Travelling from Cambodia to Indonesia

We spent most of today travelling from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Denpasar on Bali Island in Indonesia. The route took us via Kuala Lumpur where we had a couple of hours at the airport (we’ll be back).

After a leisurely breakfast we took a motor-riksha to the airport. Mainly for the experience, but it was also cheaper than the taxis used - so it seems - almost exclusively by the tourists.

All went well until at check-in, the lady at the counter wanted to see our proof of onward travel from Indonesia. Basically, Indonesia doesn’t let foreigners (travelling on a one-way ticket) come into the country unless they can show a ticket with which they will leave Indonesia again. It’s extremely stupid: if you really wanted to stay in Indonesia, having to buy a flight out of the country (and later not using it) wont stop you.

Anyway, we, of course, didn’t have proof of onward travel. On the contrary, we were actually quite happy to be in one place for a couple of weeks and wanted to work out the details of where we would go afterwards while we stayed on our little island. Still, the last would not let us check-in, claiming she had cases where the Indonesian immigration sent people away who didn’t have proof of onward travel. So we scrambled at the airport to quickly buy the cheapest tickets we could find from Indonesia back to Kuala Lumpur. We thought of going there for a couple of days - and now those plans were being finalized while standing at the check-in counter in Phnom Penh. After we had that sorted, everything went well. Needless to say, no immigration officer in Indonesia asked us about proof of onward travel when we arrived there...

We arrived in Bali after dark, avoided being scammed by a taxi driver (after negotiating the price in advance, he later claimed that was meant per person - yeah right), and went to bed.Read more