Travel to Bali/Indonesia & elsewhere in SE Asia

[Guest consulate man]

Folks, The British consulate in Perth has had quite a number of people who had booked holidays to Bali and beyond being refused boarding their aircraft because they had less than 6 months validity on their British passport. Needless to say, but this has caused a lot of upset for the traveller and in some cases they've been unable to go on their travels and lost their money. In other cases it has caused the traveller additional expense and delays by having first to obtain an Emergency Travel Document (ETD) from the British consulate, secondly paying to have their flight changed and thus losing days from their holiday/business trip. To make matters worse the Indonesian authorities will not issue Visa on arrival to holders of an ETD, and neither will they issue a visa prior to travel in an ETD unless it is a dire emergency - there is nothing that the British consulate in Perth can do about this. Our advice is to look after your passport, regularly check the validity, particularly before you book travel, and whenever practicable renew or replace your passport 9 months before it expires - any outstanding validity up to 9 months will be carried forward onto your new passport. Also remember that children under 16 only have passports that have a maximum of 5 years validity and letting these expire can cause real upset and ruin the holiday for a family. For information on how to renew/replace your British passport visit the website at www.gov.uk/overseas-passport. You can also visit the British High Commission's facebook page for regular updates at http://facebook.com/ukinaustralia