Extending Your Tourist Visa While Living in the Rural Philippines

So, during my first long-term stay in the Philippines on a regular tourist visa, I wanted to stay about three months. To do that I needed to extend my tourist visa. I was at the house in the rural Philippines. So, the closest BI office is a few hours drive away. This was a while ago before I had learned aboout how the Filipino immigration system works. So, I hired an immigration firm to take care of it for me. Not how I generally like to do things, but needed sometimes the best way to learn is to watch someone else do it.

Since this was the first time I was going to be in the country long enough to get an ACR I-Card, I went ahead and asked them to assist that as well.

Before I did any of this, I got the 29-day visa waiver for my tourist visa.

Now, in retrospect, I could have done all this myself and saved a bit of money, but this is part of the learning process.

I signed the proposal (contract) for these two tasks and sent a scanned copy to them through email. I’ve got my laptop and a Starlink setup for internet access out here.

Next, I had to mail my passport to the lawyer’s office. I used LBC Express to ship my passport to the lawyer’s office in Manila. I asked multiple parties who the most reliable courier service in the Philippines (notably, the rural Philippines) would be. LBC Express was the answer from multiple parties. So, I went with that one. Others expressed reservations with shipping something so sensitive (and difficult to replace) through any courier service in the country, but two different law firms told me that’s what they use for legal documents all the time. So, I went with it.

A couple of observations about my experience with this part:

• They tried to deliver the package to a law office that would have no expectation of being open on a Saturday. The package eventually got there on Monday. No big deal in the grand scheme of things I suppose.
• On the return trip with LBC Express, it took over a week for it to get back here to the house because they need at least two packages that need to be delivered to the local barangay in order for them to send out a delivery truck. This is worrying until we called LBC Express to find out why the delivery was delayed. This multiple package thing was eventually given as the explanation.

I kept my passport in a tough leather passport cover I’ve had for years and put it in a sealed ziplock bag for extra protection. When I received the passport back from the lawyer it was still in the leather passport cover. I appreciated that. LBC Express document packages do have a plastic layer to provide some basic protection against liquids. Not sure I’m prepared to trust that.

Once the lawyer had the passport, they went ahead and applied for my visa extention to 90 days. A was asked a couple of questions by the agent submitting the paperwork:

• Exact departure date
• Complete Address Abroad
• Complete Address in the Philippines
• Height in CM
• Weight in KG
• Name of Spouse if married

I also had to sign a special power of attorney that required a wet signature and original document. Those were included in the package with the passport I sent to the lawyer’s office.

There was additional paperwork I had to sign for the ACR I-Card that required a wet signature. This was also included int he package with the passport I sent to the lawyer’s office.

It took about a week to get the visa extension processed.

It took another two weeks for the entire ACR I-Card paperwork to be processed.

Now, I still had to go into a BI office to do the biometrics to complete the ACR process. Which defeated one of my original goals to not have to travel out to do that, but it had to be done. So, I went back to Manila for a couple of days to do the biometrics. I also setup an appointment with the assistant bank branch manager I’d been talking to so that I could get my personal bank account opened finally. I could do this now that I had my ACR I-Card.

At the time, I was given a red ACR I-Card that signifies a voluntary registration for the ACR. You usually get this color of ACR I-Card if you registering to open a bank account.

Later, when I went back to the BI office to do a tourist visa extension for myself, I was informed that there was an ACR I-Card at another office that hadn’t been picked up yet. That seemed odd. It was the BI office where the original agent from the start of this story had gone to apply for my ACR I-Card. So, I stopped by this extention BI office to see if they were holding an ACR card for me. It turns out they were. It was the more common white-colored ACR I-Card for tourist visas. It was valid for a year rather than just being valid through the end of the 90-day visa extension. That was useful. I then had a valid ACR card again without needing to apply for a new one that only last for a few months.

Now, to this day, I don’t entirely understand what that original agent did that resulted in two ACR I-Cards being produced, but it didn’t seem to hurt anything and I only seemed to be charged for the original voluntary registrant card.

This may be the most important point in this story. As you navigate the Filipino government beauracracy, you will eventually encounter a “Huh?!?” moment. In my IT consulting practice, I used to call these WTF moments, but this situation has proven to be harmless enough. I did get what I originally needed.

And, thus ends the tale of my first visa extension in the Philippines, the one time I didn’t do it myself, and technically did the full visa extension process remotely.

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Photo by Beth MacDonald on Unsplash