Indonesia - Jakarta and a Fellow Traveller's Nightmare

A pretty bird in Jakarta airport

Our flight to Jakarta was cramped but uneventful.  We landed at the new Terminal 3 and it was really very busy.  As we had visas already firmly placed in our passports we did not need to queue up at the “Visa on Arrival” counter before heading through passport control.  We joined the massive queue and waited patiently with the throng of people who had all arrived at the same time.

I was summoned up to one of the 6 passport check desks before Paul and it did strike me at the time that the clerk was taking rather a long time to satisfy himself that everything was in order.  Paul was called up and had gone through before I was processed.  My clerk (who was a particularly officious looking middle aged man) kept glancing over in Paul’s direction.  After a good 3 minutes or so I was handed my passport back and allowed through.  Paul, and indeed everyone else who passed through before me, had gone through in less than a minute.