PASSPORT

Your passport will have to be valid for 6 months beyond the planned date of entering Indonesia.
Make sure it is not too full yet - it is a formal/legal requirement for entering Indonesia that your passport should have 2 empty pages in it when you arrive (so that it has enough space for their stamps).

  ONWARD TICKET

Officially, every visitor must hold a ticket out of Indonesia to be allowed to enter the country. This may be checked at three places:

• 1: By an Indonesian embassy, if applying for a visa in advance;
• 2: By check-in staff at the airport where you are boarding your flight to Indonesia;
• 3: By Indonesian immigration upon arrival.

If you don't have an onward ticket, check-in staff can refuse to let you board you flight, while Indonesian immigration officials may refuse to let you enter the country, or demand a bribe. You may also be offered the option of buying an onward ticket on the spot, at a price that is likely to be higher than what you could have found online. This is a nuisance for those who plan to leave Indonesia overland by taking a boat to Malaysia or crossing the border to Papua New Guinea, or for those who simply haven't decided how long they wish to stay and therefore would rather not buy their onward tickets well in advance. If you don't have one, you can of course try and risk catching your flight to the country hoping no one will check, but a safer, legal option is buying the cheapest online ticket out of Indonesia available (often costing only around US$ 20-30 with Air Asia) even if you are not planning to use it later. Onward tickets are rarely checked if entering Indonesia by sea, and virtually never if entering through a land border.

VISAS

Important! When counting the length of stay, Indonesian immigration authorities count both the date of arrival and the date of departure as a full day each. So if you enter on the 1st January and get a 30 day visa, you must leave on the 30th January, not the 31st!

VISA EXEMPTION (VISA-FREE ENTRY):

Nationals of 169 countries can now enter Indonesia without a visa through 124 entry points, and receive a non-extendable 30 day permit to stay. The list of eligible countries covers all but a few usual exceptions like Iraq or Somalia, and the list of entry points cover pretty much all a tourist is likely to use. If in doubt about your nationality or point of entry, check the long lists on the official website of Indonesian Immigration: www.imigrasi.go.id

VISA ON ARRIVAL:

Nationals of 68 countries can also get an actual Indonesian visa (as opposed to a visa-free entry stamp) upon arrival so long as they enter and exit Indonesia through one of the designated entry points. These visas will cost 500.000 Rp for a 30 day visa (you can't get a longer one upon arrival!) and are  extendable by another 30 days within the country. You will not need any photos, nor to fill in any forms, but you should ideally have the right amount in hand in Indonesian cash, as other currencies may only be accepted at a poorer rate.

List of eligible countries:

List of designated entry points:

By Air:

• Bali: Denpasar
• Java: Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Solo
• Nusa Tenggara: Kupang (Timor), Mataram (Lombok)
• Sumatra: Banda Aceh, Medan, Pekanbaru, Padang, Palembang
• Riau Islands: Batam
• Kalimantan: Balikpapan, Pontianak
• Sulawesi: Makassar, Manado

By Sea or Land:

• Bali: Benoa, Padangbai
• Java: Jakarta (Tanjung Priok), Semarang
• Nusa Tenggara: Maumere (Flores), Tenau (near Kupang, Timor)
• Sumatra: Belawan (near Medan), Dumai, Padang, Sibolga
• Riau Islands: Batam (Batam Centre, Batu Ampar, Nongsa, Sekupang, Teluk Senimba), Bintan (Tanjung Pinang, Tanjung Uban), Karimun (Tanjung Balai)
• Kalimantan: Entikong (land border with Sarawak)
• Sulawesi: Bitung, Makassar, Pare-pare
• Papua: Jayapura (by sea only!)

Important! If you plan to use any other entry point to the country, you must get a visa in advance even if you would otherwise be eligible for a visa on arrival! This is most likely to affect those who plan to enter Indonesia by land from East Timor or Papua New Guinea, or by sea from Sabah. You may also need a visa in advance if you plan to enter via a visa on arrival or visa-free entry point but leave via one requiring visas, though enforcement of this varies from border to border.

VISA IN ADVANCE:

Nationals of countries not eligible for visa-free entry, or anyone who plans to stay longer than 60 days, must get a visa in advance from an Indonesian embassy or consulate abroad. Tourist visas obtained this way usually cost under US$ 50, are valid for entry within 3 months and then for a stay of usually 60 (rarely only 30) days, and are extendable 4 times! Anyone else planning to stay between  30-60 days is also advised to get  a 60 day visa in advance, as this will save the hassle of extending a 30 day visa on arrival within the country.

Applying for a visa in advance

Procedures and requirements vary from one Indonesian embassy or consulate to the other, so you will have to ask the one you are going to deal with about the specifics. If the embassy in your home country proves difficult to deal with (the one in London is notorious), remember that you could easily get a 60 day tourist visa from the Indonesian consulate in Penang (Malaysia), or the embassies in Bangkok and Singapore if you pass through those countries first on the way to Indonesia. Note that the embassy in Kuala Lumpur nowadays only issues 30 day tourist visas, and the same is often the case in Dili (East Timor) and Vanimo (PNG).

You will certainly need:

• Passport, valid for 6 months beyond the planned date of entry
• Passport photos
• Filled-in visa application form

You may or may not need the following:

• Round-trip air tickets
• Bank statement
• Employer's letter allowing you to leave
• Letter detailing your planned itinerary

Important! On the visa application form, you will be asked to list places you plan to visit in Indonesia. What you put here is not binding in any way, so just list a few touristy places like Bali, Yogyakarta and Manado to save any further questions. Don't list any place in Papua, Maluku, Central Sulawesi or Aceh on your application form, or even worse, ask the staff about these regions. Years ago, foreigners required special permits obtained in advance to enter these regions, and while that requirement has been dropped many years ago (only Papua still requires permits, and these are issued once there), most Indonesian embassies have never been updated on this, and many still seem to believe permits are needed. They may even post this on their websites, and may refuse to issue you a visa if you tell them you want to visit these places. Don't worry, regardless of what they believe or tell you, you will still be able to visit any part of Indonesia once you have your visa and are inside the country. You may find this hard to believe, thinking an embassy should know these matters best, but Indonesia is Indonesia, and things don't follow Western logic!

VISA EXTENSIONS

Those taking advantage of visa-free entry apparently still can't extend their stay beyond the initial 30 days. 

The 30 day visas issued upon arrival can be extended by another 30 days, but only once! The extensions can be a bit of a hassle to get, so anyone planning to stay longer than 30 days had better get a 60 day visa from an Indonesian embassy or consulate before arrival! Those who obtained a tourist visa from an Indonesian embassy before arrival can try and get  up to 4 extensions of 30 days at a time, which would allow you to stay nearly 6 months in total.

Extensions are handled by immigration offices throughout the country, usually found in the provincial capitals and at other international entry points, plus in some other major cities. See the full list here.

You will need to dress up neatly, ask nicely, pay a fee of 500.000 Rp, fill in forms (in black ink!), take photocopies of your passport's biodata and Indonesian visa plus entry stamp pages, show your onward ticket (out of Indonesia) once again, get your portrait and fingerprints taken, and may also require a local person or organization to "sponsor" you. The last is most likely to be necessary if extending a visa issued by an embassy, though in my experience this varies from office to office. The whole procedure can take anything beween a few hours and a few days (the official rule seems to be 3 working days), and  remember that some offices/officers may not  like to do them at all so don't leave it till the very last moment! Then again, if you try to apply long before your current visa is about to expire, you may simply be told to come back closer to the date of expiry - you can always try and give them a reason why an early extension is necessary. 

A popular alternative to extending a visa is doing a "border-run" to a neighbouring country, which means leaving Indonesia on the last day of your initial visa for one of its neighbours, and picking up either a new 60 day "Visa in Advance" from an Indonesian embassy or consulate there, or a new 30 day "Visa on Arrival" or visa-free entry permit when you come back. This can be easier than extending your visa within Indonesia, and this way you can get a new 60 days (if you pick up a visa in advance), whereas extensions only give 30 at a time. Border-runs can be done either by crossing the land borders from Kalimantan to Malaysian Borneo, West Timor to East Timor or Papua to PNG (note that both East Timor and PNG may require their own visas!), taking the frequent boats from Sumatra to West Malaysia or Singapore, and of course by taking a cheap flight on one of the budget airlines from Sumatra, Java, Bali, Lombok, Kalimantan or Sulawesi to Malaysia or Singapore. Many people wonder how many such "border-runs" they can do, but at least presently there seems to be no official limit on this! Nor is there a minimum amount of time you must stay outside Indonesia - you could even return the same day.

OVERSTAYING

If you overstay your visa by a few days, you will have to pay an official fine of a steep 1 million Rp per day when leaving. Other than the fine, there are no additional sanctions. Of course, you should still be polite and apologetic. Though the same rule officially applies for those overstaying up to 60 days, in practice overstaying by a longer period may well be taken more seriously -  better don't do it! In fact if you think there might be a chance you want to stay longer than 30 days, do get a 60 day visa in advance. If you want to stay longer than 60 days, extend that visa, or do a "border-run" to a neighbouring country to get a new visa.