Don’t you miss traveling before the pandemic?
Don’t you miss the time that you could pick up your bags and just go?
As of now, the beginning of 2022, in order to travel internationally, you need to have a visa, and do a quarantine. We spoke about these topics in our last video and today we gonna share more information with you about the quarantine process.
Book As Early As Possible 🏨
💡 Tip: Don’t leave booking the quarantine hotel to the last minute of your trip.
Why You Should Book Early
In addition to what we’ve mentioned before, we advise you to book your quarantine hotel as early as you possibly can.
We have heard some people waited until the last minute to book their quarantine hotels, which left them with very few options to choose from and they were forced to go way beyond their budget. If you wanna save money, then be sure to book in advance.
Our Cancellation Story
It also gives you more room to adjust if anything goes wrong. The quarantine hotel we first booked canceled on us 3 days before our departure, we felt really lucky that we successfully booked another hotel in the similar price range just 2 days before our flight, otherwise we would have had to change the whole plan.
How to Book Quarantine Hotels đź“‘
Documents For booking
You need to provide your flight itinerary and a copy of your passport in order to book a quarantine hotel.
Provide The Details Of Each Person
The process is a bit different from booking a regular hotel. Normally, you only need to provide one person’s name when booking regular hotels, but if you are traveling as a family or a couple, you need to provide the details of each person, otherwise you might run into problems when you arrive in Indonesia.
Payment Time May Vary
The hotel may charge you upfront when you are making the booking, or they will request for you to make the payment at check in. Once your booking is confirmed, you will receive 2 documents. One is the QR code provided by the hotel and one is the reservation confirmation. And you need to present both of these documents to the officers upon your entry to Indonesia.
Traveling As Non-Family
Indonesia is a Muslim majority country, some hotels only allow family members to share a room. That’s why if you are traveling as an unmarried couple or if you plan to share a room with friends, you need to check with the hotel to make sure that they allow it.
Pricing & Services Of Quarantine Hotels đź’°
The price of quarantine hotels are generally more expensive than regular hotels, but the cost of all your meals and certain services are included in it.
High Price Doesn’t Guarantee High Quality
When it comes to quarantine hotels, we’ve heard that the more expensive ones aren’t necessarily better. There are many horror stories that we heard about the more expensive quarantine hotels, people were starving because their food would often come late, their food was cold, or just tasted really awful, one guy didn’t even have a working phone in his room, can you imagine, when you can’t go anywhere and you can’t talk to the front desk, you can only starve in your room, alone…
Better Hotels Likely Provide Better Services
But with that said, more expensive hotels are more likely to provide better services, for instance, you can reserve gym equipments at some hotels, like what Ryan from http://onwardticket.com/ had.
He just did his quarantine a week after ours, this is the 2nd time that he did a quarantine. He did his 1st quarantine in Feb of 2021, at a hotel he chose randomly after landing in Jakarta. As he described, he was served terrible food, so he fasted for 5 days. However, after learning from the prier experience, he chose a much better hotel this time, he brought his own protein supplements, and he was served much better food with more options to choose from, and they even adjusted the meals to low carb for him. He also had the “wellness package” at the hotel, but because others reserved certain items before him, he only got an indoor bike and 10 kg dumbbells.
Here are some pics of his experience:
Our Quarantine Hotel Experience
But renting gym equipments is a service we didn’t have, because we stayed at Jakarta Airport hotel, which is a transit hotel at the airport. However, while it was relatively cheap and old, the service was great, the staff really went out of their ways to help us.
- Every time when we called the reception, they always answered immediately and delivered what are we requested within a couple of minutes.
- When we complained about the Wi-Fi, they moved us to another room with stronger Wi-Fi signal.Hi
- Our food was simple, but it tasted pretty good! Additionally, it was always delivered on time if not early. There was one day that our food had less than half of the normal portion, they immediately ordered us KFC chicken after we complained. Similar to Ryan, we normally avoid carbs, 2 days into our quarantine we asked if we could replace carbs with more meat & veggies, and they catered to our needs.
- We also asked for extension cords and scales, apparently these weren’t common requests, and this is what they gave us, you really can see they did their best to help us.
💡 Even tho more expensive hotels can’t guarantee better experience, you should always get a hotel with a balcony or a window that you can open, fresh air is always great.
Length of Quarantine Changes Fast 🔀
COVID is unpredictable, and in my opinion Indonesia responds very fast, which means the length of your quarantine might change when you arrive in Indonesia. But, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’d do longer quarantines, responding fast also means they will shorten it when they can.
Length of Our Quarantine
When we were planning to come here, there was a 3 day quarantine, it then got bumped to 7 days and then 10 days because of the omicron variant, and while we were in quarantine it got knocked down to 7 days.
We thought our quarantine was not bad at all, and you most probably will have even a better time than ours because right now in early February 2022 the quarantine length has been shortened to only 5 days.
PCR Test Before Quarantine Ends
You will have a PCR test on the second last morning of your quarantine, including both nasal and throat swab.
Documents You Will Receive
If your result comes back negative you will be free to go the next morning, with the negative test report and a clearance letter in hand.
What Happens If You Test Positive
But if you test positive you will be taken to another government assigned quarantine facility where you will do more quarantine time, and the same goes for if you test positive at the airport before your quarantine.
Final Tips âś…
Here are some tips that we think you may find useful!đź’ˇ
Print Out All The Documents
Print the QR code and hotel booking confirmation and other documents before your trip, we had to show our quarantine hotel confirmation in the airport before we left for Jakarta and once we arrived in Jakarta too.
Try Getting A SIM Card If You Don’t Have One Before Quarantine Begins
After you complete all the steps after you landed, and about to go to your hotel, ask the hotel staff who is picking you up whether you can get SIM card, just in case the Wi-Fi in your hotel is not good. We only got our sim cards when we were out of quarantine, and the Wi-Fi at the hotel we stayed at was really bad, which means our quarantine was also a social media detox session for us. We chose Telkomsel because they have a little store right at the exit of the Jakarta airport. If you also choose Telkomsel, you should look for this logo at the airport.
The Real Length Of Your Quarantine
7 days quarantine is not really 7 days but actually 5 full days. We arrived Tuesday night , then spent Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and in our room. Sunday morning we had the PCR test and Sunday night we got the results, so we were able to go out of the room and wonder around the hotel. However, our checkout was officially on Monday morning.
So yeah, it was really not that bad, and if you are coming to Indonesia soon, and you will be doing a quarantine, good luck and just remember what will come after the quarantine.
