Aussie tourist is held by armed guards and kicked out of Bali over minor passport issue
- Aussie vacationer stopped at Bali airport
- He was arrested due to a small tear in the passport
- Flew back to get a new passport
Due to a small tear in a passport, an Aussie holidaymaker was denied entry to Bali and forced to fly home after being detained by armed guards.
Matt Vandenberg, 29, took off on a Jetstar flight from Sydney at 6am on Tuesday with plans to celebrate a friend’s wedding on the island on Friday.
But his dreams of a fun vacation came to a sudden halt when he tried to get through Indonesian customs.
Mr Vandenberg said everything was going according to plan until an immigration officer told him there was a 1cm tear along the spine of the front page of his passport.
To be fair, he’s right (I had no idea until he bent it all the way back, and it caught my eye). You couldn’t see it any other way,” Vanderberg tweeted Tuesday.
Matt Vandenberg (pictured left) tries to make the best of his situation after being told not to leave Bali airport
A minute of tearing through an Australian passport was enough to see an Aussie holidaymaker denied entry to Bali and forced to fly home
The shocked tourist was taken to a customs office where he was told the split was not acceptable and he would not be allowed into the country.
Despite protesting that Sydney immigration officials were ‘fine’ when they scanned the document, Mr Vanderberg saw his passport confiscated until he could board a flight home that evening.
He was allowed to roam the airport during his 11-hour wait, but he was required to have two armed police guards with him at all times.
“Honestly they are the nicest people you could have by my side, feel very sorry for me – rules are rules,” he tweeted with a photo of his handlers smiling.
Mr. Vandenberg also saw the humor in his situation.
By Friday morning, Mr Vandenberg was back in Sydney, where he hopes to get an emergency passport to make it to his friend’s wedding in Bali on Friday
Over an agonizing twelve hours, Mr. Vandenberg tweeted a photo of Viktor Navorski, Tom Hanks’ character trapped in an American airport in the Hollywood movie The Terminal, pressing his own face onto the actor.
He was back in Sydney on Wednesday morning, where he has applied for an emergency passport in the hope of getting back to Bali in time for his friend’s wedding.
Mr Vandenberg told news.com.au that the entire episode will likely cost him $15,000 on top of the original travel costs.
“It’s probably a good warning to people traveling to Indonesia – they don’t mess around,” he tweeted.