Welcome back to Planet Doug behind the scenes for Monday, November 10th, 2025. It’s about 10:30 in the morning. I’m at the Raja Boat Hotel here in the Chow Kit district of Kuala Lumpur. And the main thing that I wanted to talk about this morning is more in the way of an announcement. I was going to write this down and just post it to Patreon, post it to YouTube, etc. But I thought, hey, why not tell the story as a video? So that is what I’m doing. So the main point is that I just booked a flight out of Malaysia and I had to do that because my visa is expiring. In fact, my visa expires this week on Thursday. So, I had to leave Malaysia before Thursday, go somewhere else, and of course, in theory, fingers crossed, hopefully come back into Malaysia with a 90-day social visit pass, a fresh visa as it were, and then I can finally get on my bicycle and go for a tour around Malaysia during the monsoon season. So, we’ll see how all that works out. So yeah, I had to leave Malaysia and I had a lot of thoughts about this. My original plan was to go get my bicycle in Port Dickson and then I was just going to ride down the coast to Melaka, Johor Bahru and then I’d be in Johor Bahru around the time my visa is expiring and then I would cross the border into Singapore and then come back into Malaysia. That seemed like the easiest thing to do and that’s what I was sort of working towards. But then I had a lot of opportunities here in Kuala Lumpur. Some people that I’ve gotten to know, things I was able to do. So I kept extending my stay in KL by two more days, then three more days, then two more days, and I had other things to do. And before I knew it, there was a little bit of a time crunch now that if I were going to ride my bike to Johor Bahru and going to Singapore, yeah, there weren’t going to be as many days available as I had hoped, particularly if I wanted to spend like a week in Melaka, things like that along the way. And then I had another issue which turned out to be the key factor in this, which is that I got a new passport. So I have the passport. My old passport is the one that I entered Malaysia on. So my entry stamp is in my old passport. And that passport is now cancelled. It has canceled stamped on every page. The corner has been cut off. It is an invalid travel document and I can’t use it anymore. So I have to exit Malaysia using my new passport. But in order to do that, I have to somehow get Malaysian immigration to understand that right now I have two passports and I need to get my records transferred from my old one to my new one. So when I exit Malaysia, I need immigration to change their computer records to update it to my new passport number. And then as I go through immigration, I need them to put the exit stamp in the new passport, not the old one. So there’s a little bit of a bureaucratic issue hanging over my head. And I started looking into this and doing research and I heard a lot of stories. Well, not a lot of stories. I started hearing some stories that people doing this going into Singapore ran into trouble. They still managed to get it done, I think, but it wasn’t easy. Mainly because it’s a land border crossing Malaysia into Singapore and it’s an extremely busy one. Commuters by the thousands, maybe by the tens of thousands, I don’t know, pour across that border in both directions every day. So, it’s highly automated, highly there’s like they’re built to handle a huge flow. And like you can even get on a bus here in Kuala Lumpur that takes you all the way into Singapore. So, you basically buy a bus ticket to Singapore and the bus pulls in at immigration at the border. Everybody gets off the bus, goes into immigration, then they come out of immigration, and meanwhile the bus has passed the border, and you all pile into the same bus, and then it takes you into downtown Singapore. And that seems like it would be the easiest thing to do. However, I would get into trouble because it would take longer for me. I can’t just go zip through the normal system. I can’t use the auto gate, for example. I can’t just scan my passport, be done in 2 minutes, and then get back on the bus. I’m going to have to find someone in immigration who knows about how to do this. They’re going to pull me out of line. They’re going to take me to a special office. They’re going to take me somewhere and they’re going to have to sit down. I don’t know. And what I found out is that if you go through the border crossing into Singapore, it could be problematic because they’re not accustomed to handling this sort of thing. And yeah, I got I’ve crossed that border a few times in my life, so I know what it’s like. And I just don’t know. I was trying to visualize how it would work out that there you are a foreigner trying to cross and then you’re going up to the immigration counter and then you say to the guy, “Oh, I have two passports.” And you’ve got like 150 people behind you in line. Everybody wants to zoom zoom through and he’s looking at you and there’s like he may or may not know what you’re talking about and he’s got a call and it could turn into a big deal. So, I have no confidence that the Singapore border crossing was the best way to go.
And then I was still thinking about doing the Singapore thing. So, and actually I met up with a Planet Doug subscriber for dinner. And we went out for dinner and we were talking exchanging stories about our travel plans, things that and I was talking about this story and this man that I met said, “Well, why don’t you just go to immigration here in KL, get it taken care of in advance?” And then he put that idea in my head. And it just seemed like, yeah, that probably is the best thing to do. Like why wait until you’re at the border? If I want to go to Singapore, yeah, I should go to an immigration office in KL, find the foreigner desk, the foreigner office, the office that deals with tourism issues, and then yeah, I’ve got a few days. Why don’t I do that? And it just seemed like, okay, that’s what a normal person would do. So, why don’t I just be a normal person and I will go do that. So I now had to figure out, okay, where to go. Here’s I’m starting from scratch with this. I have no idea what to do. I’ve never done anything like this before. And I thought, okay, let’s start from the beginning. And I start doing all my research and I find out that there is a Malaysian immigration office not that far away from here, from Chow Kit. So I made plans to go there in the morning. Okay, we’re heading into a Planet Doug story here. So like, brace yourself. This is my life day after day after day. So I figured out where this immigration office was and it turned out I could get there by Monorail and by LRT and then a short walk. So I made plans to go there. I find out when they’re open. Made sure everything was cool. Got up at the crack of dawn so that I could get there really really early so to avoid crowds and have lots of time. I don’t like time pressure. Causes a lot of stress in my life. So, hop on the Monorail, get onto the LRT, go like four or five stops on the LRT. I get out checking Google Maps all the time, and I arrive at this place, a big like shopping mall and bus station, I think. And then, as far as I knew, there was an immigration office, a large one, there. So, I got there, went up to the information desk at the entrance to this shopping center, and there were men in like very elaborate uniforms there. I don’t know who they were. Didn’t they look more elaborate than security guards or information people? But anyway, they says, “Yeah, first floor immigration.” So, I hop in the elevator. I go up there. It’s a big big office, very familiar to me from immigration offices all around the world. Just a long series of windows and each window has a person behind it with a number above them. And you can take a number. You tell someone what you’re there to do and you take a number. You wait your turn and then you start going through the windows. First go to window two, pay a fee or whatever you need to do. Go to window five, get the form, fill out the form, go to window 7 to get the signature, go back to window 8 to get the stamp, then you go to window 9. There’s a procedure. You just get sucked into the procedure and you follow the steps. I’ve done it so many times in my life, but in this case, I went in and I didn’t know what window to go to. I went to the machine to get a number, but the machine didn’t make any sense to me. None of the options applied to me. So, I went up to the windows or like a whole series of windows where people were waiting for customers. Like, nobody was in line for them. So, I just kind of made eye contact with all these people like, “Okay, dumb foreigner here, dumb foreigner alert. Is there anybody here who’s willing to help me out?” So, I’m making eye contact. I’m trying to pick my victim, basically. And there were, like I said, four or five windows there. And then all these people were like sort of avoiding eye contact with me, but then they saw I wasn’t going to go away. And then they all started pointing to one woman. Like nobody wanted to deal with me because of dealing with a foreigner the language barrier all these issues so they started pointing to their office English expert and they were smiling and laughing and they all started pointing to her and then she’s like no no no not me not me him but everybody seemed to be pointing to this one woman so I went up to her window and I sat down in the chair in front of her and of course I could not hear her I could understand her she spoke English, but the bulletproof glass and they put those little holes in there that the voice is supposed to come through. I don’t know who designs these things. I don’t know whether I have poor hearing at my advanced age, but I cannot hear these people. I never can. Bank, government office, wherever it is, money changers. I mean, you got to give the person a walkie-talkie and maybe I can communicate with him. But anyway, I’m leaning in. I’m sorry. I no I can’t hear you. And I got they got this little opening down at the bottom where you put your passport through and things like that. And I go I crouch over and I put my ear like right next to there like Dumbo trying to make my ears as big as possible. Like sorry what what what did you say? And this went on for a while. And even when I could hear her, I didn’t really understand what she was saying. It was just way too fast, unfamiliar words, vocabulary. But the upshot was that immigration office is only for Malaysians. This is where Malaysians go to get new passports. That’s all they do. It’s a big big office. So I was kind of taken aback. I said, “You need a place this big just to issue passports.” But apparently they do. And they says, “Yeah, there’s nothing here for foreigners. We don’t deal with work visas or work permits, tourist visas, nothing to do with any foreigners at all. So for my issue, something to do with a tourist visa with a Canadian passport, I have to go to the main immigration office. And I know that I’ve been to this immigration office before, once before in a previous lifetime. So this was sort of making sense to me. And then the woman kept telling me the name of this place and that’s where the communication broke down. I’m like, she said, “Oh, you have to go here.” And it’s like, I have no idea what you just said. Yeah, you got to go here. And I guess she’s telling me the name of the building, the government office, and the street and the district, all this information. But I couldn’t figure out what she was saying. And I was kind of hoping she would stop at that point, pull out a phone, drop a pin on Google Maps, and just sort of show it to me or hand it to me or write it down on a piece of paper, but she just kept saying it over and over again. And I figured, well, I can find it on my own. So I said, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” And now, yeah, I knew my life was spinning out of control at this point because my whole idea was to get there as early as possible, but now I’m going to have to go to this new office and it’s far far away the one I know about. Very difficult to get to for me because there’s no LRT or MRT station anywhere around this area that I’m aware of. It’s more it’s this neighborhood. It’s sort of like what’s that area called? I forget the name of it, but it’s filled with huge buildings like government offices. A very famous national mosque is there. There’s just a lot of big complexes and government offices and things. And it’s just not a place for a dumb foreigner to get to by LRT and then use Google Maps just to wander around. It’s a bit unfriendly area. It’s actually the immigration office is right beside the Publika shopping center. I figured that out eventually. But anyway, now I had to get there and I thought, well, do the normal thing. Don’t be Doug. Just take a Grab. That’s what a normal person would do. No normal person is going to fight through all the LRT, MRT bus systems, take two hours to get to this place, hop in a Grab. So, and I don’t like using Grab. I find it stressful. But anyway, I left this building and I went out into the main entrance because you want to be standing at the place where you’re going to be picked up and it was the main entrance exit. So then I’m standing there and then I’m going through the Grab system. Don’t get me talking about Grab. I’ve got so many issues with Grab. Yeah, I won’t tell that story now. But anyway, I am able to book a Grab in Malaysia. I’ve done it before. So, I kind of went through the system, but it turned out it was going to cost 35 ringgit. And they had like a little message saying, “Okay, this is crunch time. This is the surge time.” So, Grab cars are more expensive than normal. And 35 ringgit. I was like, “Wow, that’s I mean, if I can get there by bus for two ringgit, I would much rather do that and then I’ve got 33 ringgit to spend on something that’s useful in the world of Planet Doug. I don’t want to spend 35 ringgit on this.” So anyway, I rejected that idea. So then I got back into the LRT system, rode the LRT all the way to Masjid Jamek because at Masjid Jamek there was a bus, bus 851 had a pickup spot according to Google Maps that could take 851 from Masjid Jamek to Publika basically near the IMO. Well, the way I was looking at it, I could get dropped off on a corner within short walking distance of the immigration office. So, that’s what I decided to do. But then I got to Masjid Jamek and then where Google Maps told me the bus would pick me up, there’s just no way. It was like right between the two LRT MRT stations. A very busy busy busy road and there’s no bus stop. That’s one. I was shooting video at the time. I don’t know whether I’ll edit the video and post it because maybe just telling a story is enough. But my one big issue I have with the buses, the Rapid KL buses, is that the bus stops are not well marked. Most of the time they don’t even exist. People just know where they stand at the side of the road. They just learn it over generations of experience. It’s like knowledge handed down from mother to daughter, mother to son, like, okay, this is where you stand for bus 851, but there’s no sign. There’s no shelter. And then even if you do find an official bus stop, a shelter with a bench that looks like a bus stop, you still don’t even know it’s a bus stop because there are no signs. There’s nothing that says bus 851, bus 8211. There’s no information at all. So, you’re just basically guessing that you’re in the right spot. Anyway, I hung out at Masjid Jamek for a while just to watch the buses to see whether is there a spot on this road where the buses zoom over to the side and pick people up. And none of them did. I never saw bus 851 and but I saw a bunch of buses go by and they just went zoom. Nobody, no bus was stopping in that area, which made sense because it’s very congested. There’s no way buses are picking people up in that exact spot. So, I went back to Google Maps and I saw that if I walked along the main road, eventually I got to this black dot that looked like an official bus stop for 851. So, I thought, okay, I’ll just walk up the road until I get to that point and then I’ll wait there if there is a bus stop. So, of course, now I’m a pedestrian in Kuala Lumpur, which is not a good thing to be. And I started walking along. And the first thing, I mean, there’s no the sidewalk disappeared. You can either walk out in traffic or go on these long loops because the sidewalk just comes and goes. And then I got to the big big roundabouts with the highway systems going off our top. And I had to get across these very busy roundabouts with highway systems. And there are pretty much no pedestrian crossings at all. In this one spot, I actually found a little piece of one. But then, yeah, it’s very, very hard to get across these roundabouts as a pedestrian. I made it all the way across. I got confused. I went in the wrong direction. I went up the wrong, you know how you go around a roundabout and there’s all these roads branching off and I was a little bit flustered. I wasn’t thinking clearly. And then I just accidentally picked the wrong one. And I walked up the wrong road and I got to a bus stop. So, I’m at this bus stop and I thought, “Oh, I’m at the bus stop.” But there were no signs of any kind and I’m waiting for the bus. I’m waiting for the bus. I shot some video there for another video project I was working on. And then I’m waiting and waiting and then I thought, I better double check. So then I got out Google Maps. I was like, “Ah, I am at a bus stop, but I’m on the wrong road. I’m at the wrong bus stop.” So then I had to turn around and go all the way back to this roundabout, navigate to another road, and there just happened to be a big demonstration going on because the corporate headquarters for Malaysia’s national bank is right there. And I guess there’s some sort of a dispute between the bank and the union, employees union, and the union was demonstrating that day. And there were police everywhere and I don’t know 200 250 people there demonstrating. They all had their union t-shirts on the flags and their megaphone. They’re chanting and waving their signs and their flags and that was kind of fun. I shot some video of all that trying to hide my camera from the police because I didn’t want to give the impression that I was some kind of a rabble rousing journalist out there to cause trouble, right? I didn’t want to get teargassed or hit with a water hose or something. So, I had to fight my way through all the police barricades, fight my way through all the demonstrators, kind of filming surreptitiously a little bit. And I get through them and then I get to another bus stop. And again, there’s no signs of any kind, but according to Google Maps, 851 did stop there. And then lo and behold, from a distance, I mean, when you get older, this is another issue in life, I find, because you have to wave down the buses for the most part, right? I remember running into this in Korea decades ago, the first time I came to Asia basically to live here, and I had to take a lot of buses there when I was teaching English. And the buses in Korea, man, back in those days, they’d go like a 100 million miles an hour. You see the bus coming and you have to figure out whether that’s your bus or not and then just start waving like a madman because if you don’t start doing jumping jacks and waving that bus just it’ll blow right by you. They’re not waiting around. But then so you have to see the bus number from like a kilometer away. You have to have the eyes of a hawk. Oh, bus 851. Okay, that’s mine. And then you start waving. But if you wait until the numbers are clear and in focus, it’s too late. It’s like finally I see 851, but by then the bus is like 50 meters away by the time I can make it out with my poor eyes and then the bus will go by. I had that experience in Korea all the time. But here with bus 851, I took a chance from a distance. I’m like squinting like George Costanza, I’m like squinting and trying to bring the bus number into focus. And I kind of was like, “Oh, maybe I think it looks like 8. I think I think I think that’s 851.” And I just started waving. I said, “Well, if it’s the wrong bus, no problem. The poor bus driver is just going to have to slow down.” And then I’ll tell him, “No, no, no. Sorry, sorry, sorry.” But it turned out it was 851. Got on the bus, using the power of Touch ‘n Go. Ding. Got a seat there. And then I just started tracking where the bus was going using Google Maps. And then I got into a little bit of trouble because there was a I picked out where I wanted to get off the bus because immigration was here and the bus had to do this weird dipsy doodle and it looked like it was going to stop here and then it would be a short walk to immigration. So as we got close to there, I went up to the front of the bus to tell the bus driver. I pushed the button and then I went up to the front and I said, “Yeah, can I get off at the next stop?” And then he said, “Well, where are you going?” And I said, “I’m going to immigration.” And he says, “Oh, okay. No, not here. Not here. Last stop. You have to go to the last stop.” So I was like, “Well, I think I want to get off here.” But then he just said, “No, you don’t get off here. I will show you where to get off.” So I’m like, “Okay, friendly bus driver.” And then we went off on the journey of a lifetime. Like all these government buildings and secure complexes I mentioned. I don’t know what they all are, but man, this poor bus driver, he had to navigate this massive bus through these tiny areas with guards because there’s all he had to go into these complexes through a gated entrance with security guards. And then he’s got to go these really tight tight corners, stop in front of these big government buildings or conference centers, hotels, I don’t know what they all are, and pick people up, drop people off, and then he’s just got to turn around and come out again. And of course, people have parked in the bus stop areas. People are double parked, people are triple parked. Couldn’t imagine being this bus driver living this life trying to drive that bus every single day on that route because we went into one complex a maze of turns and things we come out then we go on this long loop into another complex another complex another and I like I’m thinking this bus cuz we’re immigration is here and by this time we’re like way over here and I’m like man I hope this bus starts turning left and starts coming back around because we’re heading to Penang here. I mean, we’re on our way out of KL. It’s like, where is this bus going? That’s what it felt like to me. And but eventually, we finally got to one corner and instead of turning right into another complex, the bus driver turned left. And I was like, “Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, thank goodness.” I think we’re going to now start turning around and heading back to where I needed to go. And eventually we did. And then the bus driver stopped in front of Publika. And then when I saw Publika, kind of a light bulb went off and I went, “Oh yeah, I remember Publika.” Because I used to go there because they had a camping store there and it was right beside immigration. And I remember going there by bus years and years and years ago because I had to go to immigration for another reason way back then. And I was like, “Oh, now I remember this.” But it was a different bus back then. And I didn’t until I saw Publika, I didn’t make the connection. I didn’t have this memory of doing this before. If I had the memory of that, it probably would have been a lot easier and I would have looked for buses to Publika or Publika. If I’m saying poo when I should be saying P. Who knows? Publika. I have a vague memory of people saying Publika. It’s a big shopping center and things like that. So anyway, the bus driver dropped me off there and then I started walking towards what I had on my Google Maps as immigration and then things really spun out of control because I found myself on the edges of this massive complex with a 20ft cement wall and I couldn’t find the entrance. Like it was like how do I get in? It was a fortress from the outside. It looked like I’d have to get a grappling thing, and climb up this wall to get in. And yeah, I’m walking around and around and around and I was like, where is the front of this thing? Like it does not look like a very friendly building. And eventually I came across one small door, just a tiny doorway in this giant wall. It was like the wall from Game of Thrones for Pete’s sake. And I thought, well, there’s an entrance and I see some stairs going up. So I thought, well, that gets me in anyway. So I go through this little door and I go up through these stairs just covered in cigarette butts, covered in coffee cups and cans thing cuz all the people going to this government office and employees, they come out there for smoke a smoke break. So everybody would sit on the steps there, a convenient place to hide and have a cigarette and have a drink, I guess. So, I made it to the top and then I’m outside this massive building, like a set of buildings. It was like a complex.
I still don’t see an entrance. There’s no entrance of any kind that makes sense to me as okay, this is the entrance to immigration. I hadn’t seen any signs of any kind that made sense to me. But then I run into a big tent. There’s like a large tent with like maybe 50 men lined up holding big packages of documents and passports and then there were armed guards all over the place. And I figured out pretty quickly these were all immigrant workers from who knows could be from Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, any number Indonesia any number of countries and they were there being processed for work permits and it looked like they’d brought them there in these big armored trucks. My leg is I’m losing feeling in my leg for some reason. Planet Doug Studios is not a very comfortable place. I adjusted my position. So, blood is flowing into my left leg again. So, yeah, feeling is coming back. I did my whole left leg went dead. It was like completely numb. I guess the way I was sitting cut off the blood flow because I’ve got a tripod in front of me and I kind of have to wrap my legs around the tripod on an angle and I guess I cut off the main artery to my leg. The things we do to shoot video, I tell you. So yeah, I see all of this going on. So I thought, okay, at least there’s something going on here to do with foreigners and passports. These were all workers, of course, not tourists, which is different from my situation. But I got the sense, okay, I’m sort of in the right place. Anyway, I walk by there. I’m looking and looking and looking for the entrance and I still can’t really find a way in yet. And then I saw, well, I saw there was a security guard ahead of me a guy with guns and things like that. And I thought, well, I see in YouTube videos all the time people leave comments like local people. Let’s say some YouTuber is going through Indonesia and is telling this story about difficulty of figuring out this or that going here by bus, by train, offices, and everybody always says, “Why don’t you just ask? Everyone is so friendly. Just ask someone. Ask.” You see this comment all the time in YouTube videos. And I had this sort of thought in my head. So, I thought, “Well, come on. Just ask.” And then I went up to this the very next person I saw was one a Malaysian guy, a security guy or police officer, whoever he was. And I just wanted to ask him, is this immigration? Like if I can get that confirmation, at least I can keep walking around this building until I finally find the entrance. So I went up to this man and I asked him in English, excuse me, sir, is this immigration? And then I quickly realized why we as foreigners are often reluctant to ask local people because then you lose control of your life. And I guess it was my fault for asking a man with a gun. Maybe I just should have. But there was no one else out there. I mean, there’s no one else to ask. So anyway, I thought it was a pretty easy question. Is this immigration? And he would say yes or no. And then I could go on. But then he basically interrogated me. He said, “Oh, let me see your passport.” Passport. He was very abrupt. I is this immigration passport. So, I was like, “Ah, okay.” So, I get out my and I’m trying to tell and he says, “He gets my passport now, which is my old one, which is what I gave him.” And he actually went through my passport. He was like going page by page by page looking at the information page, looking at me. And I’m like, “Well, I didn’t sign up for this. I’m just asking for directions, right? I didn’t plan on being interrogated before I even got into immigration. He’s like, I don’t like the way this is going. And he got to my visa stamp, which is on the very last page of the passport, right? Cuz that’s why I had to get a new passport cuz my old one was completely full. And then he looks at the date and he’s like, “Oh, you overstayed.” Cuz this was like 3 months ago. And he’s like, “Oh.” He’s looking at the date and he says, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no.” And I thought, “Okay, great. Now I’m under arrest. So I’m trying to tell the guy says, “No, no, no. As a visitor, we get a 90-day social visit pass and that this I’m still within the 90-day period.” But man, he really didn’t like what he saw. I eventually convinced him that I was in the country legally. He did not have to baton me and pepper spray me and hose me down or anything, throw me into the back of one of those trucks, cart me away. And then he wanted to know why are you here? What are you trying to do? I’m like, oh boy, this is not going to go well. And I said, well, I have a new passport. And man, this guy did not like that either. It’s a new passport. Let me see. Let me see. Like I gave him my passport. Now I’m telling him I have two passports. So this is setting off alarm bells for this armed soldier, whoever he is. So I get out my new passport. And now he’s looking at that. He’s like, who is this guy? Why do you have two passports? I’m explaining, well, this one is full and I had to get a new passport. So now I came here because I need to tell Malaysian immigration that I have a new passport and they can transfer the records. And he was not believing any of my story. He was like, he didn’t understand it. Obviously, he had no idea what I was talking about. But he eventually gave up on me. And then he pointed to a door which was smaller, I think, than the door I had used to get through the great ice wall. And he said, “Oh.” I said, “Wait, where? I’m just looking for the entrance into immigration.” And he pointed at this tiny door sort of hidden. And he said, “Oh, there.” I’m looking at that like, “Well, that’s not the entrance to the that like what is that?” He said, “No, no, just go in there.” And he told me, “Go in there. You go up, then you turn right, then you go up, then you turn left, then you go straight, then you go right, then you go.” He went through this long like going through a maze. And eventually, I was like, “Oh, I guess I go through that door. I know it’s not the main entrance, but the guard is telling me to go that way.” So, I go that way. I go into this door and then it’s basically a stairwell, the same as the other one. I went through the wall and then it’s just Yeah. Cement stairs, a back stairway. It’s not the main entrance, obviously, and I just went up. I didn’t know how many floors I was supposed to go up, but I eventually just came out. I found like one of those doors. You’re always worried with these stairwell doors that when you open them, it’s going to set off an alarm. They have all these signs on them warning you about things. And I was like, “Do I dare open this door?” So, anyway, I eventually did, and I pushed open the door. No alarms went off. And then finally I found myself in what looked like a government building. Like hallways, offices, signs everywhere, lots of people milling around doing all kinds of different things. And then basically for the next I don’t know how long I was there. Felt like a lifetime. I just wandered around and I was looking for the tourism department. I thought there has to be an office. There’s got to be a department that deals with tourists and their passports and their visas, right? But there was nothing in English. I hate making that point. It’s like I’m in another country and people go, “Oh, there was nothing in English.” Like, “Well, dude, you’re in a foreign country. Why should you expect your language to be everywhere?” But I mean, Malaysia is a little bit of an unusual or special case because English is a national language. Everybody here speaks English. And I was going to immigration which serves people from all over the world and English being the international language now I think it’s reasonable to expect a little bit of English guidance but there’s nothing nothing in English that I saw anywhere and I eventually found myself in the I finally found the main entrance it’s like ah this is where I was supposed to come in and I guess if I had gone past the security guard to another corner another length of the building and another corner I finally would have gotten to the front of the building, but it was on the exact opposite side of where I tried to go in. So, that’s where all my problems started from. I just Yeah, I came at the building from the wrong direction. So, now I’m in the main entrance and there’s a big information desk and I’m thinking, “Ah, okay, finally I can get some guidance.” But of course, I live on Planet Doug and on Planet Doug when there is an information desk, it’s not staffed. There’s nobody there. And it didn’t it wasn’t just unstaffed. I got close to it. I was looking to see if anybody was hiding around the corner or sitting on a little stool somewhere, but clearly it is never staffed. It just it was just junk was piled up everywhere. There was nothing back there. It was just covered in dust and dirt and piles of stuff. So clearly this is not It’s a big one. Like the whole front entrance it was a big circular information desk but there was nobody there and there was no no there’s nobody to ask questions to and signs everywhere all in Malaysian and it was all vocabulary that made no sense to me at all like governmentoriented vocabulary so none of it made sense to me doing my Google translate thing I get out my phone I aim it at this huge sign with 30 things listed all these government offices and none of it made sense to me. There was nothing about tourists, nothing about foreigners, passports, visas. None of it made sense to me. So now I’m wandering around this complex. I’m going from floor to floor to floor. At every floor it goes to the left, to the right, and there’s offices everywhere. You go through doors, vast sets of offices. There’s people there processing wedding stuff. I think I saw wedding parties. Everybody’s having a good time. They’re dressed up in their wedding gowns and suits. And I guess they just got married, but you have to go to this building to register for a wedding marriage certificate. There were vaccination offices. There were insurance offices. Just on and on and on and on. And I went from room to room to room to room. I’m asking people, I’m showing I’m doing my show and tell. I’m a foreigner. I have a tourist visa. I have two passports. Like, “Can I transfer?” And nobody had any idea what I was talking about. Not a single person that I spoke to. Officials behind desks in offices. I went around and around and around. I eventually found one area that looked the most promising. And there it seemed to be about foreigners. So, I went down this hallway and I entered this room. Oh man, my heart just sank when I saw this room cuz I thought, “Okay, if there’s any place in this building that might be for me, it would be this room.” And it was a nightmare, a bureaucratic nightmare cuz like I said, I wanted to get to this place early, but now because of going to the wrong office and the long time taking the bus, I was there midday and this place was jammed filled with people. Every seat was taken. Standing room only. Lots and lots of people. And they all look kind of like foreigners. There was a mix of people in there. So I thought, okay, there’s something about foreigners going on in here. And there was just like window window just from end to end, endless windows. And there was an information desk and there were people there, but people were just crowding around this waving documents and papers and they’re trying to answer questions where you go, what you do. And I waited my turn, got to the front. People are trying to push me out of the way. Put their papers in front of mine. But I finally explained to this woman what I’m trying to do. And she said, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” And she’s like waving me away. You can’t do that here. That doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t know what you’re trying to say. No, no, no. Get out of here. And I gave up. I just gave up because I could sense that you don’t go to that office ever as a tourist. It’s not meant for tourists. I was in the wrong place. I don’t think there is a right place. And that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. Like in my head, I’m comparing this to my experiences in Sumatra in Indonesia. And the island of Sumatra is covered in immigration offices. They’re everywhere. There’s like every small town, medium town, big city has an immigration office. And when I go to these immigration offices, cuz I had to extend visas and do things like that. There would be two clear sections. You walk in through the front gate, everybody is friendly. Everyone’s really nice. Everybody’s happy. Greet you. Oh, welcome. Book, there was no threat of being arrested by the guard as I’m asking a simple question. And then it becomes very clear. You tell them, oh, like I’m a foreigner. Oh, so this is for Indonesians. Here is the foreigner section. And then you go around the corner and there’s like a big door with a sign, foreigners, tourists visas, whatever the language is. And recently in Indonesia, they’ve had this push to be nicer to tourists, to kind of streamline the visa process, make it friendlier, more efficient. They keep changing the system in Indonesia, which can be incredibly frustrating, but they have this government movement to be nicer about this. So, when you walk into one of these places, it’s so clearly marked. It’s a friendly place. It’s a welcoming place. There’s a coffee station. They get you coffee. They get you tea, there’s cold water, and then there’s a very clear distinction between, okay, this is where Indonesians go to get their passports, and here is the foreigner tourism office. And it has a completely different vibe, and then there’s, you sit down and you tell them what you need to do, and oh, here are the documents. Please fill out this form. It’s all very, very nice. You run into bureaucratic snafus like I I’ve done my share of telling stories about Indonesian immigration where sometimes you go to one of these small regional offices they understand the rules differently than other offices. So, I went to extend a tourist visa one time, which is supposed to be a very simple process, but then that office, for some reason, they insisted I had to get a sponsor for a tourist visa extension. And I knew I didn’t have to. For a 30-day visa on arrival, you don’t need a sponsor. That’s completely 100% the truth. Yet, in this office, they made up their own rules and they said, “No, you need a sponsor.” So, I told that whole story in a video before. So, I have had my issues in Indonesia, but there’s a very clear office for foreigners, tourist visas. It’s there’s a distinction. And I thought maybe in this massive government building in Kuala Lumpur, maybe there’s a little corner somewhere for tourist visas. And maybe there’s like one person in there who sits at a desk all day long doing nothing because no foreigner would ever come out to this building. And maybe if I show up and I knock on the door, they’ll go, “Ah, welcome.” But I could not find that office if it exists. And I had the idea that even if I found the place, like maybe in this giant room that was so jammed with people, maybe one of those windows, if I managed to wait 2 hours, finally get to that window and show them two passports, can you transfer? Maybe I would find the right window, but I’m pretty sure it would take the entire day to finally work through all of this. And I just I had this vision of endless problems. So after all of this, after the woman had information there telling me, “No, no, no, no, no, not here, not here, not here.” I thought, “Okay, nah, give up. I did my best. I’m done.” So it whatever like if I go to the Singapore border crossing with two passports, whatever happens there can’t be worse than what’s going to happen here. So I just decided to give up and I just I left on my way out. I went out through the main entrance and then I saw a huge sign up on the top of the building and I took Google Translate and it said Ministry of the Interior. So like it wasn’t even an immigration office per se. It was the Ministry of the Interior and who knows how many things that ministry handles. A lot of things I imagine. So, immigration would be just a tiny piece of what they do. And if they handle anything to do with a tourist visa, I couldn’t find it. It was just It was so crazy. Yeah. I just I absolutely just gave up. Maybe had I kept pushing, spent more hours there, I could have finally gotten it done, but I thought, nah, I’ve invested enough time. I’ve had my adventure for the day, and I don’t need anymore. And I just left went back to the same bus station at Publika and bus 851 was sitting there waiting for me and I just hopped on 851, zoomed back to Masjid Jamek and then came back to the Raja Boat Hotel to tell you this story. This is actually a few days ago, so it’s an older story by now, but yeah, what a crazy experience that was. Yeah. So anyway, I was going to say that’s a good thing and a bad thing. So it’s a bad thing in the sense that as a tourist visiting Malaysia, going to the immigration department as listed on Google Maps doesn’t do you any good at all. That’s the bad thing. The good thing is, well, the reason that doesn’t exist is that in Malaysia, foreigners never need to do this. They never have any problems because Malaysia is very generous with their social visit pass. 99% of the people in the world can just show up at the airport 90 days, welcome to Malaysia. And then they have their holiday, they go backpacking, they do whatever they’re going to do in Malaysia, and then they leave. So they don’t have to extend it. They don’t have to they never have any problems or issues. So, the good thing is that Malaysia doesn’t have 50 immigration offices dedicated to foreign tourists because foreign tourists never have any problems. Normal tourists. I Planet Doug, we have problems. But the average person coming to Malaysia on a holiday, they never need an immigration office. They don’t need to go to one. So, Malaysia doesn’t have any. So, that’s what I mean by that’s a good thing. That’s in Malaysia’s favor. Indonesia, they have all these immigration offices dedicated to foreigners because foreigners there were constantly we have to apply for our visa and then we got to go there to get our fingerprints taken and our picture taken and then we got to fill out the form. If you want an extension in the old days, you have to go there three times and you got to go to banks, get forms, come back. I mean, it’s a whole procedure. So, Indonesia makes it so difficult to go there as a tourist. They need all of these offices and they need them to be as streamlined and as friendly as possible. Malaysia generally doesn’t need them and that’s why they don’t have them. So, that’s what I mean by it’s a good good thing on Malaysia’s side. So, I’m going to make another cup of coffee and then I’ll tell the story about the rest of the story.
Okay, I have a coffee number two to get me through the rest of the story. So, basically, I gave up on getting my passport problem solved before I leave the country. So, that brought me all the way back to thinking about, well, do I really want to go to Singapore? And I sort of sat down and thought it through and I decided that if there is another option, no, I don’t really want to face that Singapore border crossing with my passport issue. I had this feeling and you should One thing I’ve learned in life is don’t ignore your feelings. Like don’t ignore those little alarm bells that go off. They’re usually connected to something real. And I had this sense that okay, I show up at the border with Singapore, the land border crossing. Sure, I got there easily and cheaply, say by bus. I could take a bus to Johor Bahru for like 50 ringgit or, it wouldn’t be that expensive and then you can just go to the border. But I just had this feeling like something’s going to go wrong with my two passport situation. And I thought I think it’d be better to go to the airport to go to KLIA and fly somewhere because at the airport from everything I can tell they’re used to doing this. They’ve encountered it before. There’s a system in place. I don’t know exactly what the system is, but at some point at the airport, maybe even checking into my flight, I can just say at the if I can go to a check-in counter and say, “Okay, I have two passports when I go through immigration, like what do I do?” And then something is going to happen and what no matter how bad it gets even at the airport, there’s no way it could be as bad as what would have happened at the Ministry of the Interior building. I’m lucky I got out of that building alive. Yikes. Yeah. Anyway, so I started thinking about all of my options. And of course, in my life, and me being me, I’m looking at the cheapest option because to me, it’s just a way to leave Malaysia and then sort of come back in again, and I don’t want to spend a lot of money on it. And the cheapest flights are all to Sumatra. And I was looking at all my options. I could fly to Medan, of course, and I thought that would be kind of cool. I like Medan. I love Sumatra. I could fly to Padang, which would be quite interesting. And I discovered I could fly to Banda Aceh for the same price. They were all quite inexpensive flights, relatively speaking. And I thought Banda Aceh far to the north would be double the price of flying to Medan which is a lot closer. But through the vagaries of airline travel the flights were the same price. Padang for some reason was cheaper. Pekanbaru was cheaper but Medan and Banda Aceh were about the same price. And I was pondering those two options. And this always happens in my life. Things spin out of control. Like when I started this whole process, I wasn’t starting from the point of view like, oh, I want to go to Sumatra and do this and do this and do this. That wasn’t my plan at all. My plan is to ride my bicycle around Malaysia, but through circumstances, I haven’t gone on that trip yet, and my visa is expiring. So now I have to go somewhere and come back. But then my brain starts ticking over. Is like, well, if you’ve gone to all the trouble of flying to Medan, paying for a tourist visa, and you have 30 days, well, you might as well take advantage of them. Cuz in my world, visas are the ultimate currency. They’re as important to me as oxygen. And if somebody gives me a 30-day visa for their country, I want to maximize I want to use up all of the 30 days. Like if I go there and just stay for 3 days and fly back again, I feel like I’m wasting I’m leaving money on the table because to me tourist visas are money more important than money. But anyway, so I started thinking, wow, I’m in Medan. How can I turn that into a really interesting experience, not just for me, but for Planet Doug viewers? Well, rent a scooter in Medan and zoom up to Lake Toba, zoom around Lake Toba, come back to Medan. That would be a very interesting set of videos for Planet Doug. So, I started thinking about that and the only issue with that for me is that I’ve been to Lake Toba many times, but it was all before I had a YouTube channel. So, even though I’ve never shot videos there for Planet Doug, I have been there a lot and I’m very I’ve rode my bike around lots of parts of Lake Toba, stayed in, I could have made videos like tourists never go here because I went to a lot of places along the shores of Lake Toba again because I had my bicycle. I’m just riding my bike and I spend the night in this village beside the lake and then this town and then this town and I went to a lot of places that tourists never go to just because when you’re riding a bike that just happens naturally. But I never shot any video of these experiences. So going there would be interesting from that point of view but at the same time they wouldn’t be new experiences to me and that’s kind of a negative thing.
And then I just typed in Banda Aceh to see and I found out that the flight to Banda Aceh was the same as going to Medan. So I thought, “Oh, that’s interesting.” I’d been to Banda Aceh before on a bike tour. I rode my bike to the north to Banda Aceh. Spent quite a bit of time there. Rode my bike all around the city. Amazing place. I love Banda Aceh. And then I Yeah. So, I’ve been there before as well, but and this was the key thing. I’ve never been to Pulau Weh. And Pulau Weh is the island, kind of the tourist island off the coast of Banda Aceh. There’s a ferry there. You can take the ferry from Banda Aceh to Pulau Weh. And as soon as I remembered that, all the pieces kind of fell into place. And I thought, ah, that is the thing to do on Planet Doug. Book a flight to Banda Aceh, shoot some video in that city, then hop on the ferry to Pulau Weh. And on Pulau Weh, I never been there. I don’t know a whole lot about the island, but I’m pretty sure it’s quite laid-back. It’s like a place where you go, it’s an island with a mountainous interior, a coast road that goes all the way around the island. It’s a small island, but it’s supposed to have very beautiful snorkeling and scuba diving. And I’m not a scuba diver, but I do love the water. I love the ocean, and I love snorkeling. So, I can go there, find a cheap place to stay, have the adventure of taking the ferry out to Pulau Weh, find a cheap place to stay, do some snorkeling, and key to this whole project, rent a scooter. And then if I rent a scooter while I’m there, then I can just go all over the island, circumnavigate the whole island, go into the interior. I’m sure they’ve got waterfalls. Every island has a famous waterfall. Can ride my scooter to the famous waterfall and just really dig my teeth into Pulau Weh and Banda Aceh. So, I booked a flight to Banda Aceh. I have that flight booked already. It’s a one-way flight. I don’t have a return flight. And yeah, I’m flying out on Wednesday, Wednesday afternoon, flying to Banda Aceh. And then I don’t know how long I will stay there cuz I don’t have a flight back yet.
So that’s the first part of my Banda Aceh story. Everything was pretty smooth. Oh, what saved my life here again is my Touch ‘n Go account and my Touch ‘n Go Visa card because I still don’t have my normal credit card. What a nightmare that has been cuz my credit card was cancelled and they had to send me a new one and then there was a postal strike in Canada. So, the delivery of the credit card was delayed. I had no idea how long it was going to take to arrive. I found out recently that it finally arrived at my brother’s house. So, my brother has my credit card. So, I called him and I got all the information. So, now I have to activate that credit card. But then I ran into yet another problem because in order to activate the credit card, they have to send me a security code. And the only way they will send me that security code is by a physical phone call to a landline. And they have to phone the phone number that is on record with my bank in Canada. So now I have to figure things out where somebody is in Canada at a specific time is sitting beside that phone waiting. Then I have to go online here. Go into my mobile banking app, try to activate my phone, have them send me the security code. The computer is going to call that phone in Canada. My friend has to answer the phone, get the code, hang up, contact me, give me the code, and I have to enter it into mobile banking within the two-minute time lapse time window because they only give you like two minutes to enter the code and then it’s cancelled. It’s like a whole James Bond thing. Anyway, and I haven’t been able to do that yet. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do it before I go to Banda Aceh on this short trip. But then, so anyway, I ran into all kinds of problems because I got to book a flight. How do you pay for the flight if you don’t have a credit card? You can’t. So, my Touch ‘n Go credit card, wow, it has saved my life because I have a few online accounts and all of my online accounts all seem to expire at the same time of year and they require Yeah, it’s a lot more money than I’d like, but these are all accounts that I need. Like, I have an online archive for photos. I pay a fee, an annual fee for that. I have my website, which to be honest, I don’t really need anymore. I could probably dump websites. Nobody needs a website anymore, but I like having it. And I use it for different things. And that costs a lot of money to pay for the hosting each year. So all these bills came boom boom boom boom boom. I got this flood of emails threatening to turn off everything. We have to cancel your web hosting and your website account because payment failed. All these payments are automatic online. They all get charged to this credit card and the credit card was cancelled and I haven’t been able to activate it. So, I was getting all these like past due notices. If you don’t pay by this date, we’re cancelling. We’re deleting your account if you don’t pay. It was like such a nightmare. But then I got the Touch ‘n Go credit card and that’s basically saved my life. So, I used my Touch ‘n Go Visa card to pay for my flight to Banda Aceh and that payment is deducted from my Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. It’s like what a lifesaver, an absolute lifesaver. I’m not sure what would have happened right now if I hadn’t stumbled across this idea that I could get a Touch ‘n Go Visa card because it works. It’s not a true Visa card. You can’t buy something and then just charge it to your card and maintain a credit card balance and pay it off each month. You have to have money in your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet equivalent to the charge and it’s sucked out automatically. So anyway, that saved my life. So I paid for the flight that was done.
It gets it goes on. The stories never end here on Planet Doug because now sure I had the flight to Banda Aceh but now I need a new tourist visa for Indonesia and this gets really complicated. Why? New passport. I have an account with Indonesian immigration but as far as I understand it, as far as I can make out, you can’t change your passport number. So, if you have an account with Indonesian immigration with a passport number, you can’t log into that account and just update your record. You can’t put in a new passport number. Basically, when your passport is cancelled or expired, that account is gone and you have to start all over again and create a new account with a new passport number. But as I discovered because I’ve been trying to do this over the last few days, it gets very complicated because the immigration computer systems for Indonesia are very very sensitive and if they sense anything wrong, it fails and they won’t tell you why it fails. It just says no fail. And then you’re just stuck wondering. And it turns out that okay, I started to make a new immigration account with my new passport number. I’m going through the steps and then it just says failed because you’ve got a new passport number, but to go with that new passport number, you need a new email address. Because the first time I just entered my email address, but the computer recognized that email address was connected to my old account. It’s like, “Ah, okay.” It took me a long time to figure that out because it failed. It failed. It failed. It’s like, “Ah, it thinks this email account has already been used. So, I can’t use it again. I have to come up with a new email account.” So, I tried to sign up with a new email address. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. I could not get it done. And I couldn’t figure out why. Why? Phone number. I guess at some point I had entered my Malaysian phone number in my immigration record whether it was through the online account or through getting a visa extension and then the computer system detected that that phone number was linked to another account. So I had to come up with a new phone number to put into my new account. So you have to have a new passport number, new email address, new address, new phone number, new it has to everything has to be brand new and fresh. So I eventually figured that out and then I ran into problems because the Indonesian website is very finicky when it comes to uploads. You have to upload a photocopy of your passport information page. So, I did that. I took a picture of my new information page and then I met they have a list online all the requirements, all the things that you have to be careful about. So, like if you if you know if you’re holding your passport and then you take a picture of it and your finger is on the edge of the passport, it’s rejected. You can’t have anything in there. And then you can’t be smiling. Like if you upload a photo, you can’t have any facial expression and it has to be the perfect dimensions, your shoulder and your face. They have very rigid requirements. And if your upload of your photo or your passport doesn’t fit all of the requirements, it’s rejected. But they don’t tell you why it’s rejected. You just have to guess. So you just end up uploading copy after copy after copy. Try this, try that, try that, try this. And they all, in my case this time, they all got rejected. And it turns out the problem was the new Canadian passport is drowning in security features. It’s crazy how like the holograms. There’s just hologram after hologram after hologram. And if your picture of your passport, if it has the slightest reflection, it’s rejected. So, I took a picture and I thought it looked really good. I took a picture and I thought, “Okay, that’s a I had the right dimensions, the right size, the right pixel count. Everything was perfect.” I uploaded it and it just said rejected. And it said, “Please upload a valid passport.” That was the error message. I thought, “What the heck? Please upload a valid passport.” And I thought, “Oh boy, this could be bad news.” Cuz I thought maybe the photo there’s a problem with the photo. But the message was telling me that, “Okay, that passport is not valid.” And I thought, “Oh man, what what’s like the passport number is invalid. The dates, they don’t like it.” They weren’t telling me that, oh, the photo is too big or too small or your finger was in the photo or there’s a shadow on the page. They just said it’s an invalid passport. So, that confused me. So, I had to figure all of that out. And then I eventually thought, well, maybe there’s a reflection that it doesn’t like. And I was looking at my photo and from a certain angle like yeah maybe that they think is a reflection because there are so many holograms even if you don’t get a reflection the hologram like the security feature looks like a reflection. The new page of course I don’t want to show anything on my passport but this is the information page and it’s not like a piece of paper anymore. There are so many levels and layers to this. So many security features. It’s a thick piece of plastic. It’s not even a paper page anymore. It’s like a thick here that. It’s a thick piece of plastic because it has so much depth to it. And then every time you take a picture, it looks like there’s a reflection. So last night I was working on this until I don’t even know what time at night I finally completed this whole process. I took picture after picture after picture like here in my room trying to hold my passport in my phone and okay get get this angle get rid of that reflection ah didn’t work this this this oh it was such a complicated long process I took so many copies and I eventually got one and I uploaded it and it went through. I was so happy I finally got one that the Indonesian computer system would accept. And then I got one of my photo that it would accept. But then you’re not even done yet because for the Indonesian system you have to upload a JPEG and a PDF. And I kept getting things rejected and I finally had to. Anyway, I went through this whole system and I finally got an upload that was acceptable of my passport and my photo. So, I was finally able to open an account. That’s all I did. I hadn’t even applied for a visa yet. All I had done was open a new account with my new passport number, new email address, new phone number, new everything, everything. Everything. Finally got that done late last night and I was so tired. I was so frustrated. I was so stressed out. I didn’t dare apply for a visa. I thought, “Okay, let’s just go to bed, try to sleep, get all this out of my mind. Let’s get some rest.” And in the morning, first thing in the morning, I’ll apply for my new 30-day visa on arrival.
And I didn’t absolutely have to do this because like right now my plan is not to be in Sumatra a long time. So I could fly to Banda Aceh and get my 30-day visa on arrival at the airport. There’s an office there, but that system is now outdated. They expect you to apply online. So, I’ve been to I flew into Banda Aceh before and even back in those days, the office where you got your visa on arrival in person had largely been abandoned. You go to that office and it’s just empty. There’s nobody in there. And then you tell them, “Oh, I need to get my visa on arrival.” They have to go find the guy. He comes, unlocks the office, goes in. And then when you do that, they took a hard look at you. Banda Aceh is a little bit more serious than other entry points in Sumatra. And then if you do it in person now, they want, okay, let’s see your flight out of the country. Let’s examine it. Where are you staying? Let’s see your hotel reservation. They really want to confirm everything. So even though I could go and just pay in cash at the airport, I didn’t want to risk the hardcore interrogation. So I thought let’s get the online version because when you get the online visa then you can extend it online right even so I wanted to keep that option open for just in case. Yeah I do love Sumatra so we’ll see. So anyway, this morning, just this morning before I started recording this, I fired up my laptop, and then I went back into my account, signed in, and I was like, “Oh, thank goodness it worked.” Cuz I thought overnight maybe that account would have gotten deleted or it red flagged or something because of all the problems I faced. But it was still there. I was able to log in using my new email address, all that kind of stuff, my new password, and then I went through the steps of applying for the visa. And I’ve done this enough times that I kind of know what I’m doing. There’s a lot of tricks to the whole system. I’m thinking about making a whole video about it for behind the scenes just to show all the little gotchas. You have to be careful about that. And I went through the whole system very carefully because I know what I’m doing now. It went pretty smoothly. Of course, you’ve got to upload a flight out of the country. I had that prepared. You have to enter an address of where you’re staying in Indonesia. And a lot of people freak out over this because they don’t know where they’re staying yet. They haven’t booked a hotel yet. But, you just put in the name of a hotel where you might be staying and then you put that in. And I filled out everything very, very carefully. And one gotcha with the Indonesian system, it’s really strange is that you open an account which has all your information and then you go to the next stage to apply for a visa. And the reason you open an account is because it autofills all the information that you input and then you have to double-check it, but it gets everything wrong. Like my new passport, the expiry date had a completely wrong expiry date. It’s like the computers just fill it out randomly. So you have to be very careful that the system autofills everything for you. But then you have to go through it point by point by point and confirm that the autofill worked correctly. And in this case my new passport expiry date was completely wrong. And no the issue date was wrong. The expiry date was right but the issue date was completely wrong. So I had to make sure that was correct. And then when you get to the end, payment isn’t automatic with the Indonesian system. That’s another issue people struggle with. You finish applying and then it says something, you expect it now to go to the payment page, but it doesn’t happen. It just says, your application has been accepted. Thank you very much. Oh, phone call. Phone call is over. So, the way the Indonesian immigration system works, payment is not automatic. You submit your visa application and now it’s accepted and it’s in your account and it’s waiting for payment. It’s up to you now to go back into your account and figure out how to pay. Like, where is the button that I click on now? That opens up a payment page. And then you go through that. And then again, my life was saved. Well, I know how to do this obviously because I’ve done it before. So, this is not a gotcha for me anymore. But then, of course, when I did have to pay, you have to pay with a credit card. And Touch ‘n Go, the power of Touch ‘n Go came to my rescue once more. It’s like $25 US, 500,000 Indonesian rupiah for a 30-day visa. And you have so I had to have the equivalent of that in Malaysian ringgit in my e-wallet to cover the payment and then once you know you have that much amount in your e-wallet then you just enter it as a credit card but then for something like this something online with a government office I didn’t realize this it doesn’t always happen but then it told me I have to go into Touch ‘n Go to approve the payment a security feature so I was waiting for the payment to go through And then I realized, oh, they were waiting for me to go into Touch ‘n Go, put in my code, my fingerprint, see the pending payment, and then, oh, okay, like, did you authorize this payment? Was this you? And then if it is you for security reasons, then you say, yes, that was me. And then the payment went through. I do this thing all the time. I’ve had so much trouble with anything to do with government visa applications, banks, anything to do anything official. Everything seems to go wrong that I’m panic-stricken all the time. My heart is racing. It’s pounding. And then what I do, especially like even if I go to an ATM to withdraw money, things always go wrong and I’m always worried. I’m always stressed out. So what I do is when I click on payment, this is so ridiculous because I’m not a superstitious person at all. But when I click on payment, I cross my fingers and then I sort of send this message out into the universe like like I need luck. Give me luck. And I have this mental image. What I try to do, again, trust me, this is super ridiculous. I try to visualize the universe, but maybe not just the universe, but the Milky Way galaxy. So, I have this mental image of the massive Milky Way galaxy swirling around. And I picture our solar system, the planet Earth, like this minuscule, insignificant dot in the middle of this distant spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. So tiny, so irrelevant to the scale of the universe. So, it kind of puts my problems in perspective. Like, here I am, this little organic biological creature on this insignificant world, panic-stricken that his credit card payment is not going to go through. And on the scale of the Milky Way galaxy, how irre how pointless that is, how small, how trivial. So, I sort of close my eyes. I cross my fingers and I imagine the galaxy with Earth there going around. And I think, it just kind of calms me down. And I’m calling on the good fortunes of the universe to help me in my time of need. And please let this, this payment go through. It’s just so silly. But I can’t help it. I do it all the time now. Even at an ATM after I hit, withdraw money, I hold on to the ATM and then I try to calm down and summon the powers of the universe to let this thing go through. And in this case, it worked. After I approved the payment on Touch ‘n Go, the payment went through. And this is the amazing thing which blows my mind. I’ve done this a couple of times recently. You apply for your 30-day visa on arrival. Payment is accepted. Within two seconds, I got the email containing the visa. The visa is approved at lightning speed. So, like the speed of light, maybe that’s me summoning the powers of the universe where everything is measured in, light speed. That it happens so fast. I know that a friend of mine, Daniel, the YouTuber who’s now in Sumatra riding his bicycle, he applied for the C1 visa, which is the 60-day tourist visa, and it can be extended inside Indonesia if you get a sponsor. So, he did that. He had to wait like 7 days in total. Got like five business days, but I think it took seven or eight days before his visa was finally approved. But if you apply for, in my case, when I apply for the 30-day visa on arrival, I get it within seconds. Easily within minutes. I think the last time I did it, I got it within 2 minutes. Payment went through. And I went to make a cup of coffee and I heard beep. And I looked, oh, I got the visa within two minutes. This time I didn’t even have time to get coffee. It was just like instantaneous. Within seconds, I got an email. And in the email is a PDF of your visa. And then you download it and you’re all done. So that’s good for me because I was worried. I left this to the last minute. This is Monday. My flight is on Wednesday and I’m just now applying for the visa, which is not a good thing to do. You should do it earlier than this. But it’s how things worked out. And if something went wrong, could have been an issue. But yeah, I got the visa within 2 seconds.
Long story. Typical Planet Doug drama with bureaucracy, banks, governments, computers, smartphones. The amount of knowledge I had to have to pour into this project just to fly to Banda Aceh is pretty astonishing when you think about it. All the technology I needed. And I’m still nowhere near done because I still have to do my arrival card for Indonesia, your customs card, your health declaration. Then I have to start worrying about my smartphones because all my smartphones are banned in Indonesia because of customs email registration expiry. And then you’ve got to make sure I’ve got an Indonesian e-wallet. I don’t love it like I love Touch ‘n Go, but I do have an Indonesian e-wallet called OVO, and I have to figure out how to keep OVO running with my Indonesian SIM card, is it still valid? So, by the time you land in Indonesia, you have to do a lot of things when you land. Get your phone up and running. Get your e-wallet up and running. Make sure your SIM card phone number is still operational. Book a hotel room. Figure out how to get from the airport into downtown to get to where you’re going to stay. It is a lot.
Funny that like on a YouTube video, a travel video, you often see people post a video. It’s like, “Wow, Banda Aceh is amazing.” And they show you the friendly people, the amazing cafes. They have a real coffee culture in Banda Aceh. You go to Pulau Weh, go snorkeling, have all these adventures, but all of this stuff going on in the background, it overshadows the trip itself to an extent. It’s like I’m going to Banda Aceh because I need to because of visa issues, but I’m going there to have an amazing travel experience, new experiences, meet new people, try new food, go new places, have new experiences. That’s the heart and soul of what I’m going there to do and make YouTube videos about all of that. And yet, the work you need to do, the logistics is much bigger than any of that. And if you let it, it can actually expand to such a size that it overwhelms the actual travel experience.
There’s so much technology involved today that it’s kind of crazy ’cause I do think about this all the time ’cause I’m glad to be of my generation because I’ve had the experience of both worlds. I lived in the world before the internet, before digital banking, smartphones, digital cameras. I grew up in a world where none of that existed. We couldn’t even imagine the way the world is today. It would just be utter fantasy. Yeah. It’s even beyond fantasy.
So I remember that world where you would go to a travel agent, an office with a human being and say, “I want to go to Banda Aceh.” And the travel agent sits on their computer and then says, “Oh, here’s your ticket.” And then you fly into Banda Aceh and yeah, you get your visa from the embassy. You have to make a trip to the embassy, wait in line and then go in and fill out the forms and pay in cash and then you have the visa stamped or you can just show up. Quite often you just show up at the border and just stamp you into the country. Wow, welcome. Here you go. There’s no issue for even a visa sometimes back in those days. And then when you wanted money you had traveler’s checks. You brought cash and traveler’s checks. Those were your only options. So you had cash to get you through arrival and then you go to the bank with your American Express traveler’s checks and you spend like two hours there and then you cash them in, get 500, $200, $100, whatever it is you want. And then you cash in your traveler’s checks and you get local currency. So yeah, very simple world back then. You didn’t have to do nearly as much as you do now. And everything happened on the way.
You still had to do a customs declaration, but you do it on the airplane. You’re sitting on the airplane and the flight attendant comes and hands you your immigration arrival card and your customs card and you get your pen and on the plane you’re like trying to fill it out as you’re bouncing around. And then as you land, you just hand over these cards to people and away you go. Hop on the local bus to, for 20 cents and ride on the local bus to go into downtown. No Grab, no Gojek, no nothing like that.
But anyway, I still have a lot more to do. I still have to do the arrival card and the health card and the customs card and I have to figure out accommodation and I have to change money. I like to have rupiah in advance. I don’t like to land with nothing because that’s a surefire way of getting stuck. But and then I guess I’ll end this story to talk a little bit about my plans.
My plans for Banda Aceh could go in one of two different directions. I could just land in Banda Aceh, spend a few days there, fly back. It’s possible. But I’m thinking to make the trip worthwhile, I should at least go to Pulau Weh. So I’ll spend time in Banda Aceh, shoot a Planet Doug video or two there, then take the ferry out to Pulau Weh, find some really cheap accommodation there, as cheap as I can find. So I can rent a scooter and then zoom around the island, have some adventures there. Pulau Weh is done. Take the ferry back, fly back to Malaysia, get on my bicycle, and then tour Malaysia. That’s option number two.
There is option number three, which may happen. We’ll see what happens because there is a town in Sumatra. There’s two towns actually that I’ve always wanted to visit. One is the mountain town of Takengon which is in the central mountain region sort of halfway between or maybe two-thirds of the way from Lake Toba to Banda Aceh. You got the central mountain range and there’s a big lake up there and there’s this town called Takengon right on that lake. Looks like an amazing place and I’ve always wanted to go there. So maybe I might treat this like okay this is my last trip to Sumatra. So since I’m in Banda Aceh why don’t I pop over to Takengon as well and then that could be option number three. So Banda Aceh, Pulau Weh and then zip to Takengon to check out that town shoot Planet Doug videos there. These videos are not going to be super popular or they’re not going to go viral because nobody has ever heard of Takengon in the world. Nobody’s going to be doing searches for, wow, I really want to visit Takengon. It’s going to be a hard town to get to. It’s way off the beaten track, but we’ll see. I may decide to go there as well. So, those are my three options right now.
So, that’s it. I’ve got to get going. I’ve got to get busy. I’ve got things to do here. I’ve got to head out into the city and get things done. So that’s it. Planet Doug behind the scenes. Hope you enjoyed my story of my struggles with the world of bureaucracy. But all is well that ends well. I’ve got my new immigration account. Got my new visa already approved. I’ve got my new passport. I’ve got my flight booked to Banda for Wednesday. Today’s Monday, so I have Monday and Tuesday to do last minute details and then on the plane to Sumatra. All right, that’s it. Shutting down. See you in the next video.