Aussie learns ‘big life lesson’ after making a mistake trying to enter Bali

A woman has warned fellow Australians hoping to avoid the long queues on arrival in Bali not to make the same costly mistake with her visa that she paid the price for.

Visa on arrival forms allow travelers entering the Indonesian island to skip immigration lines and save time completing travel documents.

Australian tourist Laura Davy completed such a form, but realised she had made a mistake when filling it out online.

It cost her an uncomfortable wait at Balinese customs and a $50 fine.

Ms Davy told Daily Mail Australia the ordeal was “very disappointing” but she vowed never to do it again.

She said an airport employee told her she would not be allowed to leave the arrivals hall after landing because of her visa.

Mrs Davy thought she would get through the immigration procedure at Denpasar airport, but she was overtaken.

“The automatic gates that scan your passport didn’t work for me – probably because they noticed an error in my visa – so I had to go through customs manually,” she recalls.

She was stopped by a customs officer, who had problems with missing letters before the number sequence at the top right of her passport.

“When (the man at customs) checked my details to make sure they were 110 per cent correct, he said, ‘You have to pay another $50 because you entered your passport number incorrectly,’” Ms Davy explained. in a TikTok video.

“I said something like, ‘No, I didn’t. I filled in all the numbers correctly.’ He said something like, ‘You missed the first two letters.’

Her passport has the letters “PA” followed by numbers, she said.

“I always thought ‘PA’ meant passport number,” she explains.

“I thought, ‘Why should I record them?’” she wondered in the video.

“They made me pay another $50. I paid $100 for 30 days. That’s a big life lesson for me.

‘If you pay for your visa in advance, please fill in all your details 100 percent correctly.’

Ms Davy told the Daily Mail Australia that other Australians had experienced similar tragedies at the airport, but the outcome was different.

“Other people have sent me messages saying that some people had their incorrect information corrected right away and they didn’t have to pay the extra $50,” she said.

“We landed at 10:20pm so I guess the guards were just grumpy and didn’t want to bother helping me,” she joked.

‘Very disappointing, but I won’t do it again!’

Nearly 860,000 Australians visited the Indonesian island between January and July 2024

However, it has been reported that Indonesia will be waiving the $50 visa fee for Australians and a limited group of other countries from October.

The island nation plans to abolish the levy in a bid to boost its struggling tourism industry

Australians must still apply for a visa for a 30-day stay, which can be extended to 60 days.

Visa fees were largely unpopular with Australian travellers after they were reintroduced following the Covid pandemic.

A financial expert said Yeah The cost could deter larger families from traveling to the idyllic tourist island.

“When you’re looking at spending thousands of dollars on a holiday abroad, a $50 visa for a solo traveller probably isn’t enough to deter someone from going to Bali,” says Finder’s Sarah Megginson.

‘But if you travel with the whole family, this allowance can be quite high.’

Laura Davy urges Australians to check their visa details when travelling

Despite the exemption, Australians travelling to Bali will still have to pay a $15 tourist tax, which was introduced earlier this year to combat overtourism in the province.

Indonesia aims to reach $18 billion in tourism revenue by 2024.

According to the Henley Passport Index, the Australian passport ranks highly when it comes to freedom to travel globally, although Singapore takes the top spot.