I was taken aback at being treated like a criminal when I applied for a visa upon arrival at the Bandara Hussein Sastranegara airport on 10 Nov.

When calling the embassy to ask for my visa requirements, the staff told me that I would only need two photos, a letter of invitation to the seminar I was attending and also a valid passport.

However, upon my arrival at the embassy and subsequently submitting the required documents based on my telephone conversations (in fact on two occasions) with the embassy staff, I was again told to get a letter on the letter head of the organising committee chairman of the seminar faxed to the embassy before a visa can be issued to me. So I contacted the organising committee here in Kuala Lumpur as the Seminar was organised by both a Malaysian university and a university in Bandung, Indonesia.

Due to the requirements I had to go to the embassy on three occasions. At the time I was informed by an officer to get the letter faxed to the embassy by the Indonesian university.

I was also told that my case is being treated differently or else I had to wait for an approval by the immigration authority in Indonesia before a visa could be issued to me. Anyway (the organising committee on the Indonesia side) had the letter faxed to the embassy in due course and I got my visa.

Things did not end there and to my surprise upon collection of my visa, the officer told me I was given only four days to stay in Indonesia and Bandung to be precise.

The climax of my ordeal was at the Bandung airport where my passport was temporarily seized by the officer and no reason was given. So I was made to proceed to the luggage x-ray machine where an officer who I believe was a narcotic officer was waiting for his prey. I had to undergo another interview with him after giving him my staff card and other documents to support my case of a genuine traveller.

Matters became even worse when the very officer who was interviewing me came across a deodorant which to him might be a drug. So what do you expect? I was taken to a room where there were three other officers and was given a chair to seat while the deodorant was being tested for banned drugs.

It was really a panicky and traumatising situation as they carried test after test on my innocent deodorant as if trying to prove me guilty. Before the test, the deodorant was shown to a drug-detecting dog to see if it is a banned substance. Meanwhile the whole group (the Malaysian lecturers) was waiting for me to begin our journey to our hotel.

Before my trip I went online to get more information about Bandung, especially the hotel we were going to stay and also about factory outlets. To my amazement the hotel we were going to stay is situated in Asia Afrika Street close to the venue of the Asia Africa Bandung Declaration in 1955.

My amazement turned into excitement as I could not wait to step foot in this street and to have a glimpse of the venue of the Bandung Declaration. In fact Kwame Nkrumah the first President of Ghana and the architect of Ghana's independence from the British was an icon for South-south cooperation and shared similar aspirations with Sukarno of Indonesia.

What I went through is a disgrace to my person, my employer and the Indonesian professor who was the chairman of the organising committee of the seminar I attended. In contrast, I was at New Delhi Airport in July 2009 for another conference and I was treated fairly.