Indonesia visa HELP!

[Happietraveller]

Husband and I are joining Viking Orion in Sydney next week to sail SE Asia.  I am finding it impossible to access indonesia visa site.  We have had 3 sets of passport photos taken and all have been rejected on the visa application…(admittedly I would like my photo to look 30 years younger 😁) but that’s not the issue!  We have finally resorted to CIBT visa agency, but still being rejected.  Apparently if you fly in you can get an eVoa, but there is no mention of entering through a port.  Has anyone recently sailed into Indonesia and obtained a visa on the spot?  How does customs work when the ship is at tender?  Can we go ashore?  Many thanks for any replies.

[rossc]

Hi,suggest you read comments under section" Australia & New Zealand Cruisers" in C/C, posts headed "Assistance please Indonesian Visa for Cruise, it may help or you could ask there for further assistance.

[Happietraveller]

32 minutes ago, rossc said:

Hi,suggest you read comments under section" Australia & New Zealand Cruisers" in C/C, posts headed "Assistance please Indonesian Visa for Cruise, it may help or you could ask there for further assistance.

Thanks.  Will do

[djdc]

We took pictures with our phone, sent them by email to our desktop and saved them as jpegs. They had to be in a certain proportion, I think 2 x 3 (but not certain) and had to take less than 1500 mpxls (again could be the wrong term, but memory space). I had to download and save a few times to get it right, but it finally worked. 
The other advice is to very carefully check the next form that automatically fills with information from your uploaded password photo. It read one of our Canadian passports as beginning with 6C instead of GC. I had to complete a second application and pay again, and this time it changed the spelling of a middle name. Luckily I caught that in checking the form over before submitting. I think you just have to be prepared to read the instructions extremely carefully, save your photo and passport photo until you get them just right, and problem solve. 
The good news is once everything was correct and submitted, and paid for, the E Visa arrived relatively soon. Another hint - check that your credit card allows the charge as security may flag the charge to be checked and not automatically allowed. 
Good luck! I know this caused us a lot of anxiety but it did finally work out and we are currently on our cruise. 
 

[Happietraveller]

This is so frustrating!  It insists that he uploaded photo of our passport be only the information page, not the opened double page, but the space provided is portrait and of course the single page passport is ‘landscape’. But it won’t allow a sideways photo which fits the ‘allotted’ frame.  The final straw was when it continually rejected my passport number as ‘incorrect’.  I give up!

just hoping someone has been able to apply for visas on the spot at our first port, Komodo national park.

[SusieKIslandGirl]

Have you checked to see if you can get the visa while on the ship? I think it was on a Holland America post that I saw where the visa could be obtained through the ship. 

[Happietraveller]

1 hour ago, SusieKIslandGirl said:

Have you checked to see if you can get the visa while on the ship? I think it was on a Holland America post that I saw where the visa could be obtained through the ship. 

Thank you for responding.  I give up!  I did call Viking to be told that the ship don’t do visas and to keep trying….but ‘perhaps guest services may be able to help once on board’.  It was creating me so much stress, at one stage hyperventilating because I just couldn’t get the application form to accept our photos .  So I’m hoping that once on board, someone, anyone, might be able to help me.  I feel so useless!  We join the ship on Tuesday so hopefully there is time.  Someone else has said there is a customs desk at Lombok where we should be able to get an ‘on the spot’ visa.  🤷‍♀️

[SusieKIslandGirl]

Good luck! We'll be on a Holland America cruise through Indonesia in January. Don't think I'm looking forward to the visa process! And there's some kind of arrival paperwork to do for Singapore. Ugh! But cruising is worth it!

[Happietraveller]

3 hours ago, SusieKIslandGirl said:

Good luck! We'll be on a Holland America cruise through Indonesia in January. Don't think I'm looking forward to the visa process! And there's some kind of arrival paperwork to do for Singapore. Ugh! But cruising is worth it!

Good luck.  I’ll keep you posted.  👍

[keysey222]

It's not you, it's the website. Are you by chance using a Mac? I spent hours trying to upload our passport photo pages and it was rejected every darn time. Switched to my husband's PC and it worked instantly. 

Edited February 29 by keysey222

[Happietraveller]

All that stress for nothing! We arrived at embarkation and the first question was ‘which visas do you need help with?’  Not an issue at all.  Guest services are doing it for us and many others!  Why couldn’t Viking just tell us that it was standard practice to arrange visas once on board? 😞

[IWantToLiveOverTheSea]

Glad you got it straightened out.  I was going to suggest a few things, but I guess it's no longer needed.  And when we traveled to Bali in 2019, no visas were required or asked for, so I don't know what the experience is like.

 

But I do know that there's at least one port in Asia which requires a separate procedure for obtaining a visa for a seaport than for entry at an airport. 

 

And I do know that some countries are very particular about the size of photos (in MBs, not physical size) which means you have to be able to "compress" a photo), so that's frequently problematic.  And if something needs to be in landscape that is generally portrait (or vice versa) that can be tricky.  

 

And I know that some cruise lines offer to do visas for you (through GenVisa or other visa company), but you normally pay half to two thirds more for them to do visas for you. 

 

Getting visas for my recent 15 day cruise in SE Asia on a competing line wore me out.  And for one country (the one alluded to above), evisas for the seaport could not be obtained for the 3 months before our visit.  So we and many, many others got on the ship and had to pay for the cruise line to work its expensive magic.   Yes, visas are maddening....and then there are landing cards, and entry cards, and this and that, and occasionally an in-person face to face immigration meeting like we had to do for the Philippines.  I was exhausted.

 

[Happietraveller]

1 hour ago, IWantToLiveOverTheSea said:

Glad you got it straightened out.  I was going to suggest a few things, but I guess it's no longer needed.  And when we traveled to Bali in 2019, no visas were required or asked for, so I don't know what the experience is like.

 

But I do know that there's at least one port in Asia which requires a separate procedure for obtaining a visa for a seaport than for entry at an airport. 

 

And I do know that some countries are very particular about the size of photos (in MBs, not physical size) which means you have to be able to "compress" a photo), so that's frequently problematic.  And if something needs to be in landscape that is generally portrait (or vice versa) that can be tricky.  

 

And I know that some cruise lines offer to do visas for you (through GenVisa or other visa company), but you normally pay half to two thirds more for them to do visas for you. 

 

Getting visas for my recent 15 day cruise in SE Asia on a competing line wore me out.  And for one country (the one alluded to above), evisas for the seaport could not be obtained for the 3 months before our visit.  So we and many, many others got on the ship and had to pay for the cruise line to work its expensive magic.   Yes, visas are maddening....and then there are landing cards, and entry cards, and this and that, and occasionally an in-person face to face immigration meeting like we had to do for the Philippines.  I was exhausted.

 

Lol…yes all of that!  I was so stressed I even used a word that’s never come out of my mouth before!!!  But it’s all good and we now have an array of passport photos to choose from.  Non of them good!  😂

[JJean]

I can't get the VOA for Indonesia to work as I can't convert to JPG, can i get it at the Bali Cruiseport.  

[Happietraveller]

1 hour ago, JJean said:

I can't get the VOA for Indonesia to work as I can't convert to JPG, can i get it at the Bali Cruiseport.  

It all became too difficult!  We are on Viking Orion and they are organising visas for us…..but we couldn’t get this clarified through Viking head office!  It was only at embarkation they offered to help us.  Good luck.

[JJean]

Viking is good at that, hope Celebrity will help even though they say you have to have it to board, Indonesia says you can get it when your ship arrives at the port.

[IWantToLiveOverTheSea]

19 hours ago, JJean said:

I can't get the VOA for Indonesia to work as I can't convert to JPG, can i get it at the Bali Cruiseport.  

Not sure about getting it at port.  The cruise line we use the most offers to get visas for us, but at a steep price.  But what do you need to convert to a jpg?  What format is the photo or whatever?  Maybe I can point you in right direction.

Edited March 3 by IWantToLiveOverTheSea

[JJean]

Actually I need to convert passport and document to pdf from jpg at the last step of visa.

[IWantToLiveOverTheSea]

4 hours ago, JJean said:

Actually I need to convert passport and document to pdf from jpg at the last step of visa.

Well, here's how I convert a jpg that I have on my desktop computer to a pdf on my computer.  I don't know if the same process works on a phone, but theoretically it should.  It's basically a matter of "printing" it to Adobe, not converting.  It can be used on documents, spreadsheets, photos, screenshots and more.  If this doesn't work, you might need to try something else, or maybe send the JPG to a computer and work from there.  Also, I think I have Microsoft on my computer, so I suppose it's possible this won't work for you if you don't.  And it's also possible you may have to load [usually] free Adobe pdf software (or Microsoft?) onto the device you're using.  In any case, this might be worth a try.  (I hate paying the cruise line for something I can do myself.  Oceania charges a LOT; not sure about Viking.)

 

-Pull up JPG of passport page or other document

-Pretend you want to print it, so select "print"

-I get a choice of "printers" from which I select "Microsoft print to PDF"

(There's also a choice of PDF software; but I didn't try that.)

-You may have to check a box saying it's OK for an app to change your printing preferences). If so, check box

-Name your document  ("PDFd passport Jean" or whatever) and select where you want it to be saved (file)

 

You'll then need to find that PDF file - usually not hard, but if in doubt, look under "All files" or something like that.  The document will end in .pdf and will likely have a red pdf Adobe symbol on the document if you display thumbnails of your documents. (The red block won't appear on the pdf'd document, just the thumbnail.)

 

By the way, if you need something that's in landscape format (like one page of passport), making a PDF will help as you can specify whether you want to "print" the document in landscape or portrait orientation.  And I believe it makes the file size a lot smaller, which is often helpful.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 4 by IWantToLiveOverTheSea

[Juno1956]

I have just done ours for our trip next week. My husband gave up in despair after trying for 2 hours! 
Basically used my iPad, had trouble loading my passport photo ,every attempt was turned down . Then I went back a page on the application, tried again and it accepted it. Same with the expiry date on my passport. Just wouldn’t accept it! Went back a page, then it did ! So weird.