Australians, Russians, Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese were practically over the moon when sources started reporting late last year that Indonesia would scrap its visa on arrival fee for those nationalities starting in 2015.
However, it looks like tourists from those five countries should hold off the celebration and factor the VOA fee into their Bali trip budgets in 2015 after all.
According to a letter published online by the Indonesian Director General of Immigration dated January 5, 2015, there is yet to be an official provision that would knock off VOA fees for Australian, Russian, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese tourists and travelers should ignore media reports stating otherwise.
An excerpt from the letter:
To avoid misunderstandings and the maze of information about free short visit visas, Presidential Decree No. 43 2011 should be referred to, where citizens from 15 countries can enter Indonesia without visa fees, namely: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, Chile, Morocco, Peru, Vietnam, Ecuador, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.
Note that citizens from Australia, Russia, Korea, China, and Japan are not included in that list so they don’t get in for free, according to the letter.
Also, based on a steady stream of complaints from Bali tourists on social media (especially like this one on Facebook) since the turn of the new year, it really does look like that immigration initiative did not actually go through and those five nationalities are stuck paying the $35 fee with the rest of us.
