Stay in Indonesia for any length of time, whether for work in Jakarta or a second home on Bali, and sooner or later you end up at Imigrasi. In most cases the destination is a KITAS, the limited-stay permit. The forms are in Indonesian, the questions across the counter are in Indonesian, and the agent many people hire to handle all of this will also be explaining things to you in Indonesian at speed.
Three things catch applicants out with some regularity. You need a penjamin, a sponsor, usually an Indonesian company or individual who formally vouches for you; your application is tied to them rather than floating free. Many documents require a materai, a duty stamp you buy and stick on, signing across it, and without one the paper is simply not valid no matter how correct everything on it is. And when you leave the country for good you need a separate permission to do so, the EPO. Departing without it leaves an open case behind you that catches up with your next application, sometimes years later.
What follows is not a course. It is the set of words that get spoken in the room while your file is being looked at, and the ones printed on the documents you are handing over.
On pronunciation you get a break. Indonesian uses the Latin alphabet, has no tones, and is spoken very much as it is written. There are no cases and no verb conjugation. Of all the languages in this series it is by a distance the most accessible, and the vocabulary below is a few days' work rather than a few months'. c is "ch" as in "chair", j is exactly the "j" you would expect, and an unstressed e often flattens to the vowel in "the". The rest is roughly what it looks like.
The office and getting through the door
Kantor Imigrasi (kan-tor ee-mee-grah-see): the immigration office. Everyone just says Imigrasi.
Dukcapil (dook-cha-pil): the civil registration office, responsible for the residence certificate.
Loket (lo-ket): the counter.
Antrian (an-tree-an): the queue, and the queue number.
Petugas (puh-too-gas): the official on duty.
Berkas (behr-kas): the file, the stack of documents. Your entire existence at this office consists of one berkas, and whether it is complete is the only question anyone is really asking.
Your documents
Paspor (pas-por): the passport.
KITAS (kee-tas): Kartu Izin Tinggal Terbatas, the limited-stay permit. KITAP is the unlimited version, available after several years.
VITAS (vee-tas): the matching entry visa, which you need before you arrive and which is converted into the KITAS once you are in the country.
Penjamin (pen-ja-min): the guarantor, the sponsor. Worth knowing by ear, because it is the first thing anyone will ask you about.
Surat (soo-rat): the letter, the written document. It sits inside a great many document names.
SKTT (ess-kah-tay-tay): Surat Keterangan Tempat Tinggal, the certificate of residence.
Materai (ma-tuh-rye): the duty stamp. You buy it at the post office or a minimarket, stick it on, and sign across it.
Persyaratan (per-sha-ra-tan): the requirements, meaning the list of what you are supposed to bring. Ask for the persyaratan in advance and you will be handed the list; turn up without having asked and you will be told it item by item, in the order you failed to satisfy it.
Foto dan sidik jari (fo-to dan see-dik ja-ree): photo and fingerprint. The biometric capture is part of the appointment.
The procedures
Izin tinggal (ee-zin ting-gal): the residence permit, literally "stay permission".
Perpanjangan (per-pan-jang-an): the extension.
Permohonan (per-mo-ho-nan): the application.
Lapor diri (la-por dee-ree): self-reporting, including with your own embassy.
EPO (eh-peh-oh): Exit Permit Only, the permission required for a final departure.
Biaya (bee-ah-ya): the fee.
Tanda tangan (tan-da tang-an): the signature, literally "hand sign".
Cap (chahp): the stamp.
Salinan (sa-lee-nan): the copy. Asli (as-lee): the original.
The words you hopefully won't need
Kurang lengkap (koo-rang leng-kap): incomplete.
Ditolak (dee-toh-lak): rejected. Short word, long consequences.
Denda (den-da): the fine. For an overstay it is calculated per day.
Melebihi batas waktu (muh-luh-bee-hee ba-tas wak-too): past the deadline.
Kembali besok (kem-ba-lee beh-sok): "come back tomorrow".
Why this beats a translation app
Indonesian may be the most underestimated language in the world. Around 280 million people in the country, a grammar that puts up almost no resistance to a new learner, and next to no serious learning material beyond the phrasebook tier. Get the first few hundred words and you travel unusually far in Indonesia, and the words in this article are a good place to begin, because they turn up in situations that repeat themselves every single year.
A translation app will not do this job for you, and not because the translations are bad. It is that you cannot hold a phone up to a sentence somebody said to you three seconds ago while they wait, and you cannot search for a word you did not catch. Recognition has to already be in your head. Twenty of these terms is the difference between following a conversation about your own file and watching it happen to you.
That is precisely what Vokabulo is built for. You capture the words your own life puts in front of you and learn them in the context where you will meet them again. Indonesian taught straight from English, with over 100 languages available in every combination.
Get Vokabulo, start free.
