I renewed my passport this month, and it was a painless experience. I downloaded the app, filled out my details, and uploaded photographs of my ID card and existing passport. When it was all done, I was given two hours to finalize the payment through a convenience store, ATM, or bank transfer. Went to the bank’s ATM section and while waiting for confirmation, I just found out that the app also accepts credit and debit cards. The wording of “Pay Now” BEFORE getting to the card/e-wallet/bank virtual account options made me hesitate to tap it, not least because a test run of upgrading a Substack plan last month resulted in instant payment.
In any case, the app confirmed my payment, so leaving home was worth it. I came to the immigration office for an 11 am appointment with the app, passport, pens, and ID card. I was given a folder that must be filled with copies of the passport and ID card and a legal stamp, so the old paper bureaucracy remains alive. The copy center was no longer a 20th-century general store behind the office but now the cafeteria’s cashier. I could pay for the copy service and the stamp with my phone; other applicants topped their purchases with snacks, and I got to lick a stamp again in 2025 (it tasted weird).
I filed my application by 10.45 and got the number – there were 105 people before me. Kept tapping between X, Bluesky, Substack Notes, and Google Books during the hour, and I was sure there was no way I could get called by noon.
Indeed, noon was lunch break, and all desks were closed – no replacement officers at all. Other applicants were either getting lunch too or waiting on their phone, like me. I hesitated to try the cafeteria (it would have been full of officers, anyway) or even buy a packed snack from the store, while a woman next to me came back with a sausage roll from the bakery across the street.
Once, Chinese Indonesians worried, maybe reasonably, that all government institutions would make things hard for them in exchange for cash. Not anymore, at least to my knowledge. I mean, I won’t be thrilled to try every office (I don’t think there’s any Danish who enjoys visiting the government office anyhow), but this was no longer your parents’ third world state. The models for the “How to dress for your passport photo” display were a Chinese woman and a Chinese man, which was fine for me, but seems interesting in this global diversity drive in 2025.
The office was reopened before one, and I got called about forty minutes later. I received no questions at all, just posed for the camera and got my fingers scanned, and got a printout telling me to come back next Thursday.
It was Thursday, 12 June 2025. I picked the date because it was the first available date when I made the booking on 2 June. The day was more packed than the strangely empty 13 June, but I thought, why should I wait for another day if I could do it the day before? A wise decision in retrospect, because the public chat on 13 June would have been bad, and bad vibes might have occurred.
I came back on 19 June, the security scanned the printout and gave me a number, and I got my new passport, along with the voided old one, 20 minutes after arrival. Then the existential crisis began.
The Existential Crisis
“What stops you from traveling the world?” asks the social media slop (wait, is the word antisemitic since it started from the 4chan term ‘goyslop’?). “This”, Indonesians would answer, showing a stock photo of an Indonesian passport. It’s visa-free in merely 78 countries, excluding the nicest countries: The EU and the Anglosphere. A visitor visa is not required in Southeast Asia. Passport registration for Japan. Not a bad deal at all, unless you compare the situation with Singaporean, Malaysian, and Chinese passports, let alone with Western passports. Ah, the peril of social media, when what’s normal for others is a big ask for you.
For Indonesians, the condition is unfair. Indonesians aren’t criminals, terrorists, overstayers, or illegals. Indonesians are willing to spend euros and dollars, so it’s unfair that we must go through all the hoops before getting to experience Yookay. Sometimes our application to experience Yookay is rejected, while people who create such a situation have British passports.
Maybe that is the point? Once I calculated why Australia approves a student visa for an Indonesian passport more easily than a tourist visa, the answer is because an Indonesian tourist will spend $3,000 top in a week, while an Indonesian student may spend $300,000 in 3 years. And we have less to offer compared to China and India.
Some Indonesians half-jokingly rue the historical fact that the Brits skipped Indonesia (Stamford Raffles governed Java and Bencoolen in the 1810s. The trauma prompted him to micromanage Singapore) while the Dutch did nothing at all to help the former Dutch East Indies. Well, that is what we get for revolting after 1945, and the Indonesian diaspora in the Netherlands had either assimilated or moved to North America by now. Assimilation gets you forgotten, defiance gets you noticed.
In any case, several Indonesians got to travel to the Netherlands as tourists and students. Several live there. Maybe if you’re complaining about the weakness of the Indonesian passport, you’re not rich and powerful enough. That's what I feel when I get the innocent, frank comment of “You should visit Australia again,” coming from Australians.
In another timeline, I’m a happy holder of the Australian passport (the most expensive in the world). The day I got naturalized as an Australian citizen, I would have happily handed over my Indonesian passport, and therefore ended my Indonesian citizenship, to the nearest Indonesian consulate (is there any chance I would live around the ACT? Yes, maybe in rural NSW, nearer to Canberra than to Sydney).
Holding the new Indonesian passport reminds me of my failure of imagination 25 years ago. I was in Australia, so why didn’t I become an Australian? Every day, the TV ad said, “There’s never been a better time to be an Australian,” so why didn’t I heed it?
The short answer: A Chinese Indonesian is more respected in Indonesia than in Australia. Hence why according to my knowledge, a Muslim Indonesian was more willing to trade their Indonesian citizenship for something else. Chinese Indonesians who sought a new citizenship would be more low-key about it, keeping it vague, even from other Chinese Indonesians.
Because we had the burden of being seen as eternal strangers and ungrateful guests. And perhaps the biggest venom could come from other Chinese Indonesians. Once I was with women who made fun of their old classmate who…was an animator for The Adventures of Tintin. I blogged about this incident, the animator read it and got angry at me, and I replied that I was a messenger. Unhappiness follows the wanderer, and maybe that’s been my fear.
What now? I didn’t use my previous passport at all. In early 2020, I thought about traveling to Japan in autumn 2020. When the pandemic ended, I wasn’t interested in going anywhere, not even Singapore. Money-wise, socially wise, practicality-wise (travel to Jakarta from a city without an international airport, spend five days alone while spending hundreds of dollars without socializing with anyone, return to my third world country, and back to my third world city). Meanwhile, everyone travels to Japan.
My current passport has a lifetime of ten years. I’ve wasted twenty years of my life languishing and wasting away my potential. Twenty years of hating myself, of ruing the reality that I am not an Australian. I don’t know if eventually I’ll trade my Indonesian citizenship for something better. But my new passport can help with that. It’s my blank check to leave.