Indonesia
Indonesia is more than seventeen thousand islands and one visa, and the second part is what catches people. The thirty day visa on arrival costs IDR 500,000, extends once for another thirty days, and is otherwise rigid. Overstay it and the fine is IDR 1,000,000 for every day, which is twice the visa price per day of lateness.
The country is cheap to be in and expensive to cross. Jakarta to Bali is a flight, not a bus, and island hopping is a series of flights or ferry days that each eat an afternoon. Price the internal legs before you price the hotels, because they are usually the line that breaks a budget built on daily costs.
Two pieces of paperwork catch almost everyone. The All Indonesia arrival card is mandatory and free, filed within three days before you land, and paid lookalike sites exist in numbers the government warns about in writing. The second is the one nobody mentions. If you stay in private accommodation rather than a hotel, you register yourself at the local police station. A villa booked through a platform is private accommodation. The fine for skipping it is IDR 5,000,000.
Indonesia will not suit you if you want to drive on your own licence. You cannot, and you cannot buy the permit here either. It will not suit you if you need settled weather across one trip, because the seasons run opposite ways in the west and the east.
What it does suit: long stays at a low daily cost, diving, volcanoes, and anyone willing to treat each island as its own trip.
- Entry and visas
You need a visa. There is no visa exemption for most Western passports. The usual route is the thirty day Visitor Visa, bought either at the counter as a visa on arrival or online before you fly as an e-VOA, and the fee is IDR 500,000 either way: Directorate General of Immigration, e-VOA information. It is single entry. Read the two dates on it carefully, because they are different numbers: the visa is valid for 90 days from the date you nominate, and the stay it buys is 30 days from the day you actually land.
It extends once, for another 30 days, at an immigration office inside Indonesia, or online if you bought it online. Extend inside the first 30 days. Overstaying costs IDR 1,000,000 per day and can end in detention, deportation and a re-entry ban, which Immigration states on its own FAQ and the Foreign Office repeats: Indonesia entry requirements.
Your passport needs six months of validity counted from the day you arrive, plus two blank pages. Eighty seven nationalities are eligible for the e-VOA and the full list sits on the immigration page above. Holders of travel documents other than a passport cannot use it at all. A yellow fever certificate is required if you arrive from a country on the transmission risk list.
Everyone arriving files the All Indonesia arrival card within three days before arrival. It is free, it replaced the paper arrival card along with the separate customs and health declarations, and it is filed in one place only: All Indonesia. Sites that charge for it are not official, and the Foreign Office says so in those terms.
The rule most visitors miss has nothing to do with visas. Stay in private accommodation rather than a hotel and you must register your presence at the nearest police station yourself. A villa booked through a platform is private accommodation. The fine is IDR 5,000,000. A hotel registers you automatically, which is a real argument for a hotel on a first trip.
The visa on arrival is also not a work permit. The Foreign Office spells out that it does not cover volunteering, influencer work or producing commercial online content, which is worth reading twice if your trip is funded by posting about it.
- Taxes and fees
Accommodation and restaurant bills carry a local tax called PBJT, and it is set by the regency or city rather than nationally. Law 1 of 2022 on fiscal relations between central and regional government caps it at 10 per cent, and the tourist regencies use the cap.
In Bali that matters, because the island is eight regencies and one city, each with its own regulation. Badung covers Kuta, Legian, Seminyak, Canggu, Jimbaran and Nusa Dua, which is most of the island’s beds, and its rate is 10 per cent under Perda 7 of 2023, amended by Perda 8 of 2025 with effect from 1 January 2026. Ubud is in Gianyar, a different regency under a different regulation, so check the rate on the bill rather than carrying Badung’s figure inland.
Most hotels add a service charge on top of the tax and quote the room before both. A rate advertised as plus plus is the room alone. Ask for the nett figure before you compare two hotels, because the tax by itself adds a tenth and the service charge is additional to that.
Bali also charges foreign visitors a levy of its own, separate from any of this and separate from the visa. The amount and the way it is collected are on the Bali hub below.
Flying out, departure tax is inside the ticket price on domestic flights. On some international departures it is not, and the Foreign Office advises checking with the airline rather than assuming.
Customs allows each arriving passenger goods to a value of FOB USD 500 duty free, plus one litre of alcohol and 200 cigarettes. Those are the figures printed on the declaration form itself: Indonesian Customs Declaration.
- Getting around
You cannot drive in Indonesia on your home licence. The UK Foreign Office puts it without qualification: a UK licence is not valid, and you drive on an International Driving Permit issued in the UK. Indonesia safety and security. Get the permit before you leave. You cannot buy one in Indonesia, because Indonesia issues permits only to holders of its own licence.
That matters most for scooters. Bali’s rental trade will hand over a bike against a passport photograph and no licence check, which is a commercial decision rather than a legal one. The Foreign Office records a large increase in moped and motorbike accidents in Bali, some of them fatal, and warns that foreign nationals caught in even minor traffic incidents are vulnerable to extortion. Riding without the right licence also voids most travel insurance, and that is the part that costs real money rather than a fine.
Grab and Gojek are the ride-hailing apps, and both quote a fixed fare before you accept, which removes the meter argument entirely. Some areas restrict app pickups, so where that happens agree the fare before you get in rather than after.
Between islands, treat every hop as a flight or a full day on a ferry. The Foreign Office notes that sea safety standards vary between operators, that vessels are often crowded and overloaded, and that child life jackets are not always carried, so bring your own if you are travelling with children.
Java has the country’s only high-speed line, Whoosh, between Jakarta and Bandung. Bali has no passenger railway at all, so a Bali trip is cars, scooters and apps, and the distances behave accordingly.
- Cards and money
The rupiah is a large-number currency and the zeros are the trap. The Foreign Office prices the Bali levy of IDR 150,000 at about GBP 8, which puts IDR 100,000 a little over five pounds. The 1,000 and 100,000 notes are easy to confuse at speed, so count before you hand anything over.
Use licensed money changers only, and there is a test for it. A licensed changer displays a Bank of Indonesia logo and a QR code, and you open the code to check the business name and its operating licence. Unlicensed changers short-change people. That advice, and the warnings that credit card fraud is common and that criminals stick fake helpline numbers on ATMs, all come from the Foreign Office page on Indonesia.
Refuse dynamic currency conversion. When a card terminal or an ATM offers to bill you in pounds, euros or dollars instead of rupiah, that is the merchant’s exchange rate rather than your bank’s, and it is the worse of the two. Take the rupiah option every time. The longer version of that argument is in card versus cash abroad.
Cards work in hotels, malls, and anywhere built for visitors. Warungs, markets, temple entries, parking and most of rural Indonesia are cash. QRIS, the national QR payment standard, is everywhere locally but needs an Indonesian bank account, so it is not a visitor tool however often you see the sticker.
- Currency
- IDR
- Best months
- Indonesia is too large for one season. The UK Foreign Office puts the rainy season at roughly October to March across most of the country, with eastern Indonesia reversed and wet from April to August. Haze from fires on Sumatra and Borneo is worst in the dry months, April to September, and does not reach Bali. Avoid the first half of March 2027 unless you want company. Nyepi falls on 8 March, Idul Fitri on 10 and 11 March, and joint leave on the 9th, 12th and 15th, so 6 to 15 March is one continuous national holiday and the heaviest domestic travel window of the year.
Prices checked 2026-10