Comments: Foreign tourists question `duties'

Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport staff officers have irritated tourists this week by slapping tax duties on souvenirs bought on the holiday island.

In an email currently doing the rounds, an Australian woman shared two cases when baggage checkers demanded customs excises on goods bought in Bali.

"Yesterday my friends visiting from Singapore were really hassled in the Denpasar airport.

Your comments:
A "practice" at Denpasar airport has arisen known as the VIP visa on arrival where regular incoming tourists are enabled to avoid long waits in immigration processing lines of up to two hours.

They can thereby exit the airport in a fraction of this time. The problem is that the fee for this service is often negotiable with intermediaries, which provokes doubt as to whether it is really an official payment.

For the sake of fairness and equity to all, this practice should be banned except in cases of genuine visiting officials or VIPs and all should pay the standard visa fees which apply.

It would be a much more efficient use of human resources to post the VIP immigration staff to the normal immigration lines to alleviate bottlenecks.

After all, it is the tourists which provide exchange and help the Indonesian economy.

Tony Smith
Canberra

This type of news is a slap in the face for those in the Culture and Tourism Ministry who anticipate seven million visitors, under the proposal by the ministry to continue the slogan of "Visit Indonesia Year 2009" into 2010.

And yet more harassment is popping up at the airport for those tourists who actually helped the economy in Bali. It is just mind-boggling.

I understand that tourists traveling abroad with less than six months or a year left on their passports (depending on the regulation of the country of destination) will get into trouble at their destination unless the airline employees at the point of origin catch the discrepancy beforehand.

Therefore, it falls to the travelers to be more vigilant with their passports and the regulations of their destination to avoid such unfavorable situations.

AK
Los Angeles