Extending your Social Visa in Bali

Extending your Social Visa in Bali – What to expect

My name is Lya Fitsoulas. I’m a student at INSEEC Business School Paris and I’m currently in Bali for an internship of 4 months. In order to comply with Indonesian visa requirements, I applied for a social-cultural visa prior to my arrival in Bali, I chose Vietnam as a place to apply whilst on holiday there.

Once I applied for my Social Cultural visa in Ho Chi Min city,, I was permitted me to stay for up to 60 days within Indonesia, counted from the day of entry, and I was notified that the social visa could be extended up to 4 times, which makes a total maximum stay of  180 days in Indonesia.

In Bali, you can find three immigration offices:

-Immigration office in Denpasar,
-Immigration office in Nusa Dua
-Immigration office in Singaraja.

The choice of which one to apply your visa  extension at, will depend on where you stay in Bali.

Extending your Social visa in Bali through an agent

If you have a tourist visa, social cultural visa or single business visa, and you want to extend it through an agent, you should submit your passport and details to your appointed agent 7-14 days prior to the visa expiry date. Please be very careful in calculating the date, as you should be counting the day you enter as Day 1.

Once your agent as submitted your documents, all you need to do is to wait for instructions and attend a photo session and finger print scanning. Which should normally take about 30-45 minutes depending on how busy immigration is.

On the day of my photo session, the agent was able to take a number for me. All I had to do was wait for my turn. Prior to the photo session I was a little nervous, the agent gave me a quick briefing and explained what questions I could expect.

The officers at Immigration are known to be diligent in finding out if anyone is in violation of labor and visa laws. Plus, with the language barrier, this can cause confusion. But the briefing helped calm my nerves, and within 20 minutes I had my picture taken, and I was informed my passport would be returned within 7 working days.

How to extend your Social Visa without an agent

If you are not using an agent, it is also possible to handle the extension yourself. The process requires 3 trips to the Immigration office : once for the submission of your passport and the extension forms (you will need to bring a photocopy of your passport, original passport, a signed statement guaranteeing you are not here for work, visa extension forms, and ID card of your local sponsor). Next, you will be given a receipt with a date to return to make payment. On your second trip, you will be given another appointment for your photo session, and the final trip to collect your passport.