When I arrived here I entered on a standard 30 day tourist visa purchased on entry which is not extendible – on Monday night around nine thirty lil' bro' informed me that I would be going to Singapore on Tuesday to get it replaced with a 60 day extendible one. The bad news was that I would have to leave the house at 03:30 to catch the flight and that I would need a passport photo to go with the visa application form.
On arrival I eventually get through to the local agent and am told to tell the taxi to head for the Forum Mall by the Hilton Hotel and then to proceed to the nearest McDonalds from there. Yer man's fixer was processing a red haired lass's details when I got there and I said that I needed photos done, got directed to a mall across the street where I was told that there was a booth on the 2nd floor.
Culture difference stepped in here as I went up 2 floors and scoured thoroughly with no success – resisted the entreaties of a young lass to have a massage as I passed the 1st floor on the way up and down. Asked a security guard and was told it was on the 1st floor so I was able to get that part done and returned to the fixer who had a pile of 10 or so passports to get processed at the Indonesian embassy.
Even though this had been set up through lil' bro's company it is still a wee bit daunting to hand over your passport to a stranger in a foreign land with only the simple instruction of return in 4 and a half hours to get it back. Had noticed an Irish Theme bar across the road so headed there for some lunch and treated myself to 2 pints of extra cold draught Guinness as a belated St Patrick's day celebration.
Ambled around town window shopping and people watching until there was an hour or so before the rendezvous when I got a large coffee in a place just down the road from McDonalds. Notice a pensive looking red haired lass sitting outside and thought that she might be the one from this morning but was not sure as I had not been paying her that much attention at the time.
Guy was a little over 15 mins late getting back and I noticed that a couple of his customers were getting a little twitchy while waiting - one them being the red haired lass from earlier. Much relief and happy faces all around when he appeared with processed passports and I got a cab back to the airport for the return journey – all in all a fun day out.
The really good news was that lil bro's Kiwi buddy was not in town or I would never have made it out of the Irish bar in a fit state to cross the road never mind get back to the airport, based on our encounters in the past.
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6 comments:
Glad everything worked out and that there are decent, honest people the world over. :)
Glad you found some Guinness to help pass the time, too.
A drop of the black stuff in the Lion's city - now there's a thought. Just look at my flickr photos for today! ...and you get a 'nod' on my latest post.
As to floors - same thing in Europe.
rt, Guinness was expensive at £4.40 a pint but worth ever penny.
Noddy, good to see that you are enjoying some fine Spring weather.
Gads, you reminded me of why I an so content to stay in the canyon for six months at a time. Very little red tape out here, you know. So glad you got yours ironed out without snags.
Lin, red tape is not much fun but as compensation I had a grand day out and the Guinness was the proverbial icing on the cake!
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