Are you worried you’ll land in Denpasar, join the queue, and be told you’ve missed something? A lot of people feel that way before a first trip to Bali, especially with kids in tow, and it’s an easy worry to carry when everyone online seems to have a slightly different version of the rules.

Here’s the reassuring part. There are three things to sort out before you fly, and you can do all of them from the couch: an arrival card, a visa on arrival, and the Bali tourist levy. Two of them cost money and one is a free form. Do them in the right order, keep the confirmations handy, and the airport becomes a lot less nerve-racking.

Everything below comes from Smartraveller, the Australian Government’s travel advice service, which publishes the current requirements for Indonesia. Rules can change, so it’s worth reading Smartraveller’s Indonesia page again in the week you fly.

One warning before you start, because it applies to every step. Smartraveller tells travellers to beware of fake websites, and a quick search for a Bali visa or the levy can turn up sites that look official and charge extra. The calmest habit is to type the official address in yourself, or use the links Smartraveller gives, rather than tapping an ad at the top of the results. If a site wants money for something that should be free, close the tab.

Step 1: check the passport

It sounds too obvious to bother with, but the passport is where trips most often come unstuck, so start here.

Smartraveller says that for a visa on arrival, your passport needs at least six months’ validity from the date you plan to enter Indonesia, and it recommends six months from your departure date as well. If you’re cutting it close, it may be time to renew before you book anything else.

Here’s a quick illustration of how close “close” can be. Say you’re flying in on 3 December and your passport expires the following April. That feels like plenty of time, because it’s months away. Count six months forward from the day you land, though, and you reach early June, so an April expiry falls short. It’s an easy one to miss when you only glance at the year.

Condition matters too. Smartraveller notes that Indonesia applies strict standards to damaged passports, and that travellers have been refused entry because of damage. Water damage or minor tears can count. Have a proper look at each passport in the family, including the photo page and the binding, under good light.

One small step: take every passport out of the drawer tonight and check both the expiry date and the condition.

Step 2: the All Indonesia Arrival Card

The arrival card is the free one. According to Smartraveller, the All Indonesia Arrival Card is completed online within 72 hours of travel, which is three days, and it includes the health declaration, so there isn’t a separate health form to hunt down.

The 72-hour window is the bit to plan around. It can’t be done weeks ahead like a hotel booking. If you fly on a Saturday morning, the window opens on the Wednesday morning, so pop a reminder in your phone.

Smartraveller is clear that the arrival card is free on the official site. Fake sites charge a fee for it. If you’re being asked to pay for your arrival card, you’re on the wrong site.

One small step: set a phone reminder for three days before your flight, labelled “arrival card”.

Step 3: the e-Visa on Arrival

Smartraveller describes the visa on arrival, which you can also arrange in advance online as an e-Visa on Arrival, or e-VOA. Here’s how it lays out the details.

• Cost: IDR 500,000. The e-VOA adds a small online processing fee.
• Timing: apply at least 48 hours before you travel.
• Where: through the Directorate General of Immigration’s official e-Visa site, or on the All Indonesia site after you’ve done your arrival card.
• Length of stay: 30 days, which can be extended once, for up to another 30 days, at an immigration office.

If you miss the 48-hour window, don’t panic. Smartraveller says a regular visa on arrival is still available at certain airports and seaports. It does note that some checkpoints may only take cash, so if you’re relying on paying at the airport, have some on hand.

The extension is the part people forget once they’re relaxed and sunburnt. If you think you might stay longer than 30 days, Smartraveller’s advice is to apply for the extension within your first 30 days. Overstaying can lead to a fine and deportation, which is nobody’s idea of a holiday ending.

One small step: put the e-VOA in your diary for the week before you fly, well clear of the 48-hour line.

Step 4: the tourist levy

This is the one that catches people out, because it’s easy to assume it’s part of the visa. It isn’t. Smartraveller describes the Bali tourist levy as a separate charge of IDR 150,000 per person.

The levy is cashless. You can pay it online before you travel, or at designated counters when you arrive at Bali’s airport or seaport. Smartraveller notes that some transit passengers and some visa holders are exempt, so if your trip is unusual in either way, check whether that applies to you.

The official channel is the Bali Provincial Government’s Love Bali site. As with everything else here, type the name in yourself rather than following an ad, because lookalike sites exist.

Paying before you fly isn’t required. Still, it’s one less thing to think about on a hot afternoon after a long flight, so if you’d rather walk out of the airport with it done, do it at home. Either way, keep the receipt where you can find it.

One small step: decide tonight whether you’ll pay the levy before you go or on arrival, and if it’s before, do it while you’re doing the e-VOA.

Putting it on the calendar: an example

Sometimes it’s easier to see the order laid out against real days, so here’s an illustration. Imagine a family of four flying to Denpasar on a Saturday morning.

About a week before, someone sits down at the kitchen table with all four passports and does the e-VOA for each person who needs one, comfortably ahead of the 48-hour line. While the laptop’s open, they pay the tourist levy too. At IDR 150,000 per person, that’s IDR 600,000 for the four of them, and they could just as easily leave it for the counters on arrival.

On the Wednesday morning, the 72-hour window for the arrival card opens. The phone reminder goes off, and the arrival cards get done one traveller at a time, with each confirmation saved under that person’s name.

On the Friday night, it’s the cup of tea and the short check at the end of this guide.

Notice what that does. Nothing is squeezed into the last 48 hours except a form that’s free and quick, and nobody is paying for anything in a queue with tired kids. If your flight is on a different day, just count back the same way: 72 hours for the arrival card, at least 48 hours for the e-VOA, and the levy whenever it suits you.

One small step: write your flight day at the top of a page, then count back three days and one week and mark both.

Money and customs, briefly

There’s one money rule worth knowing. Smartraveller says you need to declare money over IDR 100,000,000, or the equivalent in other currencies, when you arrive in Indonesia and when you leave. For most holidaymakers that won’t come up, but if you’re carrying a large amount for any reason, it’s important.

That’s as far as this guide goes on customs. Smartraveller’s Indonesia page covers the rest, and it’s the place to check if you’re bringing anything you’re unsure about.

For families

Travelling as a family mostly means doing the same steps more than once. Smartraveller describes the levy as IDR 150,000 per person, so budget for it person by person. For the arrival card and the e-VOA, check on Smartraveller’s page how each applies to everyone in your group, then work through them one traveller at a time.

It helps to do them together at the kitchen table, one passport at a time, and to name each confirmation clearly when you save it. A folder on your phone with everyone’s documents labelled by name saves a lot of scrolling at the counter while small people are getting restless.

To give you a picture, one way to set it up is a single folder called “Bali”, with a smaller folder inside for each traveller. Each of those holds three things: the arrival card confirmation, the e-VOA where that person has one, and the levy receipt if you paid ahead. When it’s the next person’s turn at the counter, you open the next name, and that’s it.

One small step: before you close the laptop, go down the booking name by name and tick off each person’s documents.

Questions people ask before they go

“Isn’t the levy part of the visa?” It’s a very common mix-up, so you’re in good company if you assumed so. Smartraveller describes the tourist levy as a separate charge of IDR 150,000 per person. Paying for your e-VOA doesn’t cover it.

“Can I do the arrival card a week early, just to get it out of the way?” It’s a lovely instinct, but no. Smartraveller says the All Indonesia Arrival Card is completed within 72 hours of travel, so it has to wait until those last three days.

“A site is asking me to pay for the arrival card. Is that normal?” No, and it’s worth trusting the uneasy feeling. The arrival card is free on the official site, and Smartraveller warns that fake sites charge a fee. Close the tab and type the official address in yourself.

“I’ve left the e-VOA too late. Is the trip off?” Not at all. Smartraveller says a regular visa on arrival is still available at certain airports and seaports. Because some checkpoints may only take cash, bring some with you if that’s your plan.

“What if we fall in love with the place and want to stay longer?” The visa on arrival covers 30 days and can be extended once, for up to another 30 days, at an immigration office. Smartraveller’s advice is to apply within your first 30 days, because overstaying can lead to a fine and deportation.

“Do I have to pay the levy before I fly?” No. It’s cashless either way, and you can pay online before you travel or at the designated counters when you arrive at Bali’s airport or seaport. Paying at home is simply one less job on arrival.

One small step: if any of these questions was yours, jot the answer on the same page as your flight dates, so it’s all in one place.

The night before the flight

By now the hard part is done. All that’s left is a quick check before bed, and it’s worth doing slowly with a cup of tea rather than at the boarding gate.

• Passport: at least six months from the date you’ll enter Indonesia, with no damage that could cause trouble.
• Arrival card: completed within the 72 hours, with a confirmation saved for each person who needs one.
• e-VOA: approved, with a copy saved for each person it covers.
• Levy receipt: saved, or a plan to pay at the counter on arrival.

Save all of it offline as well as in your email, because you may not have a reliable connection when you land. And if you do end up checking documents over airport or hotel wifi, it’s worth reading up on VPNs and why you might need one before you go.

Then close the suitcase and get some sleep. You’ve done the bits that can be done from home, and the rest is holiday.

Sources: Indonesia travel advice, Smartraveller, Australian Government (https://www.smartraveller.gov.au/destinations/asia/indonesia); Love Bali tourist levy, Bali Provincial Government (https://lovebali.baliprov.go.id/home); e-Visa, Directorate General of Immigration of Indonesia (https://evisa.imigrasi.go.id/)

Booking a taxi has become a screen with a map on it, which is an improvement in most respects and a distraction in one: the screen is good at showing you the nearest car and quiet about the things that decide whether the trip works. The trips that matter most are usually the ones arranged in advance for a fixed time, and they reward a conversation rather than a tap. This guide covers where the app stops being enough, what to specify when booking, and what to do when a car does not arrive.

What the app does not do

Digital dispatch has not replaced the taxi so much as changed how it is called, and the gaps are instructive.

What an app does well is the ordinary trip, booked minutes ahead, price visible, car nearby. What it does less well is the committed trip: the 5am airport run that cannot be missed, the hospital appointment at a fixed hour, the return from an event where every passenger in town is booking at once. These need a booking rather than a request, and a booking needs an operator who holds it. The second gap is specification. A passenger who needs a wheelchair-accessible vehicle, extra luggage space or a child seat is stating a requirement, not expressing a preference, and a dispatch system that does not carry the requirement to a specific vehicle cannot be relied on to meet it.

Booking for an appointment or an early flight

The booking for a fixed-time trip has four useful components. The first is the booking itself, made as far ahead as the operator allows, because a small or busy fleet fills. The second is a pickup time with a margin built in for the hour: for a flight, the time the passenger needs to be at the terminal, worked backwards; for an appointment, the same logic with the check-in time in mind. The third is the exact meeting point, which matters more at 5am than at noon, because the front door, the corner and the hotel entrance are three different instructions. The fourth is the return trip, booked at the same time as the outward one where the day will end at a fixed hour.

Two questions settle the rest. Who should the passenger call if the plans change, and what is the operator’s policy on waiting? The answers are worth having before the morning rather than during it.

Accessibility, specified at booking

Where a passenger needs an accessible vehicle or assistance, the requirement belongs in the booking, stated plainly and confirmed back. A reliable operator will assign a suitable vehicle at the time and note the assistance required; a system that cannot confirm the vehicle is not a confirmation. The same applies to mobility aids and luggage: name the equipment and its size so the right vehicle arrives, and ask what assistance the driver can provide at both ends of the trip.

Fares, and knowing the cost before you go

Fares for metered taxis are set under the rules that apply where the trip takes place, and the meter in the vehicle displays what is being charged. The useful habits are two. For a routine trip, ask the operator for an estimate when booking, which the better ones will give for a known route. For a fixed run such as an airport transfer, ask whether a fixed fare applies, and confirm what it includes, because tolls and booking fees are the usual variables. What a passenger should not have to negotiate is the meter itself: it is displayed, and a fare that does not match the display is a matter for the operator rather than the passenger.

If the car does not arrive

A no-show is the failure mode that matters, and the response is procedural rather than panicked. Call the operator first, with the booking reference if there is one, and establish whether a car is coming and when. If the answer is not, ask for the next available vehicle and, where the trip is critical, start the alternative in parallel rather than sequentially: another operator, or the ride-hailing option, whichever can confirm a car first. Then report the failure properly afterwards, because the operator’s record of it is the only thing that changes the next booking.

What to have ready when you call

A booking is only as good as the information in it, and the list is short. The pickup point described precisely, with a landmark if the address is ambiguous, since “the front entrance” and “the back gate” are different instructions at different hours. The time the passenger needs to arrive, rather than only the time the vehicle should come, so the margin is the operator’s problem rather than the passenger’s. A phone number that will be answered on the day. Any requirements the vehicle must meet, from accessibility to luggage. And the payment method, where a card in the vehicle matters, because not every fleet carries one on every shift.

It takes a minute to assemble, and it converts a hopeful call into a booking the operator can actually fulfil and hold.

The return trip

The return is the half that gets forgotten and the half that fails. Where the day ends at a fixed hour, the return trip should be booked with the outward one, because a car that took the passenger somewhere at nine is not automatically available at three. Where the day’s end is uncertain, the conversation at booking is about who to call when the time firms up, and whether the operator prefers a message or a call.

Late at night, the arithmetic changes again: the fleet thins, and the passenger with a booking made in the morning is the one the operator can plan around. For the trips that matter, then, the pattern is the same as it has always been. Book both legs, confirm the vehicle, and keep the number for the hours when the screen has nothing to offer.

Where the rideshare is the better answer

The honest comparison has both columns. A ride-hailing app is usually the better answer for a spontaneous trip where price comparison matters and a car is nearby, and it is often the only answer late at night in areas where taxi coverage thins. A taxi tends to be the better answer where the trip is committed: a pre-booked pickup at a fixed hour, a rank where cars are already waiting, a taxi rank at a station or an airport, an accessible vehicle arranged in advance, or a regional town where the local service is the local knowledge. The choice is not loyalty to one system; it is matching the vehicle to the trip.

The booking decision

The screen is a tool, not a strategy. For the trips that matter, the discipline is the old one: book ahead, state the requirements, confirm the vehicle, know the fare basis, and keep the operator’s number for the day itself. That is the half of taxi travel the app has not replaced, and the other half of the story, what a local service is doing for the town it serves, is set out in what a local taxi service covers.

A country town’s transport problem is not that it has none. It is that the services that exist run to their own schedules, and the trips people actually need take place at the edges of them. The first train leaves before the first bus connects, the specialist appointment is on a weekday, the shift ends after the last service has gone. A local taxi service exists in that gap, and the gap is larger than the town’s size suggests. This article sets out what the service is doing in a community, trip by trip, and what a passenger should confirm before relying on it.

The trips a timetable does not cover

Public transport in a regional town is arranged around volume, and the taxi fills in where the volume is not. The pattern of those trips is consistent across towns, and each of them is a journey that otherwise does not happen.

An early flight is the clearest case. The airport run leaves before any connecting service starts, and the passenger who cannot be driven by family needs a car and a driver at the hour the plane requires. A specialist or dialysis appointment is the second: weekday, fixed, often in a larger town or the city, and impossible to reach by a timetable that assumes the middle of a working day. School runs fill the third gap, where the bus stop is right but the timing is wrong. Shift work supplies the fourth, with starts and finishes at the hours the timetable does not serve. And the ordinary evenings, dinners, events and the trip home after both, are the fifth, because a town that cannot get its residents home at night loses the events it worked to put on.

The list matters because each item is a working day in the life of a local operator, and each is a reason a household chooses to keep a car it can barely justify, or to stay home instead.

Who the service carries

The passengers are the town’s own. Older residents who have stopped driving or never did, and who still have appointments to keep. Workers whose shifts do not match a bus. Young people getting to study or a first job. Visitors arriving to a wedding, a winery or a weekend, who need to move around without imposing on their hosts. Each group describes the same thing from a different angle: transport that adapts to the trip rather than the trip adapting to the transport.

The exercise of listing this out is not sentimental. It is the reason a town’s transport infrastructure deserves the same attention as its road maintenance, because the households it serves are the ones that keep the town functioning during the hours when everyone else is asleep.

A working day, from the car’s point of view

The clearest way to see what the service is doing is to follow a day of it. The first booking is before five, a resident to the airport for the early flight. The return leg brings a visitor in from the same flight an hour later. By half past eight the school run has replaced the airport runs, and by mid-morning the car is on the appointment circuit: the dialysis regular whose treatment runs fixed hours, the specialist visit in the city, the pharmacy errand for someone who cannot carry the bags. The middle of the day belongs to shopping and the station connections. The school run repeats at three. The evening fills with the trips the town’s calendar creates, the dinner, the winery, the meeting at the hall, and the last of them is the call that comes after the last train, from someone standing on a platform thirty minutes from home with no other way to finish the journey.

The timetable has nothing to say about most of that day, and that is the point. A town’s public transport answers the question of how people move en masse; the local taxi answers the question of how a particular person gets to a particular place at the particular hour their life requires. Remove the second answer and the first one is not a replacement. The appointments are missed, the shifts become impossible without a second car, the evenings shrink, and the households without a driver in them quietly stop going out.

What to confirm when booking

A local service is flexible, and flexibility is best used deliberately. Four things are worth confirming at the time of booking rather than on the day.

The first is the pre-booking window, because a small fleet means a popular hour can fill and the earlier the booking, the better the choice. The second is accessibility: where a passenger uses a wheelchair or needs assistance, that requirement should be raised when the booking is made, so the right vehicle is assigned rather than discovered to be unavailable. The third is luggage and equipment, relevant for airport runs and for passengers carrying medical equipment. The fourth is the plan for the return, which for a late event or a distant appointment is worth arranging at the time of the outward booking, because the quiet hours are exactly when a local fleet has least to spare.

After the last train

The value of a local service shows most clearly at the end of the evening. Where the train line stops early, the alternatives for a passenger returning from the city or from a night out are a lift from a friend, a long wait, or a decision not to go. A taxi that runs when the timetable does not converts that evening from an impossibility into an ordinary evening, and it does the same for the commuter who misses the connection, the patient whose appointment overruns, and the visitor who stayed for the last course.

The local operator’s other asset is knowledge: the driver who knows which road floods, which venue has the rear entrance, and where the station becomes the other station at night. That knowledge is not a marketing point; it is the reason the service can do trips that an out-of-town provider or an app cannot sensibly cost.

What the service means for the town

Put the trips together and the summary is structural. The service carries the appointments that keep people healthy, the journeys that keep people employed, the evenings that keep communities connected, and the access that keeps older residents in their own homes for longer. It also takes cars off the road at the hours when a tired driver is the worst option, which is a safety outcome as much as a transport one.

Any business that does this deserves to be paid for it, and the practical form of that support is to book the service rather than default to driving: a local taxi service is a business like any other, and the towns that keep one are the towns whose residents use it. For the question of what to do when something is left behind on one of those trips, the lost property process is its own small guide, and it is worth reading before it is needed.