Stay as long as you like… Part 2

Next day. Trying our luck again. Getting up at 5am to depart 5.30am to immigration in the south of the island.

Tired. Sleepy. And yet happy to have the fresh, cool morning air, no burning hot sun yet on our skins. Around 6.15 we get there. Thought we were the only smarty ones to arrive that early. Mistake! There’s a line already! Again. Yet considerably smaller than the day before. It gives hope. Maybe we can get the visa extensions done today.

Bad coffee from the supermarket (the amount of Sweetness many Indonesians can bear would kind of shoot me to the moon & back!), dry bread and 2 toilet stops at the same shop later, my friend just went off to buy some snacks also, the line finally starts to move.

A black car arrives, and excitement goes up. Half past 7, the speakers start crackling. Texting my friend that the fun is starting, expecting to be inside the immigration building soon. Thought wrong again. Over the wall of the immigration building, we hear an announcement, but not really clear.

My friend arrives, we enter the courtyard and are informed to go home, as the Indonesian immigration has decided, as of today, that travelers who arrived in the country after a specific date are for now free to stay until the situation has returned back to normal, flights are not being cancelled anymore, and everyone can be safe again. Wow!! For the first time ever, i don’t need a visa extension on Bali & i am invited to stay!

Now that’s quite awesome, given the circumstances, and i consider myself, ourselves very lucky. So here we are, free to stay, for an uncertain amount of time, and yet it might be longer than expected.

Never thought that this would ever happen to me. Two days at immigration without a visa or even an application, a crazy global situation, and me happily ‘stuck’ on Bali!

Life really does have it’s Magic Ways!!!

(Continuation of Crazy, beautiful day.)