Post Office

Most of Indonesia’s post offices known as Kantor pos are open from Monday to Thursday 8:00 am to 2:00 pm, Fridays from 8:00 am to 11:00 am and on Saturdays from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm. Apart from the regular post office services, they also provide fax and email facilities. The poste restante system in Indonesia is quite efficient on some cities; but some cities, they would hold it for one month some are held even longer. Overseas letters to the United States and Western Europe would take around seven to ten days for it to arrive.

Using the parcel type of sending items is very expensive and is time – consuming for the sender. The only cheapest way of sending your mail is through surface but should be less than 10 kg only. A reminder for parcel sender: Do not seal your packages before the post office staff have finished checking what’s inside your package. A parcel that would weigh more than 3 kg that needs to be air mailed to Europe would take about 3 weeks to arrive and would roughly cost Rp170,000 and those parcel that would weigh 5 – 10 kg would cost Rp425,000 but on sea, would be cheaper; it would cost about Rp170,000 and would take about 3 months to arrive.

Telephone

Indonesia has two types of telephone offices: Telkom offices are everywhere open for 24 hours and is run by the government; while the private owned wartels is open from 7:00 am until midnight is a little more expensive but conveniently situated. Wartels also offers fax services but some of its offices don’t have a collect call service.

There are public payphones that are useful for all local calls in the country. It would accept Rp500 and Rp100 coins. Reminder: put the coin in the slot only after someone has pick up the phone. Most of the payphones accepts telephone cards or kartu telephon. These telephone cards have different denominations like Rp2,000 for 20 units and Rp68,000 for 680 units. Telephone cards are available on those small corner stores. Indonesia’s big cities have the new kartu cip phones which uses the new microchip cards. For long – distance domestic calls or panggilan inter – local has different rates and are charged according to zone system. If you plan to call someone, call between 9:00 pm – 6:00 am, because the call rates are cheaper.

International IDD call rates are fixed, although the premium rate by those wartels would vary: like for example, for Japan, USA, New Zealand and Australia it would cost Rp8500 / minute; while countries like UK and Canada would be Rp9300 / minute; also countries like Western Europe and Alaska, it would be Rp10,500 / minute. You will be discounted 25% less if you call between midnight to 6:00 am and for calling at weekends. Calling abroad from Indonesia, just dial 00 + the IDD country code + the area code (without the first zero) + then the number of the party you are calling. If you have any international directory inquiries, just dial 102 and 101 if you wish to talk to an international operator. A number of Telkom offices and some airports have a home – country direct phones that you can call collect or the reverse – charge calls also known as the settle up after the call but they are more expensive than the IDD calls.

Internet

Internet access is also becoming a fad in Indonesia. There are tourist friendly Internet cafes and cyber cafes scattered all across the region. Its rates also vary from Rp3,500 to about 40,000 / hour of usage. Email is a good alternative to using the post office postes restantes.