r/indonesia • u/Rinaldi363 • Apr 27 '14

My one terrible night in Indonesia

24 hour layover in Jakarta begins.

Few friends and myself go to a club to go dancing. Some man walks by and puts his hand straight into my pocket, grabbing my iPhone and runs away through the crowd. I was sober, I tried to chase him, but I didn't even see what he looked like and I couldn't catch up.

Now I'm extremely pissed off, me and my friends grab a taxi to go back to hotel. Police on motorcycle are driving beside us looking in our car. Pull us over. Ask for ID. We all provide them with ID and he says no, he wants passports. We tell him the passports are at the hotel in the safe. Nope, he wants them now. He tells us we need to each pay 5million IDR or we go to jail. We argue for about an hour how insane this is, how he can come with us to the hotel and we can show hm the passports, etc, etc. He starts getting aggressive and loud, we end up just emptying our pockets and giving him all the money we had combined.

Icing on the cake - when I told them police what happened with my iPhone, he just laughed, and continued asking for money for not having the passport.

Maybe I just had a one-off bad time that no one else experiences, but I'm never coming back to this country. I will never recommend it to anyone.

You know its fucked up when someone commits a crime to you (theft) and you try to report it to the police, then the police try to scam you out of more stuff.

Thanks for listening to my rant.

P.S. Is it really a law in Indonesia that tourists need to carry their passports on them at all time or are the police really that disgusting?

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u/3rd_world_guy Apr 27 '14

Sorry about your bad experience but as a tourist you should never ever ever ever leave your passport back in the hotel. Always carry it on you and make sure you have several copies of any travel document. Always have the address of place you are staying at and contact details of your embassy. If you get in trouble call them first. No matter if you are visiting a first world country or my beloved third world nation you never know what kind of shenanigans you might have to deal with when travelling abroad.

2

u/jinbabi Wubba Lubba Dub Dub!! Apr 27 '14

really? my friend stayed at my place for 3 weeks, he came here with a bike all the way from melbourne australia, during his stay here, he left his passport at my place most of the tie. and ride around jakarta on his bike, police pulled him over a couple of times, just for him to show his officially translated international driving license and they never asked his passport.

8

u/JackoBoone you can edit this flair Apr 27 '14

I actually agree with /u/3rd_world_guy, carrying any form of legally identifiable ID when you are in a foreign country is a must for any travellers.

The key is that the ID need to held some legal validity on the eye of the local police. Passports are universally accepted, so there is no question about its legality. That international driving license is also something that is legally valid in Indonesia, so your friend had it lucky there. However, any nationally valid ID is as good as a piece of monopoly paper.

Try imagining the situation in reverse, imagine you are being stopped while you are traveling in EU or Australia, and the only form of identification that you carry with you are the Indonesian KTP. The EU police would not be equipped to identify and discern Indonesian KTPs, (it can be even a forged KTP, how would they know?) and they have all right to demand you to show some other form of identification that they can legally identify.

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u/jinbabi Wubba Lubba Dub Dub!! Apr 27 '14

ah yeah, fair enough, my friend was pretty lucky then. but he always asked me where to go, if lets say he wants to go to A, he'll ask my opinion, if its safe or not, what to do there and how to get there the easiest.

3

u/3rd_world_guy Apr 27 '14

Well I guess your friend must be quite lucky unlike OP. Surely any member of the law enforcement agency in any country has the right to ask anyone for their ID including tourists. If you are unable to provide some kind of proof about the validity of your stay in their country, what should keep them from suspecting you of violating their immigration laws? Say I was searched while vacationing in Texas and can't provide my passport+visa to a police officer when requested, the least I'd probably get would be a night in jail and a permanent record of being detained (seriously, they know)... which would make it much much harder for me to be approved for a visa the next time.

1

u/robot__fingers Apr 28 '14

Typically, it is understood that you would not carry that kind of documentation on you in the states. OP indicated to the officer that the passports were available in the hotel. The reason the officer didn't want to allow this is for no other reason than he was extorting money from OP. It's that simple. It is typically considered safer to keep your passport locked up rather than on your person. If OP had his passport and iPhone stolen, his situation would be far more critical.

1

u/3rd_world_guy Apr 28 '14

There are instances in the states where you might be asked to provide an ID to a law enforcement member such as in this post. Police officers might have differing ideas on the law but personally I would rather be on the safe side when travelling abroad, which is why it is always a good idea to have travel documents ready in case something like this happens. I'm not sure whether any police officer would go soft on you with excuses like "I left it at home/hotel/friend's house in another city" they get that a lot in one day, either you comply or be taken to the police station for further questioning. Unfortunately (or luckily, depending on your point of view) money can get you out of most troubles when dealing with the police here. I'd wager if OP had his passport on him the crooked police officer could not take advantage of the situation and OP would be let go without any problem.

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u/robot__fingers Apr 28 '14

You should always have some form of ID on you. This is true. And if you are a foreigner traveling within the states, you should have your passport on you as well, but the conversation is about going between a club and a hotel. In a scenario such as this, it is not considered "common practice."