like it was a very huge deal and I’m scared that I can’t even dress how I usually am (with the hijab). It was also supported by the fact that it was the perfect timing where Trump was elected as president. I imagined how chaotic the political ambience would be when I was there. With all the ‘Islamophobic policies’ that Trump was proposing during his campaign, I was honestly so nervous that my visa would eventually get rejected. But turns out, I was just overthinking it. I did enjoy my trip later after, and I actually had a chance to join along on an Anti-Trump march in Boston where I just felt very welcomed for people like me, who just started to live in fear of how people will discriminate them for their identity or beliefs. After that trip, I realized that we should still have faith in humanity. Also, a bad leader doesn’t always mean they have bad followers. It was a heartwarming trip and I learned so much from it. I honestly hope someday someone will make America great again.
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ReplyDeleteI arrived in Indonesia in January 2018 on a holiday visa. This visa is valid for 2 months and is not extendible, or at least, not without a sponsor. I decided to do “visa runs” to the cheapest airports outside of Indonesia. I wouldn’t actually leave the airport of that country, I would just make sure that I passed through immigration. I normally had a flight back to Indonesia within four hours after I arrived. Once back in Indonesia, I would buy a Visa On Arrival (VOA). This VOA is also valid for two months. This method worked fine for quite a while, but then there was this moment in Singapore. I think it was the third that I went there, when the immigration officer told me that what I was doing was actually illegal. I honestly didn’t know this even though I knew that I was balancing on the limits of the law.
They decided to lock me up in a small “airport prison” together with 4 others that were doing the same thing. They held us there for about 3 hours and wouldn’t let me go until the moment I showed prove that I was going to study in Indonesia. This was the last time I went to do this in Singapore, after that moment I decided to go to Kuala Lumpur instead. In Kuala Lumpur the immigration seems to be much more relaxed.
In 2016 I had a study trip to Japan, during the beautiful spring of the land of the rising sun. The trip consists of tours across Honsu and Kyushu. We arrived in Tokyo and stayed there for two days before continuing our trip to Osaka. On my first day my friend and I got lost for hours in Tokyo without internet and could not even ask someone due to the language barrier, it was a nightmare but also an adventure for us. On the second day we went to the Asakusa area, where traditional Japanese craft are on sale, and fell for a mokuto or a wooden sword for kendo. And of course I bought two of it. I was pleased for it since I did not know about the nightmare that I would have because of it. The tour includes several flight, and every time we went to the airport the authority would have suspicion on me due to the odd shape of my luggage. I almost got arrested three times for it, such nightmare.
ReplyDeleteDuring my exchange year on 2017 in Italy, I was registered to a public vocational high school named Istituto Tecnologico Industriale Statale - Liceo Scientifico delle Scienze Applicate “Othoca” (in English would be translated into “State Industrial Technological Institute - Scientific High School of Applied Sciences “Othoca”). Yes, it is quite a long name given for a school. I spent one academic year with Class 4M. My class went to Poland for an excursion on 2016 and visiting numerous landmarks. The following year, they’ve proposed a school trip to London. Luckily, I was one of them and was also a part of the trip. I have never been to the UK before so you should’ve know how excited I was.
ReplyDeleteThe trip was held on April 2017 but parent’s permission letter were collected since January. Even though I am an Italian permesso di soggiorno (resident permit) card holder, I was still required a visa to enter the United Kingdom. There were several processes in order to gain that one visa. First, I had to input personal information data about myself, my family, my school, and current financial situation online. After I submitted the file, I had to print it and brought it to the representative office of the UK’s Visa and Immigration Department in Rome. They took a photo of my face and scanned my fingerprints. It took 5 days only until my UK visa attached on my passport arrived at my house.
Overall, applying for UK visa was not difficult at all but to be honest, it’s quite expensive.
I love travelling, especially travelling overseas, but I never travel outside of southeast asia. I still remember when I was at primary school, my family are planning to go to Malaysia, it was going to be my first experience going overseas and I am very excited at the time, because I only went to other cities in Indonesia before. I thought that going overseas has the same procedure as going to another city inside the country, but I was wrong, I was told by my parents that I must make a passport in order to travel overseas. I remember going to the immigration office to make my passport, at the immigration office I waited for my name to be called, and then I walked into a room to get my photo taken, and after that I wrote my signature on the passport. After that I was informed by the officials, that I should renew my passport every five years.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I do not have any problems when trying to get visas or renewing my passport, but I do have a friend who has interned at an Indonesian immigration office in Taiwan. He interned there to fulfill his high school requirements of having to intern for a certain amount of hours so he thought why not do it in the immigration office. He said that he wasn't able to speak Chinese quite fluently yet understood most of the language. For the first few days, he worked as the one who would check the requirements for a visa. He would check if they have all the needed documents and if they do, he would stamp the documents and pile them up in one place. After that, he worked in front of the counter, where he would distribute the finished passports to the respectful owner. Going back to what I said before, he does not know how to fluently speak Chinese so whenever someone asks him anything he would tell them to wait and then run to the back room to get someone who can speak Chinese. That went on for around 3 days and that was the worst 3 days of his time in Taiwan.
ReplyDeleteLast July, me and my family went to europe. Mostly, we went to the east europe countries such as Hungary, Austria, and Czech. The rest, we spent our days in Netherland. There was a bad memory when i was in Prague's airport. We were going back to netherland that time. Everything was ok that tkme until we reached the gate. In the gate, our luggage were checked if it's fit in the cabin or not. We usually had that hand carry bag when we're travelling, and it's usually fit. But, i didn't know how, but it didn't fit in their lugagge criteria. So they had something like a spot to measure your lugagge's size. Each member of my family had one handcarry that time, and the result, three out of five bags didn't fit, and we had to pay the charge if we wanted to take our bags. The thing is, the ampunt of money that we have to spend was very expensive. It can be used to buy a new suitcase. A good one. So, we decided to left one handcarry at the airport, and put it in a plastic bag, and we bought a new suitcase back in Netherland. But, we paid for the rest two handcarry. So, that's my story.
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ReplyDeleteI am studying in Germany with an Italian passport, therefore, I had never have a problem with a visa until I came to: Indonesia. This story starts back in Germany, when one month before flying, I got an email saying that my University sent my application to the wrong email address, and that coming to Indonesia was not an option any more. Fortunately, we solve the problems with the University but I will have to enter the country with a Visa on Arrival. When I arrived in Jakarta, the officer charged me 30 USD for my VOA, which I discover later that the visa do not have a cost anymore. So pretty sure the officer kept the money by himself. Anyways, that nightmare was only the beginning because 30 days later I flew to Singapore to get my Social and Cultural Visa. Actually, I messed up and forgot that January has 31 days, so I needed to pay 300.000 Rp to the officer because I stayed one day illegally in the country. Once in Singapore, I had an unpleasant experience in the airbnb I was staying which made my trip disappointing and a monkey try to steal my visa papers in the “tree top walk”. Anyways, I got finally my second visa, but the story does not end here. Because my community service was going to be the end of June, I was required to have a ITAS. Therefore, two months later, before my visa expired, I flew again to Singapore to get my long stay visa. This time a friend came with me, so the trip was better. It was a really annoying situation, but after a lot of wait, I finally got my ITAS.
I have a story about my unique travel experience in Italy. It was early summer last year, where my family is planning to go on a two-week trip. I was so excited because it was going to be my second time in Italy, and I loved the country. It probably is my favourite country in the whole world. I’ve packed my stuff since about a month ago, and suddenly it was the day of my trip. The flight felt like forever, but then I arrived safely after being 12 hours on air. Then, when we enter immigration, we were stopped to get checked. They didn’t just let us through because they said we have some permit issues. We were held for around two more hours on the waiting room, and when we were inside, we were interrogated. We were asked if we brought any types of fresh meats in our baggage. We said no, and we were confused how would they think otherwise. It turns out we ticked the wrong box in our immigration sheet because the sheet was in Italian and we felt that the question was about something else. The two hours they spent was a waste, searching for something non-existent.
ReplyDelete2 years ago my family and I travelled to Europe for 2 objectives: summer vacation and to attend my cousin’s graduation in Brighton, UK. Our initial plan was to visit the Netherlands, Belgium, France and then the UK for the graduation. The interesting story however, began in Paris. My family and I stayed in this hotel (let’s just call it Hotel X) located in the heart of Paris. My parents and I were queuing for the breakfast at the hotel while my 11 years old sister waited in the table where we left our bags. Because the hotel was crowded, my sister decided to leave the table for a minute to call me. When we got back to the table, we realized that one of our bag was missing. The worst thing is that my passport, camera, my mom’s wallet, phone and other valuables was inside the bag.
ReplyDeleteDuring the same day my mom blocked all of her ATM and credit card, we ordered an Uber to take us to the embassy to prepare for emergency passport. We were forced to extend our stay in Paris to deal with this matter. We also went to the police station to report the incident. Reporting to the police was the hardest task as most police refused or unable to speak english. After hours of waiting, we got a call from the hotel saying that they have the CCTV video of the possible suspect. On the next day, we got a phone call from the police saying that they found our bag in the street. The weird thing is that all of our valuable documents and the ATM is all organized in this bag. The thief only stole our cash and gadgets. Though we got unlucky in Paris and failed to attend my cousin’s graduation, my family and I decided to make the best of our vacation.
I arrived in Indonesia on August on a tourist visa, that allow me to stay on the Indonesian territory for 30 days only, I had to come on a tourist visa because I haven’t received the necessary document to apply for the student visa in my home country, even thought I send all the required document on time in May. I had to leave for Singapore after 30 days, and to apply for a student visa at the embassy of Indonesia, when I left for Singapore I still haven’t received the Telex visa required for application, but I had no choice because my visa was about to expire, I also needed to buy a return ticket in advance in order to enter Singapore, I arrived on a Thursday but received the Telex Visa on Friday night, too late to go to the embassy, my flight return was on Tuesday morning, I went at the embassy on Monday morning but my visa process would take 2 working days, therefor I missed my flight and I had to buy a super expensive return ticket at the last minute
ReplyDeleteI have a story about an incident that happened at a Singapore immigration a long time ago. When I was in elementary school, I remember going on a family gathering with my father’s work friends. I don’t remember the exact year, I think it was 2010 but I could be wrong. We went to Johor Bahru and Singapore for 3 or 4 days I can’t really recall the trip. There were about 200 people on that trip so it was nowhere near a small family gathering. We went to Johor Bahru first and we stayed there for one night. The next day, we went to Singapore by bus. When we arrived at the border, we had to go through custom and immigration before entering Singapore. But for some reason, after everyone finished there was still this one person who didn’t came out of the immigration for almost 2 hours. We were all really worried and anxious of what might’ve happened. Some thought he might’ve lost his passport and some were just genuinely confused about this odd situation. After 2 hours of waiting game, he finally came out of immigration. Turns out they thought he was a terrorist because of his name. I thought it was really close minded and racist for them to think of him in such way. You should never accuse someone of such horrible things just by looking at their names. That’s just ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteRaymond, he is my friend’s best friend. He was born in New York and moved to Indonesia since he was 1-year-old. He never experienced the American lifestyle, but he had the American dream. This American-born Indonesian never feels at home when he was in Indonesia, although he spends most of his life being in the capital of Indonesia. He had a dream that wasn’t patriotic for some, he wanted to renounce his Indonesian citizenship. He never considers himself as an Indonesian, seeing that he was born in the US and the most important factor for him, both of his parents aren’t ‘Indonesians’. He left Indonesia without his family and nationality, but he carried the ideals of an American dream. I haven’t heard of him since he left. I heard some stories that he applies for a job at Target and he got it. Other than that I think he’s on his way to reach the American dream that he wanted, to be a better Raymond.
ReplyDeleteBack in 2017 I travelled to Europe with my family. We decided to do a family road trip together, we rent a mini van and travel across Europe. At that time, we are in Belgium fro about 3 days. That day we decided to go to a Maasmechelen Village which is a place consisting various kind of shops. We park in the parking lot and carry our small bags, we leave the other bags in the car. I’m pretty sure my brother has locked the car at and we already put our belongings under the car seat. After spending around 5 hours shopping we finally decide to head back to our hotel, and when we got in the car we seem to not noticed anything different since we left it. The shocking part is my sister’s passport went missing, and also on of her sling bag gone missing too. We panicked because passport is an important thing when you’re abroad, and my sister is too reckless didn’t bring along her passport with her. Then we agreed to go to the Indonesian embassy in Belgium, we fill out a form regarding a missing passport. Turns out, the officer there said there has been a lot of cases about thieves around the Maasmechelen Village area. In the end, my sister got a temporary passport to use while we’re traveling around Europe.
ReplyDeleteIn 2015, I went to United States for an exchange program that was sponsored by Rotary organization. Before that, the last time I went abroad was to Singapore with my family, which was long time ago. That time to be honest I was pretty anxious about how am I going to make visa and especially how to pass the immigration. I made my student visa in Surabaya and turned out it wasn’t that hard to get it. I went to United States alone without companion and I was quite nervous that I couldn’t get a sleep even though I got 8 hours transit. I was too afraid of missing the flight and didn’t sleep at all when I was transiting. When I got to United States the first thing I faced was the immigration. People were queuing for visa checking while being sniffed by a police dog. I brought a bunch of Indonesian food seasoning that time and I was afraid that the dog might like it and bite it. Once my visa is checked, they ask me about my program and where am I going to stay. It was a great experience. If you ever want to go abroad alone, make sure everything is there, don’t forget your belongings, and stay calm.
ReplyDeleteIn 2015 me and my family decided to visit Cannes and London for holiday. I was excited to see the French Riviera so we decided to check what is needed, and there is Visa that we need to applied then we went to the Kuningan City where there is an office for applying UK visa. The process took me about 4 hours and then we've been told to wait for 3 to 6 weeks to get our visas so we decided to book a flight for the next month to London. After waited for 6 weeks, the visa was not published yet but we had the flight leaving in 3 days so we decided to cancel the flight and booked another flight which cost us a lot of money but eventually we got our visas the next week. Because of that we had to book another flight and another hotel.
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