Out of everything in our whole voyage, the check-in process to Indonesia was the part I dreaded most. I had read early on that Indonesian bureaucracy was something that should be respected (if not feared). Sailors had told many tales of bad clashes with immigration and customs. In that process I learnt two vital things: 1. We needed a ship-stamp, and 2. we needed an AIS to be allowed into Indonesia. Also, we should look smart when dealing with customs and have all our paperwork organized and presentable. This made me make an extra effort to get everything right, but what if I had forgotten something? What if there was some crucial detail I had missed? The prospect of being denied entry was daunting, but I could only do my best and try.
As soon as we arrived in the Philippines my brain capacity was filled with boat work. I didn’t have time to think about what was to come. But we did one thing right: We got Sammy an Indonesian visitor’s VISA. But we also did one thing wrong: We didn’t get ourselves visitor’s VISAs. We thought it was best to do a VISA on arrival, but in the last moment before leaving the Philippines we discovered that we would only get 1 month on VISA on arrival, while 2 months if we applied ahead of time. At the very last moment, just before leaving the Philippines, the rest of us also applied for VISAs.
Once we arrived in Bitung I discovered another great oversight. I had no agent or contact person on the ground, and we soon found that nobody spoke English! As soon as we arrived at the harbor we were approached by two young men who said one word on repeat: “SCRAP SCRAP!” They wondered if we had scrap metal on board. I wondered if they could see that our boat was made of wood. One of the guys came on board and the language barrier quickly became obvious. He pointed to his phone and said “ENGLISH” as he made a call. We tried to anchor in the harbor, but the bottom was littered by trash and our anchor could not hold. Soon two new guys came out to our boat to help us.
One guy was a fisherman who told us to go out of the harbor and over to some large fishing boats that were moored. The other guy was the one who could speak English. His name was Udin, and he quickly declared that he would help us with the check-in process. I felt shanghaied by these people and that we had no choice but to go along with it. But at the same time, I felt blessed to have a contact on the ground to help us with the process. My only question was: is he trustworthy? Is this too good to be true, or is this a gift from God?
We soon found out that Udin was a good guy. After anchoring between some fishing boats, Naomi and I went to shore with Udin. It felt so funny to be on firm ground again after 7 days at sea! Udin walked with us and we took a local minibus to town. Cheap transportation bodes well for the price of his services. He also paid for the transport, no questions asked, and helped us find the different offices. I realized that I would have difficulties figuring these things out by myself. The language is completely different than English, and google does not translate well into Indonesian.
First we go to the quarantine office where the process seemed to be just formalities. We got the famous Indonesian green book for ship health, and then we all had a group photo. They seemed honored by our visit. Next was immigration, and this is where the problems arose. Since everyone, except Sammy, had applied for our VISAs just before leaving the Philippines, we didn’t have all our VISA papers yet. The officials were very accommodating, and we were allowed to use their wifi to find our VISAs which thankfully had been processed in time. But Paul was back on the boat and we weren’t able to get a hold of him or his VISA.
Udin took off on a scooter taxi and was able to go to the boat, pick up Paul, and take him to the immigration office. It was late in the day and we were a bit stressed as the office was closing and the officials were getting more impatient. Paul had no idea why he was summoned, and when he arrived to find out that he needed to log into his email to produce his VISA, he got nervous. He didn’t remember his password, his phone had died from water damage recently and his iPad was back on the boat. After many failed attempts to log into his email, the office was way past closing, and we were allowed to leave. We had to return to our boat and come back in the morning. They were very gracious with us, instead of playing hard and imprisoning us for failing to have VISAs, they showed grace and let us go.
The next day I returned with Sammy and Paul while Naomi stayed back at the boat. They needed to see everyone’s faces. Paul had been able to get his VISA and we sat around waiting for an hour or so until everything was processed. I released Paul and Sammy to go and roam on their own, while I followed behind Udin to the next office. Next up was customs, and again we were waiting for a long time. Turned out that the arrival papers I had filled out online before our departure were invalid as we didn’t arrive on the day I said we would, so I had to fix that before we could proceed. Once the paperwork was in order, we went out to the boat with two customs officials to do a routine check. Naomi was on board and invited everyone to have tea. The customs officials were rummaging around, taking photos while pretending to look for illegal things. They only did a surface check and were happy with us. We took them back to land and Udin took me to the next office.
The harbormaster’s office was the final office of the check-in process. Again there was a lot of paperwork and waiting around. I found out that we were expected to also check out of the harbor the next day unless I wanted to do the whole round of offices again when we were ready to leave. At this point, I had enough of offices and decided we would check out the next day to continue our voyage. Then, suddenly, we were done! Almost exactly 24 hours after beginning the check-in process I had everything in order. We were successfully checked in to Indonesia and I was so relieved! I bought ice cream for everyone and returned to our boat. It was also Paul’s birthday, and the crew went out in the evening to celebrate. I stayed behind to wind down and guard the boat. I was so happy to have this part of the voyage behind us. I thought nothing could stop us now, but I had no idea what would happen next…