You’ll need a holiday after tackling Bali’s nightmare airport queues

Ngurah Rai Airport, Bali. You “debark”, as Americans economically put it, into an arrival hall so large that your Airbus might have taxied right in and saved everyone a walk. Meanwhile, Bali awaits just a few paces and minutes away.

And then you see them. Two hundred, 300 people – who’s counting? – planeloads, all ahead of you in lines, wandering bewildered or hopping from queue to shuffling queue, questioning those in the queues in front: “Am I in the right line?” Who knows? It turns out I am in the right one, the “visa on arrival” payment queue where you surrender 500,000 rupiah in order to queue for the next queue. Good morning, Indonesia.Passengers are paying in dollars, euros, pesos, yuan, rubles, zlotys, you-name-it.

Courtesy of a simple Australian $50 note, I clear the visa fee rank, only to move onto the immigration line, a sort of human cattle crush. Snaking lines of hundreds of foreigners shuffle forward by the centimetre, dazed and bemused, worrying afresh about whether they’re in the right line. They are, but for many, unnecessarily so. A few metres away, 30 gleaming electronic gates stand unused except by a few locals and visa-exempt ASEAN passport holders.

Another 20 minutes creep by in this petty pace on the imigrasi conga line. My turn comes and goes, smoothly. Now officially stamped into Indonesia, I brace for the next round of potential Do-Not-Pass-Go: the person-free Electronic Customs Declaration terminal. Dozens of desperates on the same mission are milling around the eight or nine terminals. In fact, you can skip this step by declaring in advance and receiving your clearance code online. If only one knew.

After an hour of queueing for queues, I stagger out into actual Bali, aching for a Bintang, a massage and a week to get over it all before queueing again for departure. A local friend who’s patiently waited for me says, “Aussie passport – you could have just used an e-visa at the electronic gate.” If only one knew.Get exclusive travel deals delivered straight to your inbox.

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