In Reply to: My plan is posted by mopprincess on Tuesday, 10. August 2010 at 14:29 Bali Time:
Even if the bank has the funds on hand to do what you're asking for, you're unlikely to get a very good exchange rate - and possibly have exchange fees added on.
Even though the exchange rate for paying the VOA in AUD$ isn't bang on exactly what the official exchange rate for AUD-US$ should be, it's not that far off. I've traveled solo on a number of occasions and always paid my VOA with AUD$50 note. The change received in rupiah was always within around Rp10-15K of what I was expecting. Had I tried to buy US$25 at home, it would have left me more than $2 out of pocket on fees and exchange rates.
Last year I priced buying US$ before leaving since there were three of us traveling and I figured it may work out cheaper. I checked out a number of sources with online calculators. The best I could do for US$75 at the time was around AUD$108 (not a good exchange rate for the dollar at the time, then adding fees etc). We paid AUD$100 on arrival no problems at all. I think we should have had around $3 change from the rates that were listed on the board (Jakarta has a digital board with VOA cost in many different currencies), but we didn't bother arguing for our change.