Bali and Indonesia for Indian Citizens: Two Payments, and a Hard 60-Day Ceiling

Bali is the most booked long-haul beach holiday in India, and it is also the destination where Indian travellers most often arrive having paid the wrong number of times. Indonesia does not run one entry charge. It runs two, levied by two different governments, through two different websites, with two different sets of consequences for getting it wrong — and only one of them is a visa.

The national requirement is a visa. Indonesia’s Directorate General of Immigration issues Indian passport holders a Visitor Visa, better known as the visa on arrival or e-VOA, for IDR 500,000 and a 30-day stay. The provincial requirement is Bali’s foreign tourist levy: IDR 150,000, paid to the Bali Provincial Government, which has nothing to do with immigration and cannot be paid on the immigration portal. Neither one covers the other.

The visa: 90 days of validity, 30 days of Indonesia

Indonesia’s official portal is explicit about a distinction that catches people out. The Visitor Visa is valid for 90 days, and that validity is the period in which you may enter the country. The stay it grants is 30 days, counted from your arrival date. Buying it four weeks early costs you nothing; buying it four months early wastes IDR 500,000.

It is a single-entry visa, issued for tourism, government visits, business meetings, goods purchasing or transit. Apply at evisa.imigrasi.go.id, upload your passport bio page and a photograph, pay by Mastercard, Visa or JCB, and download the PDF. The portal notes that card payments attract additional charges set by your bank, so the IDR 500,000 is a floor rather than the final figure on your statement.

Bali’s levy is a second government asking, and it is changing right now

Since February 2024 every foreign tourist entering Bali owes IDR 150,000. It rests on its own stack of law — Law No. 15 of 2023 on Bali Province, Bali Provincial Regulation No. 2 of 2025, Governor Regulation No. 25 of 2025 and a 2025 technical-guidelines decree — and it is charged per person, once per trip, not per entry. Payment is cashless only: the Love Bali website or app before you fly, a counter at the airport or port on arrival, or a registered hotel, travel agent or attraction while you are on the island.

The reason to care in late 2026 is that Bali has just changed how it collects the money. On 14 August 2026 the Governor said that only about 43% of foreign visitors were actually paying — up from 35.4% the year before, on roughly IDR 235 billion collected since January — and that from late August international airlines would begin displaying and announcing the levy to passengers before landing. The collection point is moving from the island to the aircraft cabin, which means the polite ignorance defence is expiring.

A handful of visa categories are exempt from the levy, and for some of them the exemption has to be applied for through the Love Bali system at least five days before you reach a Bali arrival gate. Miss that window and you pay like everyone else, exemption or not. Ordinary tourists have nothing to claim here — this matters if you are arriving on a student, diplomatic or long-stay permit.

Extending is no longer a website

This is the change most likely to break a plan, and it is the one least represented in older guides. The e-VOA can be extended once, by another 30 days, for a further fee in the same IDR 500,000 range. Until 2025 that could be done remotely. It cannot now.

Circular Letter No. IMI-417.GR.01.01 of 2025, issued by the Director General of Immigration, reinstated mandatory biometric attendance for stay-permit extensions, superseding an earlier 2025 circular that had allowed desk and online processing. It took effect from 21 May 2025, applied in Bali from 29 May and nationwide from the start of June. The shape of the process now is hybrid: register and upload documents and pay online, then attend the immigration office covering your Indonesian address — assigned from the postal code you register — for a photograph, fingerprints and a short interview. Reports of the rollout describe two or three visits in some cases, and non-attendance simply stops the extension.

Sixty days is a hard ceiling. One extension is all there is, you cannot apply for a fresh tourist visa from inside the country, and staying longer means leaving. Overstaying carries a daily fine and worse, and Indonesia has spent the last two years visibly tightening enforcement on foreigners working or living quietly on tourist permits.

The customs declaration nobody mentions until the queue

Indonesia has retired the paper customs form. Arrivals complete an electronic customs declaration at ecd.beacukai.go.id, in the days before landing, and present the resulting QR code after collecting luggage. It is free, it takes two minutes, and the only penalty for forgetting is standing in the customs hall filling it in on your phone with a trolley and a queue behind you. Do it with the same reminder that you use for the Bali levy.

Bali has written rules for tourists, and they are enforceable

In March 2025 the Governor issued Circular Letter No. 7 of 2025, a code of conduct for foreign tourists that replaced a softer 2023 version by adding enforcement. Two of its provisions are ones Indian visitors trip over regularly, and neither is about temples.

• Riding a scooter requires a valid licence and a helmet. The circular requires foreign tourists to obey driving rules including holding a valid national or international driving permit. An Indian licence alone is not sufficient for Bali; you need an International Driving Permit, obtained from your RTO before you leave. Renting a scooter in Canggu without one is the most common way for an Indian traveller to end up in a police conversation, and it invalidates most travel insurance in a crash.
• Pay in rupiah, through official channels. The circular requires transactions in Indonesian rupiah, payments through the QRIS standard, and currency exchange only at licensed money changers displaying a Bank Indonesia licence number and QR logo. Street exchange booths advertising suspiciously good rates are exactly what this clause is aimed at.

The rest is what you would expect, stated formally: dress and behave respectfully at sacred sites, do not enter temple sanctums unless you are worshipping in Balinese attire, do not climb sacred trees or take inappropriate photographs at holy places, do not litter or use single-use plastics, use licensed guides at attractions, stay in licensed accommodation, and do not work or run a business without the right documents. Enforcement sits with Bali’s civil service police unit and the provincial police, there is a public hotline for reporting violations, and the circular provides for sanctions or legal proceedings rather than a warning.

What a Bali trip actually costs to enter

• IDR 500,000 — e-VOA, per person, single entry, 30 days.
• Card charges — added by your bank on top, per the portal’s own warning.
• IDR 150,000 — Bali foreign tourist levy, per person, once per trip.
• IDR 0 — electronic customs declaration.
• IDR ~500,000 more — only if you extend, and only alongside a trip to an immigration office.

For a family of four that is IDR 2.6 million before anyone has bought a coconut — around ₹14,000 — and both charges apply to children at full price. Worth putting in the budget rather than discovering at the airport.

The short version

• Get the e-VOA at evisa.imigrasi.go.id a week before you fly. IDR 500,000, 30 days from arrival, single entry.
• Pay the Bali levy separately at lovebali.baliprov.go.id. IDR 150,000, once per trip, and only that domain.
• Do the customs declaration at ecd.beacukai.go.id before you land and keep the QR code.
• If you want more than 30 days, expect an in-person biometrics appointment, and 60 days is the absolute limit.
• Carry an International Driving Permit if you intend to ride anything, and pay in rupiah.

Indonesia is genuinely easy to enter on an Indian passport — one online form, one card payment, automated gates on arrival. The mistakes are all in the second layer: the provincial charge that is not a visa, the extension that is no longer a website, and the licence you needed to get in India before you ever saw a scooter.