Well it’s hard to believe, but we’re leaving Indonesia for Malaysia just about three weeks.  We went to the Malaysian Embassy this morning to begin the next round of our favorite activity, fun with visas.

Luckily, the Embassy is located only a 20 minute walk from our apartment so we don’t have to sit in traffic driving all over town trying to find the office.  TP had gone once already around Christmas to see if we had all the necessary papers and to check how long the process would take.  We needed an additional letter that was more specific, so we got that and tried again today.  I (JM) couldn’t help but compare this place to the Indonesia immigration office that we spent so much time at.  It’s actually a nice building which is not falling apart, it’s calm and organized, there are no huge stacks of passports, and there is  air conditioning and no smoking.  Also, the people actually tell you where to go and what is going on- for example, the guy said "I’m going to go check about this, wait here I’ll be right back"  instead of "Go over there!" which we heard a lot of at immigration.   However, as with so many things we try to do in Indonesia, our efforts were futile.  They told us that because we need a study visa we’ll just have to show up in Malaysia, get a regular three month visa on arrival, and then contact Tom’s sponser and immigration to change it to a multiple-entry six-month visa.  Fun.

So here’s what we want to know.  Even though we were technically on Malaysian soil inside the embassy,  was the fact that we are physically in Indonesia still enough to make things go wrong for us again?