I was supposed to be in Bali for my wife’s 50th. My passport had other plans (2024)

Travel was supposed to have become fun again. Post-COVID, trips overseas would no longer involve the dirge of QR codes, the irritation of poking a plastic rod up your nostril, or the nagging fear on joining a line at the airport that you might not even make it to the check-in desk let alone your final destination.

And this holiday had been long in the planning. It was my wife’s 50th birthday. A golden celebration. When booking our hotel in Bali, we had decided to push the boat out. Now, though, after arriving at Sydney Airport with our three kids, I wondered whether I would even make push-back from the departure gate aboard the plane.

When the staff member at the Jetstar desk inquired, “have you got another passport?” I initially thought she had miscounted. COVID, and the haunting memories of long-haul lockdown flights, have made me hyper-vigilant about travel documentation, so I knew for sure that I had the correct number of passports and that all were safely within the bounds of their expiry dates.

In an uncharacteristic act of organisational competence, I had even placed them in a plastic file. Yet it wasn’t the number of passports that was the problem, it was the condition. Mine had a minuscule tear on the photo page, barely visible to the naked eye. Alas, the woman at the Jetstar check-in seemingly had laser-like vision, and soon she was consulting her superiors to conduct a full damage assessment.

A photo was taken, which made the tear look more like the San Andreas Fault. Immediately it was sent to the Indonesian authorities. Our travel plans were now in the hands of a faceless bureaucrat at Denpasar Airport, who the Jetstar desk predicted was almost certain to deny me entry.

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To press home this point, one of them Googled a story from the Daily Mail showing how an Australian woman had been barred entry because of a tear even more microscopic than mine. Evidently, TikTok is awash with similar tales of Balinese woe. Apparently, it is a thing.

Sure enough, the Indonesians were unrelenting. No amount of British charm, no amount of moral blackmail, no amount of anguished pleading was going to change their minds. This was a “no” that could not be turned into a “yes”.

There were hurried farewells with my wife and kids, but the promise as well of a speedy reunion. I would apply immediately for an emergency travel document. I could catch a flight the next day. Paradise would only have to be postponed.

Then, on the drive home from the airport, came a call from a contact at the British embassy. Only a handful of countries in the world do not accept British emergency travel documents, he explained. Crushingly, Indonesia was on that list.

The only way to get into Bali on a British passport was to fly back to the UK, wait about a week for a new one, and then travel halfway back around the world. I’d make it into the arrivals hall in Bali just as my wife and kids were heading towards the departure gate.

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Now, I was catapulted back to my days as a foreign correspondent, when getting into countries in the most inauspicious of circ*mstances was an essential piece of tradecraft. Venezuela in the midst of anti-government protests, when journalists were barred at the border. Nauru amid a constitutional crisis, when the government was in a state of paralysis. Iran, where visas ordinarily took months to come through, in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake. Haiti on the eve of a hurricane, when the border had supposedly been shuttered and we crossed from the Dominican Republic on the backs of motorbikes slaloming between the puddles. Not only did we pride ourselves on gaining entry, but doing so at breakneck speed with a modicum of panache.

So muscle memory kicked in. Contacts were reactivated. Diplomatic levers pulled. A former colleague once posted in Jakarta had a friend who worked in the president’s office. So many people tried to help. Ultimately, though, it was all to no avail. My wife and kids had to come home early, so we could celebrate her birthday together in Sydney. An overly officious officialdom had defeated us.

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There are lessons to be drawn from his unhappy experience. If Joe Biden is serious about dealing with the crisis along America’s southern border, he could do a lot worse than contracting out the problem to a crack team made up of Jetstar check-in staff and passport control at Denpasar airport. If you are willing to sacrifice 15 days in Bali, then you can evidently achieve 15 seconds of TikTok fame. But if you actually want to enjoy a tropical getaway in Bali to celebrate a golden jubilee, treat your passport as if it were a crown jewel.

Nick Bryant, a former BBC foreign correspondent, is the author of The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself.