My Indonesian visa saga

Sometimes being organized doesn’t pay off the result you were expecting as this happened to me with my Indonesian Visa. As lovely as the country is and the people are genuine, helpful and happy the authorities are the complete opposite.
By entering the country you will only receive a tourist visa which is valid for one month and can be extended only once for a month. There were many stories going round on the web that visa are a pain in the neck and could cost you days of your trip so I decided to organise the 60 days in advance. This should be possible at foreign Indonesian Embassy with some effort (forms) but at least I could enjoy my 60 days without spending time at an Immigration office. How wrong could I be; with a lot of sweat and effort I was able to apply for a visa in Manila at the Indonesian Embassy. Only when I went through a 2hr chores to get the correct forms and payment arranged I was told that they couldn’t confirm that it would be granted a 60 days visa but at least a 30 days which I could extent during my trip. So when I collected my passport 5 days later I was (of course) very disappointed to see that it was only for 30 days. What a waste of my 2 afternoons as I could have arranged this when entering the country. 
So I parked this while traveling in The Philippines and my first 2 weeks in Indonesia but when I arrived in Yogyakarta this was the first thing on my mind to arrange. So on Friday morning I went with all the required papers to the immigration office with my travel companion who needed to do the same but I came out of the office ‘empty handed’ and very disappointed and deflated as I was told that Manila had granted me a social visa which you usually get when you want to stay for max 6 months and requires a local sponsor! I was gobsmacked as how was this possible without having a sponsor in the 1st place? I got 2 forms to be filled in by ‘the sponsor’ and could return on Monday to apply for the extension. That day I spend gathering information and looking for a sponsor but was put out of my misery by the very kind and extremely helpful guesthouse owner Tanto who called his ‘friend’ at the immigration office. The only legal way to get this sorted was to leave the country at the end of my month and enter it again to receive that well needed tourist visa which could be extended for another month. He told me that even after 20 years his German wife has many issues to extend her visa for the next five years! I was so sad, disappointed and angry that I really had to take a moment and reflect on this for the rest of the day. It felt I was betrayed by a country close to my heart (especially Java where my roots come from) but I knew I had to keep emotions and practicalities separate as the country is a paradise and the people are amazing.
I didn’t want to support or contribute to the corrupt system so trying to find a way to deal with this social visa was not going anywhere.
This meant that at the end of the 30 days I have to fly for the day to Kuala Lumpur and back to Indonesia to receive a new visa.
This was a hard lesson to learn about the Indonesian authorities and not to try to arrange to many things for my trip in advance as you never can be sure what’s around the corner or what challenge is waiting for you.