Asia · Move Kit
🇮🇩 The Indonesia Move Kit
Every Indonesian visa route, four cities priced to the rupiah, and the paperwork in order.
Indonesia has four realistic doors: the E33G Remote Worker KITAS (one year, renewable, foreign income untaxed), the Visa on Arrival (30 days, extendable once to 60), the Student Visa / e-ITAS for the length of your course, and the Second Home Visa for five or ten years against a deposit or qualifying property. This kit walks each one — who it fits, who should not bother, and exactly what documents you have to produce — then prices Canggu, Ubud, Lombok and Yogyakarta line by line so you can see where the money actually goes. Every figure is sourced, every official URL is printed so you can check us.
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What's inside
Which route is yours
All four Indonesian routes walked honestly, including the student route most guides skip.
Where to live on your budget
Canggu, Ubud, Lombok and Yogyakarta side by side with real monthly totals and student figures.
The money, broken down
Rent, food, transport and coworking split out so you can see which line you can actually move.
What you have to produce
The document checklist per route — what 'proof of income' actually looks like in a folder.
The first 30 days
Ordered arrival plan, with what blocks what.
Tax and healthcare
What our file says, and — plainly — what we have not verified and who to ask instead.
Verify it yourself
Every official immigration URL, verbatim, so you can confirm before you spend.
Read before you buy
Free chapter: The first 30 days
The complete chapter, exactly as it appears in the Indonesia Move Kit. Open it on its own page
Order matters here, because several things block several other things.
Day −7 to 0 (before you board). Insurance active before you fly, not after — SafetyWing is the standard nomad option, Insubuy is the better comparison tool if you want to shop plans against each other, and Medjet is the one people ignore until they need evacuation from an island with limited facilities. Lombok and rural areas are precisely the case Medjet exists for. Confirm your onward-travel booking if you are on the Visa on Arrival; airlines check it. Put every visa document in your carry-on. If you are on the Student route, this is critical: the e-ITAS is issued at the immigration checkpoint on arrival, so the paperwork must be in your hand, not in a suitcase on a belt.
Day 0 — arrival. Clear immigration and get your permission stamped or issued. Do not walk away from the counter until you understand exactly what you have been given and when it expires — write the expiry date in your phone before you leave the airport. Pre-booking a Welcome Pickups transfer is worth it on a first arrival, especially landing in Bali at night with a year's luggage. If you land between accommodation, Bounce or LuggageHero will hold bags for the day.
Days 1–3 — SIM, cash, orientation. Local SIM with a generous data package first; it unblocks ride-hailing, maps and every booking you are about to make. Then get rupiah moving — Wise for the transfers, and keep a small cash buffer because plenty of warungs and landlords are cash-only. Do not sign anything yet.
Days 3–14 — housing. Book two weeks somewhere flexible and view places in person. This is the single largest line in your budget ($350 in Yogyakarta to $720 in Canggu) and the one that is hardest to undo, so earning the right to sign by actually walking the neighbourhood at 8am and 10pm is worth two weeks of slightly higher short-let rent. Test the internet yourself, on your own device, at the hour you actually work — in Ubud at ~30 Mbps this is not optional. Many long lets ask for six or twelve months up front; that is normal, and it is exactly why you do not sign in week one.
Days 7–21 — work base and routine. Pick a coworking space and pay for a month, not a day pass ($80 Yogyakarta, $90 Lombok, $110 Ubud, $120 Canggu). It is the fastest way to meet people who have done your paperwork before you. Sort a scooter or settle your transport pattern. Run NordVPN by default on every shared network.
Days 14–30 — the immigration clock. Whatever route you are on, this is when you handle the next step, not when you start thinking about it. On the Visa on Arrival, your single 30-to-60-day extension is a task with a deadline, and leaving it to the last few days is how people end up paying to fix something that was free to do calmly. On a longer route, confirm at https://evisa.imigrasi.go.id/ whether your permit carries any post-arrival steps or reporting obligations — our file does not list them, so ask the portal rather than a Facebook group. Book your onward or exit flight if your route requires one, and if a flight you have already booked is delayed or cancelled, AirHelp is worth a claim; Travelex covers the trip-level risks on the way in.
That's one of 7 chapters — get the full Move Kit.
Get the full kit — $49Still deciding? The free Indonesia guide covers every visa route, living costs by city and safety.
Visa rules change often and official sources can conflict. This is AI-assembled research, not legal or immigration advice — always verify with the official link before you act. Full disclaimer
The full Indonesia plan is locked
Unlock the visa playbook, taxes, healthcare, city picks, the first-30-days checklist and the templates.
Get set up for Indonesia
The tools we use for every move — insurance, money, connectivity and more.
Bounce — luggage storage
Drop your bags at 15,000+ spots worldwide between check-out and your next move.
Solis (SIMO) Go Hotspot
Global 4G/5G pocket Wi‑Fi with pay‑as‑you‑go data in 140+ countries — the flagship "always connected" device.
Nomad travel gear
Passport holders, packing cubes, and the carry-on jacket that swallows a wardrobe.
SafetyWing — nomad insurance
Health + travel cover built for people who live abroad. Monthly, cancel anytime.
Insubuy
Compare travel-medical and expat health plans, including the long-stay policies visa applications ask you to prove. Useful before you file, not just before you fly.
AirHelp — delayed or cancelled flight?
Claims compensation for delayed, cancelled or overbooked flights. No win, no fee. Worth knowing when you fly as often as nomads do.
Travelex — trip insurance
Trip cancellation, interruption and baggage cover for the moving-day flights, where a missed connection costs real money.
Welcome Pickups — airport transfer
A local driver meets you at arrivals with your name on a sign, at a fixed price. The single easiest thing to get right on day one in a new country.
LuggageHero — luggage storage
Store bags by the hour or day in shops and cafes across Europe and North America — for the gap between one lease ending and the next starting.
Aviasales — flight search
Searches hundreds of airlines and agencies at once, including the budget carriers the big sites miss. Good for one-way and open-jaw routes.
Trip.com — flights & hotels
Particularly strong across Asia, where the Western booking sites are often more expensive or miss carriers entirely.
Travala — stays, pay your way
Hotels and apartments worldwide, with crypto accepted alongside cards — handy when your money lives in more than one place.
Travel Freely — track your points
Free tool that tracks credit-card sign-up bonuses and annual-fee dates across every card you hold, so points fund the flights.
Allianz Travel Insurance — trip protection
Trip cancellation, travel medical and baggage cover from Allianz, bought through a licensed travel agency's storefront. Check each plan's terms — plans are sold to US residents.
Medjet (medical evacuation)
Air‑medical transport + evacuation membership — if you're hospitalized 150+ mi from home, get moved to the hospital of YOUR choice. Not travel‑medical insurance; it pairs with it.
NEXT Insurance — business insurance for freelancers
Online small-business insurance — general and professional liability, errors & omissions, equipment — for US-based freelancers and one-person LLCs who keep working while they travel. Quotes in minutes; US businesses only.
NordVPN — stay secure
Public-wifi safety, and reach your home services from anywhere.
TravelFun.Biz — earn 25% sharing travel
Travel creators on TikTok, Instagram or a blog earn 25% on every sale they refer to the TravelFun host travel agency and agent training. Free to join, 365-day cookie, paid within 30 days of the sale. Earnings aren't guaranteed.
GetYourGuide
Tours, day trips and skip-the-line tickets in your new city.
Viator
Large tour and activity marketplace, useful for the first weeks of exploring.
Tours By Locals — private local guides
Private guides who actually live there — good for orientation in a city you have just moved to.
Tiqets — museums & attractions
Instant mobile tickets for museums and attractions.
EconomyBookings — car hire
Car rental comparison, for the stretch before you sort local transport.
BikesBooking — scooter & bike rental
Scooter and motorbike rental, the default way to get around much of Southeast Asia.
Busbud — intercity buses
Intercity bus tickets across 80+ countries — usually the cheapest way between nearby cities.
Project Expedition — tours & excursions
Curated tours and excursions worldwide.
Rocket Lawyer
On‑demand legal documents, business formation (LLC), and attorney Q&A — useful for nomads setting up a base or a business.
Booking.com
Hotels + apartments worldwide; the default lodging affiliate.
Some links are affiliate links — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We only list tools we'd use ourselves.
Questions
Can I work for an Indonesian company or take Indonesian clients on any of these visas?
Only the Remote Worker Visa (E33G KITAS) permits local work. The Visa on Arrival, the Student Visa / e-ITAS and the Second Home Visa all prohibit it. On the student route the restriction is spelled out explicitly: work, selling goods or services, and taking payment from any Indonesian person or company are all prohibited. Decide this before you apply, because it is not fixable afterwards.
Your file gives two different income numbers for the E33G. Which is it?
We do not know, and we are not going to guess. Our file records the summary line as 'about $60,000/mo' and the requirements list as 'Income US$60,000/yr'. Those contradict each other. Plan against US$60,000 per year and confirm the current threshold yourself at https://evisa.imigrasi.go.id/ before spending anything. We would rather flag the inconsistency than print a clean-looking number that costs you an application fee.
Can I turn a Visa on Arrival into a long-stay visa once I am already in Indonesia?
Our file does not say you can, so we will not pretend otherwise. What the Visa on Arrival gives you is 30 days, extendable once to 60, for 500,000 IDR, with no local work permitted. Treat it as a scouting trip with a hard deadline and plan your long-stay application as a separate process, checking at https://evisa.imigrasi.go.id/ whether an in-country conversion exists for your route.
Is the Student Visa a legitimate route or a loophole?
It is legitimate, and it is the most under-used door into Indonesia. You apply through the official e-Visa system, the e-ITAS is granted at the immigration checkpoint on arrival, and it lasts the length of your course and is renewable. The catch is real: no work, no selling, no payment from anyone Indonesian, and you are tying your legal status to an institution's attendance records. If you actually want to study and you have foreign savings or passive income, it is excellent. If you plan to enrol and never show up, it is a bad idea.
Which city should I pick if I only care about internet?
Yogyakarta, by a wide margin — roughly 120 Mbps, and it is also the cheapest at $920 a month all in. The counterintuitive one is Ubud: it has a nomad score of 9/10 and the best community on the list, and roughly 30 Mbps, the slowest of the four. Canggu sits at about 55 Mbps for $1,670 a month. If video calls are your livelihood, that ranking should probably outrank the vibe ranking.
What does this kit not cover?
Indonesian income tax rates, tax-residency day thresholds, and healthcare costs or hospital standards — we do not hold verified figures for any of those and we will not invent them. What we do hold is that the E33G KITAS is tax-exempt on foreign income not sourced in Indonesia. For everything else on tax, ask the Direktorat Jenderal Pajak and a cross-border accountant; for healthcare, carry international insurance from day one and add evacuation cover if you will be outside the main hubs. This kit is research and planning, not legal or tax advice.
Instant access · lifetime updates · yours to keep.
Moving somewhere else too? The All-Access Vault unlocks every country kit.
Research & planning only — not legal, immigration or tax advice. Verify every step at its official source. All sales final.